Studies in International Performance Published in association with the International Federation of Theatre Research General Editors: Janelle Reinelt and Brian Singleton Culture and performance cross borders constantly, and not just the borders that define nations. In this new series, scholars of performance produce interactions between and among nations and cultures as well as genres, identities and imaginations. Inter-national in the largest sense, the books collected in the Studies in International Performance series display a range of historical, theoretical and critical approaches to the panoply of performances that make up the global surround. The series embraces ‘Culture’ which is institutional as well as improvised, underground or alternate, and treats ‘Performance’ as either intercultural or transnational as well as intracultural within nations.

Titles include:

Patrick Anderson and Jisha Menon (editors) VIOLENCE PERFORMED Local Roots and Global Routes of Confl ict

Elaine Aston and Sue-Ellen Case STAGING INTERNATIONAL FEMINISMS

Christopher Balme PACIFIC PERFORMANCES Theatricality and Cross-Cultural Encounter in the South Seas

Matthew Isaac Cohen PERFORMING OTHERNESS and on International Stages, 1905–1952

Susan Leigh Foster WORLDING DANCE

Helen Gilbert and Jacqueline Lo PERFORMANCE AND COSMOPOLITICS Cross-Cultural Transactions in Australasia

Helena Grehan PERFORMANCE, ETHICS AND SPECTATORSHIP IN A GLOBAL AGE

Judith Hamera DANCING COMMUNITIES Performance, Difference, and Connection in the Global City

Silvija Jestrovic and Yana Meerzon (editors) PERFORMANCE, EXILE AND ‘AMERICA’

Sonja Arsham Kuftinec THEATRE, FACILITATION, AND NATION FORMATION IN THE BALKANS AND MIDDLE EAST Carol Martin (editor) DRAMATURGY OF THE REAL ON THE WORLD STAGE

Alan Read THEATRE, INTIMACY & ENGAGEMENT The Last Human Venue

Shannon Steen RACIAL GEOMETRIES OF THE BLACK ATLANTIC, ASIAN PACIFIC AND AMERICAN THEATRE

Joanne Tompkins UNSETTLING SPACE Contestations in Contemporary Australian Theatre

S. E. Wilmer NATIONAL THEATRES IN A CHANGING EUROPE

Evan Darwin Winet INDONESIAN POSTCOLONIAL THEATRE Spectral Genealogies and Absent Faces

Forthcoming titles:

Adrian Kear THEATRE AND EVENT

Studies in International Performance Series Standing Order ISBN 978–1–4039–4456–6 (hardback) 978–1–4039–4457–3 (paperback) (outside North America only) You can receive future titles in this series as they are published by placing a standing order. Please contact your bookseller or, in case of diffi culty, write to us at the address below with your name and address, the title of the series and the ISBN quoted above. Customer Services Department, Macmillan Distribution Ltd, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS, Performing Otherness Performing Otherness Java and Bali on International Stages, 1905–1952

Matthew Isaac Cohen Senior Lecturer, Department of Drama and Theatre, Royal Holloway, University of London, UK © Matthew Isaac Cohen 2010 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2010 978-0-230-22462-9 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2010 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978-1-349-30959-7 ISBN 978-0-230-30900-5 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/9780230309005 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Cohen, Matthew Isaac. Performing otherness : Java and Bali on international stages, 1905–1952 / by Matthew Isaac Cohen. p. cm. — (Studies in international performance) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Performing arts—Europe—Indonesian influences. 2. Performing arts— United States—Indonesian influences. I. Title. PN2570.C64 2011 791.094—dc22 2010027498 Contents

List of Illustrations vii Series Preface viii Preface and Acknowledgements ix Note on Orthography and Writing Conventions xii

Introduction: The Spectacle of Otherness 1 Colonial performance of Java 6 Javanese at the Royal Aquarium, 1882 11 Talk of the town: Les Petites Danseuses Javanaises in Paris, 1889 14 Putting it into practice 17

1 Mata Hari 23 Mata Hari in the Secession 23 An Indische world 27 Mata Hari as celebrity 29

2 as Technology 36 Edward Gordon Craig 38 Richard Teschner 42

3 Eva Gauthier, Java to Jazz 48 Eva Gauthier in Java 51 Gauthier in New York 57 Java to Jazz 68

4 Stella Bloch and ‘Up to Date’ Java 73 An empty thought 77 Modern tradition 79 More ‘mrrvlis’ than words can describe 84 Javanese dance in America 91 Return to New York 93 A career in dance 99 Bloch as critic 102

