Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde Vol. 165, no. 4 (2009), pp. 459-492 URL: http://www.kitlv-journals.nl/index.php/btlv URN:NBN:NL:UI:10-1-100119 Copyright: content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License ISSN: 0006-2294
CHRISTINA SUNARDI Pushing at the boundaries of the body Cultural politics and cross-gender dance in East Java
One of the most fruitful activities of my field research on dance and gamelan music in the East Javanese regency of Malang1 from 2005 to 2007 was attend- ing live performances with my teachers.2 Those occasions were key learning experiences: my teachers explained playing techniques of the various instru- ments, expounded upon conventions of dance movement, and, to my delight, sometimes took me to sit and play with the musicians who were accompany- ing the dancers. During performances they also shook their heads, clicked their teeth, or chuckled with dissatisfaction. Particularly disturbing to them were recent transformations in the performance of Ngremo Tayub, a male-style dance performed by women, and Ngremo Putri, a female-style dance most often performed by men. Strikingly, my teachers were not bothered by the transvestism, but by what they saw as dancers’ technical and artistic short- comings. Unlike dancers and musicians ‘in times past’ (dulu), they said, per- formers ‘nowadays’ (sekarang) are departing too far from ‘tradition’ (tradisi), are not as competent technically, and are less concerned about artistic content than about making money from spectacle. As they talked about ‘tradition’ and ‘times past’, performers of older gen- erations expressed their discomfort with the ways the younger generation
1 Malang is also the name of a city, but unless I specify ‘the city of Malang’, I am referring to the regency. 2 My research was funded at various stages by a Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Re- search Abroad Program Fellowship; a University of California Office of the President Pacific Rim Mini Grant; University of California, Berkeley Center for Southeast Asia Studies Grant-In-Aid Scholarships; and a University of California, Berkeley Graduate Division Travel Award. I thank Didik Nini Thowok, M. Soleh Adi Pramono and Lembaga Ilmu Pengetahuan Indonesia (LIPI) for sponsoring my fieldwork. I am grateful to Benjamin Brinner, Patricia Shehan Campbell, Sonja Downing, Jeffrey Hadler, Midiyanto, Lois Roland, Laurie J. Sears, Sunardi, Bonnie C. Wade, and two anonymous reviewers for careful readings, productive comments, and help with transla- tions. I take full responsibility for any flaws that remain.
CHRISTINA SUNARDI is Assistant Professor in the School of Music, at the University of Wash- ington, Seattle. She holds a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley. Her main field of aca- demic interest is ethnomusicology. She is the author of ‘Making sense and senses of locale through perceptions of music and dance in Malang, East Java’, Asian Music, forthcoming. Dr Sunardi can be reached at [email protected].
Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde (BKI) 165-4 (2009):459-492 © 2009 Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde Downloaded from Brill.com09/24/2021 07:07:24PM via free access 460 Christina Sunardi performs gender. Older performers indicated that the performance of male- ness in Ngremo Tayub is too ‘feminine’, commenting that dancers (who are women) execute their head movements like women instead of like men, and perform the knightly character too coquettishly. Similarly, older performers criticized the performance of femaleness in Ngremo Putri for being too ‘mas- culine’: the dancers’ legs are too far apart, the tempo is too fast, and accents in the music are too harsh. These criticisms reveal that many older performers expect cross-gender dance to reinforce constructions of gender that they have come to consider normal, suggesting generational differences in the percep- tion of cross-gender representation. These complex contemporary attitudes on cross-gender performance have been informed by an equally complicated history in which local, national, and international discourses and practices have converged. From earlier writings and his own observations, Theodore Pigeaud (1938:277, 301, 321- 3, 328) provides evidence of cross-gender performance in masked dance, social dance, and popular theatre traditions in East Java from the 1820s to the early twentieth century. Paul Wolbers (1989, 1993) and R. Anderson Sutton (1993) link transvestism, in which boys have performed female-style dance for ritual ceremonies in Banyuwangi, to centuries-old Hindu and indigenous Javanese imagery in which androgyny represents cosmic power and fertility. Nineteenth- and twentieth-century Dutch colonial and Islamic discourses have also strongly affected constructions of gender in East Java, and in Indonesia more generally. As Evelyn Blackwood (2005:866, 869-71) emphasizes, a separation of maleness and femaleness and a mapping of male- ness to men’s bodies and femaleness to women’s bodies characterize these discourses, shaping the gender ideologies that the Indonesian government has promoted since independence in 1945. Blackwood, Benedict Anderson (1996), Dédé Oetomo (1996), Tom Boellstorff (2004a, 2004b), and Jan Mrázek (2005) show that by embodying the gendered characteristics associated with the opposite sex, individuals in many parts of Indonesia have resisted such state-sanctioned constructions. In short, ‘cross-genderedness’ has been both an accepted practice integral to local worldviews in East Java and also a sub- version of official constructions of manhood and womanhood. Performers in Malang selectively contend with these different logics and meanings of cross- gender performance in order to articulate their own senses of their maleness and femaleness. To understand performers’ attitudes, I analyse their comments about several East Javanese dances: Ngremo, Beskalan, and masked dance.3 These
3 Ngremo and Beskalan, similar to each other in terms of music, movement, and costume, fre- quently open other performances and events. Masked dances may be performed as part of a drama or as individual dances to open other performances and events.
Downloaded from Brill.com09/24/2021 07:07:24PM via free access Pushing at the boundaries of the body 461 dances include male and female styles, which, for the most part, either men or women may perform.4 Because performers’ senses of gender are particu- larly visible in their discussions about how men’s bodies ‘become’ female and women’s bodies ‘become’ male, I focus on discussions about the performance of these dances as cross-gender dances. Although musicians and dancers did not consistently refer to a category of ‘cross-gender dance’, for analyti- cal purposes I have chosen to use this term to refer to an individual dancing in a gendered style that is the opposite of his or her biological sex. Heeding Judith Butler’s argument (1999:10) that biological sex, like gender, is a cultural construction, my reference to two sexes – man and woman – is based on the categories that I heard generally used in Malang. I have several aims in writing this article, one of which is to develop approaches to the study of the body. My attention to the cultural and ideo- logical implications of the body builds on Susan Leigh Foster’s view (1986) that the body is a signifier of historically specific meaning, and Deborah Wong’s argument (2004:161-93) that individuals use their bodies to align themselves with particular histories and cultural practices. I foreground per- formers’ perspectives about bodies in order to understand their insights into the meanings of their practices, the cultural impact they have as artists by performing or talking about performance in specific ways, and the reasons behind multiple and sometimes conflicting perceptions. No less central are my intentions to underline the strategies performers employ to negotiate ten- sions between official ideologies and social realities, expectations about their onstage personas and offstage lives, and differences of opinion between their personal aesthetic sensibilities and those of others. While attitudes towards the performance of gender vary by individual, a degree of consistency exists among performers of the same generation. I use ‘generation’ as an analytical framework to refer to the time an individual begins to actively perform as an independent musician or dancer.5 However, I am careful to recognize that the attitudes of a particular individual in a par- ticular generation might not necessarily represent the attitudes of the whole generation. Furthermore, an individual’s attitudes might be characteristic of one generation in one way and of a different generation in another way. Some inconsistencies are not surprising, as generations overlap and individu- als often learn from and perform with musicians and dancers from different generations. Despite the multiple factors that contribute to an individual’s perspective, using generation as a framework facilitates my examination of relationships
4 The performance context (including the historical moment) usually affects whether men or women perform a particular style of a particular dance (Sunardi 2007). 5 I thank Andrew Weintraub for a conversation that led me to think further about generation.