5 Raden Mas Jodjana and Company 106 Confrontation 106 Indies art evenings 109

v vi Contents

Attima 113 Solo career 115 Paris 120 Lelyveld vs. Jodjana 124 Centre Jodjana 132 Après la Guerre 136

6 Magical Identification with Bali in France 140 What frightened Artaud? 142 Amok 147 ‘La Princesse de Bali’ 149

7 Greater India 153 Tagore in Java and Bali 157 Javanese performance at Santiniketan 162 Uday Shankar 166 Nataraj Vashi 170 Greater India’s legacy 173

8 Devi Dja Goes Hollywood 175 Devi Dja in colonial 179 Touring the world 184 The first US tour 189 A Night in Bali 192 The Sarong Room 194 Further touring 197 Dja in Hollywood 198 Between two nations 201 Aftermath: Decolonization 209 The Second World War and the Indonesian revolution 209 Independence 213 Lessons to be learned? 225 Making the rounds 226 Talking the performance past 228

Glossary 231 Notes 234 Works Cited 256 Index 276 List of Illustrations

1 ‘Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery’ 13 2 Damina, Wakim, Sukia and Salim walking through the fairgrounds of the 1889 Exposition Universelle in Paris 18 3 Cléo de Mérode in Javanese dance costume 20 4 Mata Hari brandishing a keris in War Dance to Subramanya (1905) 31 5 Circular printed by Edward Gordon Craig circa 1917 for sale of wayang kulit photographs, postcards, and puppets 40 6 Nawang Wulan, originally produced by Richard Teschner in 1912 43 7 Backstage with Richard Teschner and assistant 45 8 Eva Gauthier in Javanese costume 56 9 Sketch of court dancer by Stella Bloch 87 10 Stella Bloch in Javanese dance costume 97 11 Raden Mas Jodjana in Topeng Mas (The Golden Mask) 123 12 Raden Mas Jodjana being made up by Roemahlaiselan 130 13 Raden Mas Jodjana and Raden Ayu Jodjana (Moes) playing gamelan at Centre Jodjana in Dardenne, France, 1935 133 14 Ram Gopal in Javanese dance costume (1946) 154 15 Ferry Kock and Devi Dja in a Dardanella extra number 182 16 Dardanella advertisement from Penang, Malaysia, from Penang Gazette and Straits Chronicle 27 February 1935 185 17 Devi Dja and company in A Night in Bali (1940) 193 18 Devi Dja interviewed by Wimar Witoelar for Laporan dari Amerika (Report from America) 206

vii Series Preface

The “Studies in International Performance” series was initiated in 2004 on behalf of the International Federation for Theatre Research, by Janelle Reinelt and Brian Singleton, successive Presidents of the Federation. Their aim was, and still is, to call on performance scholars to expand their disciplinary horizons to include the comparative study of performances across national, cultural, social, and political borders. This is necessary not only in order to avoid the homogenizing tendency of national paradigms in performance scholarship, but also in order to engage in creating new performance scholarship that takes account of and embraces the com- plexities of transnational cultural production, the new media, and the economic and social consequences of increasingly international forms of artistic expression. Comparative studies (especially when conceived across more than two terms) can value both the specifically local and the broadly conceived global forms of performance practices, histories, and social formations. Comparative aesthetics can challenge the limitations of national orthodoxies of art criticism and current artistic knowledges. In for- malizing the work of the Federation’s members through rigorous and inno- vative scholarship this Series aims to make a significant contribution to an ever-changing project of knowledge creation.

Janelle Reinelt and Brian Singleton International Federation for Theatre Research Fédération Internationale pour la Recherche Théâtrale