Downloaded from Brill.com09/24/2021 07:07:24PM via free access 462 Christina Sunardi between larger cultural forces and performers’ views. I have used my teach- ers’ references to ‘old people’ (orang tua), their ‘friends’ (teman), and ‘young people nowadays’ (anak-anak sekarang) to group performers into three genera- tions: the 1940s-1960s, the 1970s-1990s, and the 1990s to the present.6 That these generations correspond closely, but not precisely, to three main political periods in Indonesian history – Old Order (1945-1965/6), New Order (1966- 1998), and Reformation Era (1998-present) – leads me to make three related arguments. First, the political and cultural climate has affected the verbal and performance discourse through which musicians and dancers express their perceptions about the performance of gender. Second, performers have rearticulated larger cultural and political discourses in their own ways, thereby producing their own senses of gender. Third, they have affected the political and cultural climate by pushing at the boundaries of maleness and femaleness as they perform, and in some cases, by reinforcing such transgres- sion in their daily lives, making both onstage and offstage spaces critical sites of cultural production.
The 1940s-1960s generation
The careers of performers in the 1940s-1960s generation span Indonesia’s turbulent transition from Dutch colony to independent nation. The older members of this generation were performing during the Japanese occupation (1942-1945), the declaration of Indonesian independence (1945), and the Indo- nesian Revolution (1945-1949). Most were performing during the regime of Indonesia’s first president, Soekarno (1945-1966), which has come to be called the Old Order. Promoting ideas about what it meant to be an Indonesian man or woman was one way that the Old Order government worked to unify a politically and ethnically diverse new nation. National constructions of gender were synthesized from pre-existing ideas. Saskia Wieringa (2002), Saya Shiraishi (1997), and Benedict Anderson (1965) observe that femininity and masculinity in Old Order Indonesia were modelled on images of particular Indonesian national heroes and characters from traditional Javanese theatre. Women were encouraged to be like the Indonesian heroine Kartini and the legendary princess Sumbadra: refined, polite, quiet, and dedicated to the home and to their social roles as nurtur- ing mothers and wives (Wieringa 2002:99, 130-2; Shiraishi 1997:90-1). Men were encouraged to follow particular models of masculinity and to assume positions of leadership within the family as household heads and within the nation as political leaders and lawmakers (Wieringa 2002:99; Shiraishi
6 My teachers were members of the 1970s-1990s generation.
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1997:90-1). President Soekarno, as a national hero, promoted a standard rooted in his own good looks, sexual prowess, bravery, loyalty to the nation, charisma, and, as Shiraishi (1997:91) notes, his deep voice. Dipping into Javanese theatre, Soekarno held up as a model the character Gatotkaca, who is handsome, brave, determined, loyal, and patriotic (Anderson 1965:28; Weintraub 2004:110). Other notions of masculinity and femininity, however, contradicted offi- cial constructions. Writing about maleness, James Peacock (1987:204, note 3) points out that ‘Javanese tradition does not condemn homosexuality and regards a very wide range of behaviour, from he-man to rather (in our terms) “effeminate”, as properly masculine’. Anderson (1965:28) notes the shift in ideals from the 1930s to the 1960s, writing in the 1960s that the ‘he-man’ heroes popularized in the movies contributed to some Javanese people’s perceptions of refined heroes in traditional theatre as effeminate. Similarly, womanhood in Java has been more complex than images portrayed in official discourse. In addition to being wives and mothers, women have historically worked outside the home (Brenner 1998). During the nationalist movements and the Indonesian Revolution, women took active roles in politics (Wieringa 2002). Conversing with me in 2005-2007, dancers and musicians articulated these diverse ways of existing as women and men as they talked about per- forming the gender that was opposite to their own sex, showing that they did not always follow state-sanctioned versions, which, as ‘ideal’ types, fre- quently do not reflect the complexities of lived realities.
Men ‘becoming’ female
Performers in the 1940s-1960s generation talked about femaleness as per- formed in ludruk, a form of East Javanese popular theatre. Historically, the casts of these plays have been all men; those who play female roles are called tandhak ludruk, or simply tandhak.7 Tandhak also sing songs dressed as women and dance Ngremo Putri. As tandhak, men worked hard to uphold construc- tions of femaleness that were consistent with Old Order ideals based on Kar- tini and Sumbadra through dance performance that was refined, slow, sweet, polite, and graceful. Supeno (1923-2009) and his nephew Djupri (born 1939) described particular components of the dance costume that they and other ludruk actors used to make their performances of femaleness more realistic, such as padding to give the chest and buttocks a feminine shape; a thin, plas-
7 ‘Tandhak’ means ‘female singer-dancer’ and can refer to men or women who perform this role. In this article, however, I refer specifically to tandhak ludruk, who in Malang have been and continue to be predominately men.
Downloaded from Brill.com09/24/2021 07:07:24PM via free access 464 Christina Sunardi tic mask to make their faces look smooth;8 wigs with long, human hair; and a body suit with padding for breasts, hips, and buttocks.9 Expressing his pride in his ability to transform his appearance, Djupri boasted that when he was in female dress many believed he was a girl.10 Several men attributed tandhak’s abilities to dance like beautiful women and attract audiences to their uses of magic and forms of secret knowledge (ilmu). Djupri explained that as a result of his ilmu, his transformation to womanhood while dancing was so complete that he felt like he hated women but liked handsome men.11 Through per- formance, Djupri ultimately altered his inner self as well as his outer self to conform to official ideas about womanhood. At the same time, Supeno, Djupri, and others of their generation rein- forced dominant constructions of masculinity by emphasizing that although they performed as women onstage, in their everyday lives they lived as men. They made a point to introduce me to their families, thereby establishing themselves as husbands and fathers, that is, as heads of household and as heterosexual. Djupri emphasized how seriously he took these social roles by evoking his grandmother’s religiously-inspired instruction to become a woman only when he performed but not in daily life, because God had made him a man.12 Despite their assertions that they lived as men, dancers of the 1940s-1960s generation subverted dominant gender ideologies by behaving as more ‘female’. Ironically, they did not contradict ideal constructions of woman- hood directly, but reproduced existing notions of womanhood in the context of men’s bodies, effectively challenging assumptions about which kinds of bodies could and should occupy femaleness. Furthermore, they resisted discursive and social pressures to exist as ‘strong males’ modelled after Gatotkaca and Soekarno. Some men explained that they were able to perform female dance convincingly because their own characters and souls had female qualities. Supatman (born 1945) performed Ngremo Putri when he was in his early teens – just beginning his physical, emotional, and sexual transforma- tion from boyhood to manhood. He indicated that at that time, he straddled the boundaries separating the two official genders: ‘In the past, I was almost, you know – almost not male […]. I was almost like a woman – nowadays a transvestite.’13 Reinforcing his recognition that he did not fit into a normative
8 Personal communication with Supeno, 27-6-2006. 9 Personal communication with Djupri, 15-6-2006. 10 Personal communication with Djupri, 15-6-2006. 11 Personal communication with Djupri, 6-1-2006. 12 Personal communication with Djupri, 6-1-2006. 13 Saya dulu hampir, kok – hampir ndak laki […]. Saya ini sudah hampir seperti perempuan gitu – kalau sekarang banci ‘gitu lho. (Personal communication with Supatman, 6-12-2005.)
Downloaded from Brill.com09/24/2021 07:07:24PM via free access Pushing at the boundaries of the body 465 category of maleness, he recalled, ‘I used to be coquettish – so people said […]. I was said to have been delicious, sweet.’14 ‘Coquettish’ and ‘sweet’ are often used to refer to ‘female’ traits. By explaining that he was characterized this way, Supatman articulated his understanding that others in his commu- nity perceived him as effeminate, too. Likewise, Kadam (born 1939) linked his abilities to perform as a tandhak to his own femaleness: because he naturally has a high singing and speaking voice, he said, he is suitable (pantes) for female roles.15 Some men who per- form female roles, he generalized, are able to do so because they have ‘female blood’ (darah wanita) or ‘female hearts’ (hati wanita). Kadam recognized that gender and sex do not necessarily map to each other in a simple one-to-one correlation as they do in official discourses, but that some men and women embody gendered attributes of the opposite sex.