viii Preface and Acknowledgements

In the late 1980s, while studying shadow puppetry in Java, I stumbled across a musty and yellowing copy of a book by Indonesian novelist and biographer Ramadhan KH, Gelombang Hidupku: Dewi Dja dari Dardanella (1982; The Wave of My Life: Devi Dja of Dardanella) on the shelves of a local bookstore. On the book’s cover was a reproduction of an old poster, dating from 1939. ‘First time in America! Bali and Java Dancers with Devi Dja.’ Dja was pictured in full Javanese dance regalia in a classical pose in front of what appeared to be an eight-tiered Balinese funeral tower. I purchased the book instantly, and picked through it slowly with my (then) limited Indonesian. I was instantly drawn to the photographs of the world travels of a large theatre company from colonial Indonesia, and the remarkable story of an illiterate street dancer from rural east Java settling in southern California and working in Hollywood. Ramadhan mentions in his foreword that he only approximates actual events. I was thus unsure how much of his book was fictional. My understanding then was that international Javanese and Balinese performances before independence would have inevitably taken place under Dutch colonial control. I was astounded that a company such as Dardanella might travel the world without government subvention. I was pretty certain that no large-scale Indonesian troupe had mounted a tour of such scale after independence. A whole field of inquiry opened up in front of me. I wondered how many other Javanese or Balinese performers or companies were travelling inter- nationally before the 1950s. I wondered what sort of lives these performers might have had. I suppose, at the back of my mind, I wished guidance for the sorts of life decisions then confronting me, as an American student of wayang kulit with few immediate role models or precursors. I hoped the experiences of past generations who negotiated kindred career paths might provide direction. This question of historical precursors continued to occupy me during the 1990s and into the new century, as I moved around Indonesia, the United States and Europe, with shifting disciplinary affiliations. Research proceeded in fits and starts. As a graduate student in anthropology, I looked at the travels of the American modern dance company Denishawn to Java and their stage representations of Java and Bali, and learned about the coterie of foreign artists and scholars in Bali in the 1930s. While in the as a postdoctoral fellow in Asian studies, I started to read about the Dutch dancer Mata Hari, and made a ‘pilgrimage’ to her birthplace in Leeuwarden. Friendships with Dutch scholars and gamelan players, attending rehearsals

ix x Preface and Acknowledgements and performances of Indonesian music and dance, and occasional participa- tion in Dutch gamelan and kecapi-suling musical ensembles led me to think about the history of Indonesian music in Holland. I read as well about the display of exotic people in world fairs and histories of cultural exchange. Gradually, I began to think of these disparate topics as pieces of a large jigsaw puzzle, a history of international stage representations of Java and Bali up until independence. I had pondered a less complex puzzle in my book The Komedie Stamboel: Popular Theater in Colonial Indonesia, 1891–1903, which recounts the travels of an itinerant theatre company around Indonesia and the Malay world, primarily through contemporary newspaper sources. The book was researched in the traditional manner of cultural historians, by visiting archives in Holland and Indonesia and pouring over printed and microfilmed texts, one page at a time. Such a procedure would be impossible for the much bigger puzzle I now had before me. The possibility of writing the current book, dealing with the loose network of performers who represented Indonesia abroad, only emerged around 2005 with the information explosion of the Internet and its powerful search engines, online library and archival catalogues, minutely detailed ephemera catalogued at e-bay and other online auction sites, searchable newspapers and digitalized books. Typing in search terms such as ‘Javanese dance’ accessed huge amounts of fascinating, but sometimes tantalizingly incom- plete information. E-mail and the internet telephonics service Skype allowed me to contact scholars and stakeholders from New Zealand to Indonesia to California. I still needed to visit archives – and many of them. But I knew what I was looking for, and the kind assistance of library staff and archivists meant I could work through materials at a relatively quick pace. Acknowledgements are often the place to repay personal favours and recognize debts. The following list presages the contours of the book, and suggests starting places for future researchers. I would like to thank the fol- lowing institutions visited: the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, the Austrian Theatre Museum, Fries Museum Leeuwarden, KITLV, Yale University Library, the British Library, SOAS Library, Theatre Museum Library in London, the Mander and Mitchenson Theatre Collection, Princeton University Library, Harvard Theatre Collection, British Film Institute, Theater Instituut Nederland, Sonobudoyo Museum and Museum Taman Siswa Dewantara Kirti Griya, Yogyakarta. I did not visit, but was kindly assisted by staff at the following archives: Deutsches Tanzarchiv Köln, Bibliothèque du Film and La Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, Kentucky Historical Society, Hartwick College Archives, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Hull University Archives, Hamilton Library at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa, Carl Albert Center Archive at the University of Oklahoma and the National Anthropological Archives at the Smithsonian. The interlibrary office of Royal Holloway, the Edward Gordon Craig Estate and Just Entertainment (publisher of the complete works of Bert Haanstra) Preface and Acknowledgements xi also deserve my thanks. I am especially grateful for access to private archives held by Parvati Chavoix-Jodjana and Khalil Norland. Research and writing involved many other people as well. I need to thank the following personally: Ben Arps, Anita and Bernard Askienazy, Patricia Aulestia, I Made Bandem, Kati Basset, Jack Body, Primavera Boman-Behram, L. Elaine Chase, Aviva and Hannah Cohen, Phyllis Cohen, Tony Colby, Mary Jean Cowell, Pepper Lesnick Dabby, Ann David, I Wayan Dibia, Ben Doyle, David Eliscu, Tammy Elder, Kathy Foley, Helen Gilbert, Rachel and Allan Goldstein, Kathryn Hansen , Barbara Hatley, Ernst Heins, Kunang Helmi, Mark Hobart, Marijke Huisman, Christopher Innes, Steffi de Jong, Paula Kennedy, Leona Lesnick Klein, Martin Köhler, Ratna Assan Kohn, Sunil Kothari, Diyah Larasati, Vanessa Lopez, Alessandra Lopez y Royo, Rebecca and Andres Martin, Deborah Mawer, Avanthi Meduri, Daniel Meyer-Dinkgräfe, Krystyn R. Moon, Laura Noszlopy, Julianti Parani, Harry Poeze, Prarthana Purkayastha, Janelle Reinelt, Laura Rosenberg, Regina Schwarz, Pat Shipman, Brian Singleton, Sitor Situmorang, Simon Sladen, Henry Spiller, Winston Tan, Nadia Turbide, Alexia Della Valle, I Nyoman Wenten, Pim Westerkamp, Elissa White and Anda Djoehana Wiradikarta. Sanata Dharma University’s agreement to host me as a visiting scholar allowed me to menyeminarkan (present seminars) on the material in the book at Sanata Dharma, Gadjah Mada University, the arts conservatoire ISIYogyakarta, the experimental theatre collective Teater Garasi and other locations around Yogyakarta, as I describe in the book’s aftermath. I would like to thank, among others: Agung Gunawan, Agung Nugroho, Altianto, Michael Asmara, Katrin Bandel, Baskara T. Wardaya, Nur Cahyani Wahyuni, Wisma Nugroho Christianto, Dewanto Sukistono, Galuh Asti Wulandari, Jennifer Lindsay, G. R. Lono Lastoro Simatupang, Jeannie Park, Reni Karnila Sari, Joan Suyenaga and Ugoran Prasad. There were conversations and exchanges with many others in Yogyakarta and around Java that informed the book as well. Some material in this book appeared in earlier incarnations in Asian Theatre Journal, Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde, Indonesia and the Malay World and Seleh Notes, and talks delivered in London, Yogyakarta, Seoul, Kuala Lumpur, Liverpool, Oxford, Aberystwyth and Exeter. This book is dedicated to the memory of my father, Professor Donald J. Cohen, a child psychiatrist whose research into the vicissitudes of familial and social relations and understanding other minds has been inspirational to me. L’dor v’dor. Note on Orthography and Writing Conventions