Accounting for why ‘men with female hearts’ – including himself – and ‘women with male hearts’ exist, Kadam explained,
You know, sometimes people like us lose out during the sexual act of our father and mother. That is, during intercourse, the father wishes for a son, but the mother wants a daughter. What results depends on which is stronger – the push from my father or my mother. In the case of my mother and father, my father was stronger. A boy resulted, but his heart was female. Similarly, sometimes there are women who have male hearts.16
As an example of a ‘woman with a male heart,’ he talked about a woman in his neighbourhood who does not want to marry, and does a ‘man’s job’ of col- lecting and chopping wood. He also further nuanced the category ‘men with female blood’. Some, such as himself, live as men while others live as wom- en.17 Men who live as women are called waria, or the less culturally sensitive term banci (Oetomo 1996; Boellstorff 2004b). Despite his frankness, Kadam expressed ambivalence about his own female tendencies. He divulged that he himself has had the ‘seed’ (bibit) for his own ‘female heart’ since he was a child because his mother dressed
14 [E]nyek saya dulu – bilangnya orang-orang […] dulu bilangnya orang itu “enak”, “manis”. (Per- sonal communication with Supatman, 6-12-2005.) 15 Personal communication with Kadam, 23-5-2006. 16 Kan, dari, kita orang ini kan, dari bapak dan ibu, kadang kalah waktu senggama, itu waktu senggama itu, bapak menginginkan seorgang anak laki-laki, tapi ibunya ingin anak perempuan. Jadi keluar yang mana yang lebih kuat itu, dorongan batinnya bapak dan mama saya itu. Kalau dorongan batin mama dan bapak, bapak saya itu lebih kuat dari mama saya, keluarnya laki-laki, tapi hatinya wanita, itu. Kadang- kadang wanita juga ada yang hatinya laki-laki. (Personal communication with Kadam, 23-5-2006.) 17 Personal communication, 23-5-2006.
Downloaded from Brill.com09/24/2021 07:07:24PM via free access 466 Christina Sunardi him in girls’ clothes and had him help her with household chores.18 He also socialized with girls. Kadam clarified that although in his soul he feels like a woman, he does not want to become one. At the same time, living as a ‘true man’ (laki-laki yang sungguh) – one who has a productive sexual relationship with a wife that results in children – has been a struggle.
If I want to marry [a euphemism for sex], I have to fight beforehand. I have to if I want to become a true man, to be able to marry, to have children and grandchil- dren. See, I already have grandchildren, I have my wife, right? I started to fight a long time ago. Once I met a girl; I wanted to marry her. That meant it was not too high – my [female] blood, that is, was below fifty [percent], for example. My fe- male inner self was below fifty – if it went above fifty, I would not be able to marry. That’s what I have to fight against.
And what’s more, the person loved can only be my own wife. I cannot, for ex- ample, want to attract another person, another woman. I can’t seduce in a manly way, I can’t do it.19
Throughout our conversation, Kadam compared his gender and sexuality to that of ‘other men’, or ‘normal men’, pointing to his recognition of his own difference and also implying what existing as a ‘normal man’ entails: sexual prowess and conquest of women – characteristics for which President Soe karno was well known. Kadam’s references to his blood and his inner self also signify his struggle to negotiate his sense of destiny to be a man – albeit with a woman’s heart – and the pressures to live visibly as a man in terms of official discourses about masculinity. In Kadam’s case, tensions between inner and outer selves and between onstage and offstage personas mirror each other, further blurring the edges of onstage and offstage realms of cultural produc- tion and personal experience. 20 Similarly pushing at boundaries that separate ‘performance’ from daily
18 According to Kadam, she did this because she did not have a daughter to help her (personal communication, 23-5-2006). 19 [K]alau mau kawin, harus tarung dulu. Harus, kalau ingin jadi laki-laki yang sungguh, supaya bisa kawin, sudah bisa punya anak, dan punya cucu, gitu. Kan, saya sudah punya cucu, isteri saya ada, gitu, kan, ya, sudah tarung mulai dulu…itu udah ketemu sama anak wanita, sudah kepingin kawin, saya itu. Kan berarti sudah tidak begitu ke atas, anuh, darah saya itu, dibawahnya lima pulu, upama gitu, batin wanita itu dibawahnya lima puluh – jatuh ke atasnya lima puluh, sudah ndak bisa. Hanya tarung dengan itu saja. Dan lagi orang yang dicintai hanya isterinya sendiri. Tidak bisa, upama mau menggait orang lain, dengan wanita yang lain, ndak bisa, ndak bisa merayu secara laki-laki, ndak bisa. (Personal communication with Kadam, 23-5-2006.) 20 I thank an anonymous reviewer for helping me to develop this analysis of Kadam’s language, and specifically for his or her insight into the deeper implications of ‘blood’ (darah) and ‘inner self’ (batin).
Downloaded from Brill.com09/24/2021 07:07:24PM via free access Pushing at the boundaries of the body 467 life and male from female, Supeno and Djupri reminisced about their ‘female’ appearance offstage. Supeno said that he had hair down to his waist, which was good for making the large bun characteristic of female-style dance.21 Although a man’s long hair was also associated with being a revolutionary fighter during the Indonesian Revolution until at least the end of theOld Order era, the hair did not usually reach the waist.22 Recalling the 1960s, Djupri talked about wearing women’s clothes offstage, once posing as a man’s second wife because that man wanted to find out how his first wife would handle such a situation.23 Supeno’s and Djupri’s narratives about their feminine appearance in the past are similar to those that James Peacock’s respondents (Peacock 1987) relayed as he researched ludruk in Surabaya in 1962-1963. Analysing these narratives, he offers important insights into onstage and offstage gendered identity in East Java in the 1940s to 1960s. Peacock indicates that before the Indonesian Revolution, tandhak were more likely to live openly as women. Afterwards, however, it was considered more progressive and modern for them to live as men. Citing two tandhak who had cut their long hair because of ‘progress’, Peacock points to the impact that Old Order discourses had on men’s behaviour and lifestyles. He notes that this impact was not without dis- tress because long hair, as a natural part of the body, was a special symbol of a transvestite’s commitment to womanhood (Peacock 1987:207). Peacock also identifies the contradictory messages that cross-dressers received about who they should be. On the one hand, they were encouraged to be ideal women when doing so contributed to national unity through performance by sing- ing songs in support of the nation. On the other hand, they were discouraged from taking gender transgression into their daily lives; instead, they were encouraged to be modern Indonesian men – to have short hair, wear pants, and be heads of household (Peacock 1987:207). The experiences of Supeno, Djupri, Kadam, and Peacock’s respondents indicate that despite such pressures, individuals challenged official construc- tions of gender in the 1940s to 1960s. Onghokham provides further evidence that individuals transgressed dominant gender ideology in their daily lives, and that social spaces existed for them to do so. Observing masked dance in Malang in 1963, he mentions the role of a transvestite – ‘a well situated vil- lager’, he writes – as an artistic aid to a troupe leader (Onghokham 1972:119). Audiences in the 1940s to 1960s encouraged gender transgression through their patronage of and desires for cross-gender dancers both onstage and offstage. Djupri recounted an instance in the early 1960s when a man became
21 Personal communication with Supeno, 27-6-2006. 22 I thank an anonymous reviewer for drawing my attention to this. 23 Personal communication with Djupri, 15-6-2006.
Downloaded from Brill.com09/24/2021 07:07:24PM via free access 468 Christina Sunardi so infatuated after seeing him dance that he followed Djupri around, forget- ting about his own wife and children.24 From his observations of ludruk in 1950s east-central Java, Clifford Geertz (1960:295) writes that people saw transvestism as ‘peculiar’, and part of the popularity of ludruk was that audi- ences could ‘wonder at the transvestites’ – a fascination that sometimes led to homosexual activity offstage with tandhak. Peacock (1987:204) analyses audience comments on the beauty of tandhak, explicit references to their bod- ies, and desire for them, arguing that tandhak represented idealized women and sexual escape from domestic responsibilities since they could not bear children. Clearly, for some men, the refined, quiet wives and mothers of their children, modelled after Kartini and Sumbadra, fell short as ‘idealized women’. Peacock (1987:205-6) notes, however, that audiences were disgusted when any aspect of a tandhak’s maleness or age became apparent, pointing to audiences’ high demands that tandhak live up to their contradictory images as ideal women onstage and idealized women offstage.