Malay, Indonesian, Javanese and other languages of the Indonesian archi- pelago used an orthography based on Dutch conventions before a new, phonetic orthography was introduced in 1972. In the old orthography, the sound ‘ch’ (as in chat) was written tj; in the new it is c. The sound ‘ee’ (as in feet) was ie; now it is i. The sound ‘j’ (as in jungle) was dj and is now j. The sound ‘sh’ (as in shun) was written sj and is now sy. The sound ‘oo’ (as in boot) was oe and is now u. The sound ‘y’ (as in young) was j and is now y. While this book has an older historical focus, for readability I generally fol- low the post-1972 spelling conventions for words in Indonesian languages. There are a number of exceptions. I maintain the original spelling of direct quotes, names of institutions and titles of publications. I also use old spell- ing for names of authors and people who remain better known under the old spelling or who chose to maintain the old spelling after the orthographic reforms. Thus, I use the old orthography for Jodjana, rather than Yojana. The letter ‘a’ in standard Javanese is pronounced as a low back-rounded vowel (between ‘oa’ as in boat and ‘aw’ as in law) in unclosed final and pen- ultimate syllables. When either ‘o’ or ‘a’ might be used in Javanese words, I follow scholarly common practice by preferring ‘a,’ with the exception of words commonly spelled with an ‘o’ (such as Solo). I also spell out the alveolar consonants of dh and th for Javanese words. So, I prefer dhalang over dalang. I italicize foreign words, except for ones that are now part of English (for example, gamelan) or are used frequently in this book (wayang kulit). A glossary of the book’s common foreign-language terms is appended. Indonesian languages do not differentiate between singular and plural nouns, and I follow the academic convention of not adding an -s to the end of Indonesian words. Names of foreign artistic genres are italicized rather than capitalized. Translations from foreign language sources are my own, unless otherwise noted.

xii