Women ‘becoming’ male
Women dancers, too, both reinforced and subverted gender norms through their performances of maleness. Musicians and dancers recalled that women began to perform the male-style dance Ngremo Lanang in Malang in the 1950s and 1960s. These women – all deceased by the time of my fieldwork – were remembered to have performed the dance ‘just like men’, with the exception of singing in a woman’s voice. In other words, women’s voices subverted the maleness of the dance style. Djupri recognized this by qualifying his praise of his grandmother, Muskayah (Mak Mus). He remembered her as strong (gagah) and handsome (ganteng) when she danced – adjectives consistent with descriptions of masculinity based on images of Gatotkaca and President Soekarno. He also identified the ‘male’ melodies she sang, but recognized her ‘female’ vocal register: ‘only her voice was a woman’s voice, but she imitated a man precisely. It was just that the tones were female tones, but the melody was like a man’s.’ 25 Muskayah seems to have taken her ‘maleness’ offstage, as Djupri attested to through his recollections of her strength in martial arts (pencak silat) and drumming, activities often gendered as male. Expressing wonder and admi- ration, he linked her ‘male’ abilities to her spiritual practices and knowledge (ilmu):
24 Personal communication with Djupri, 15-6-2006. 25 Hanya suaranya. Suara wanita, tapi meniru orang pria, ya précis. Hanya nadanya itu, nadanya wan- ita, tapi lagunya ya, seperti orang laki-laki. (Personal communication with Djupri, 6-1-2006.)
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Even though Mak Mus was a woman, when she did pencak silat she was like this [holds a thumb up]. She was thin, but yes, like this [holds up a thumb]. She looked strong. How could that be?
Her drum strokes were distinct, pleasant to listen to – like a man’s. ‘Oh, I have to be like a man’ [she said]. She had to be like a man, using whatever way worked. In- deed, when she played ‘tak’26 it was like a man, just the same. That was the strange thing, but there was indeed, as it may be called, a sacred aspect, ilmu.27
Djupri indicated that Muskayah’s artistic activities challenged official ideas about what women’s activities and behaviours should entail. In praising Mus- kayah, Djupri, too, subverted official ideas. Djupri remembered his grand- mother, a woman he idolized, not in state-sanctioned terms as a submissive wife and mother, but in her own terms as a dancer, drummer, and martial arts expert. The discrepancy between official ideas and social realities, and between official ideas and valued memories, is striking. Women such as Muskayah and the ‘women with male hearts’ that Kadam referred to were not the only individuals who pushed at the boundaries of Old Order gender ideologies. Saskia Wieringa (2002:233) shows that members of the women’s organization Gerwani were active in politics and had their own ideas about morality, womanhood, and the family, thereby challenging assumptions about women’s roles in both public and domestic spheres. Wieringa (2002:233) likens these women to Srikandi, another female character in Javanese theatre who, in contrast to Sumbadra, is famous for her confidence, colourful speech, direct social interaction, and prowess as a warrior. Significantly, the figure of Srikandi was also referenced in official discourse, suggesting that there are contradictions within dominant ideology. According to Benedict Anderson (1965:26), ‘not only have the women’s units in the Indonesian National Army taken Srikandi as their model, but also the first woman guerrilla who landed in West Irian during the 1962 liberation campaign was widely referred to as “our Srikandi”, both by President Sukarno and by the general public’. Despite the existence of multiple femininities in theatre, society, and official discourse, Sumbadra was the ideal promoted by men in power – a construction that clearly did not go unchallenged. In recalling their heyday, the 1940s-1960s generation of performers revealed
26 Tak is the name of a drum stroke that is usually quite loud and sharp. From my own experi- ence drumming, it does require a particular strength to execute. 27 Mak Mus dulu itu meskipun wanita, kalau pencak silat, ya gini. Orangnya kecil tugu tapi ya gini. Ya ketoké itu gagah. Kok bisa? Ngengdhang ya teges, ya enak, kalau ngendhang. Ya, seperti orang laki. ‘O aku kudu kaya wong lanang.’ Harus seperti orang laki-laki, ya opo carané. Ya memang kalau ngetaké ya seperti orang laki-laki. Sama aja. Itu anehnya, tapi memang ada, kalau boleh dikatakan sakral, ilmu. (Personal communication with Djupri, 6-1-2006.)
Downloaded from Brill.com09/24/2021 07:07:24PM via free access 470 Christina Sunardi complicated attitudes towards gender as lived, performed, and remembered. While they performed maleness and femaleness consistently with official constructions of manhood based on Gatotkaca and Soekarno, and of woman- hood based on Sumbadra and Kartini, they also subverted these construc- tions onstage as well as in their daily lives. Spaces still existed for men to be ‘effeminate’ or to live as women, and for women to be active in ‘male’ activi- ties, including politics and the military. These spaces for men’s and women’s activities became more regulated by the Indonesian government beginning in the mid-1960s, as the new regime aggressively responded to the disorder that surrounded its birth.
The 1970s-1990s generation
Soeharto and his militaristic regime rose to power through a cloud of violence that affected women’s and men’s daily lives and performances thereafter. In 1965, a pre-emptive strike against six generals (and one aide taken by mis- take) who were believed to be planning a coup was blamed on the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI). Following the murder of these generals and aide, a period of chaos ensued as communists and suspected communists were systematically kidnapped, imprisoned, intimidated, exiled, and murdered. Because performances had often featured political criticism, many musicians and dancers (and puppet masters) were among those targeted. As many as one million people were killed; the violence was particularly brutal in Central Java, East Java, and Bali (Wieringa 2002:281; Roosa 2006:4). Soekarno trans- ferred power to Soeharto on 11 March 1966, and the New Order era began. The terror of 1965-1966 deeply affected musicians and dancers. Performances almost ceased, as groups were disbanded and performers killed or imprisoned (Supriyanto 2001:18; Peacock 1987:258). While some did return to the stage when the political situation became less volatile in the late 1960s and early 1970s, others did not. Many were still too traumatized; some may have felt they were too old to perform anyway. Younger performers, the 1970s-1990s generation, filled these vacancies, and for a variety of reasons brought with them a more cautious approach to political commentary. Some performers indicated that after 1965-1966, some ludruk troupes were formed under military sponsorship and supervision (see also Peacock 1987:258-9); such surveillance by the military ensured there was little overt criticism of the government. Given that many in the 1970s genera- tion were also recovering psychologically from the violence they experienced and the loss of family members, mentors, and neighbours, it is not surpris- ing that they avoided explicit challenges to the state that blatantly resisted New Order ideologies. In some cases, performers demonstrated their ability
Downloaded from Brill.com09/24/2021 07:07:24PM via free access Pushing at the boundaries of the body 471 to comply with the state’s ideals through the ways they talked about and performed gender. While some performers may have felt too intimidated to resist, others may have been sincerely attracted to the state’s ideas; some may have been indifferent, and some may have gone overboard in complying – a strategy of survival, sometimes with subversive effects, that Ariel Heryanto (2006:136) terms ‘hyper-obedience’. Some may have approached performance with all of these feelings and attitudes towards the state at different times. Although the New Order regime did not completely control performers’ views and actions, it did profoundly affect their onstage and offstage lives. The impact of the New Order on women’s political activities establishes a context for the performance of gender in the 1970s to 1990s. Along with PKI, the women’s organization Gerwani was blamed for the disorder that engulfed Indonesian politics and society in 1965-1966. Images of women dancing naked and sexually torturing the generals as they died were fabricated, circulated, and used to justify the imprisonment, torture, and murder of Gerwani mem- bers. The organization was destroyed, and women’s political activities were brought under the control of the state (Wieringa 2002:281). The New Order government and the Indonesian women’s organizations it sanctioned – such as Dharma Wanita, the national association of civil servants’ wives – empha- sized women’s ‘correct roles and behaviours’ primarily as submissive wives devoted to their husbands and secondarily as mothers.28 In other words, by annihilating the Srikandis, the government tried to ensure that the women who remained were Sumbadras (Wieringa 2002:327). With women thereby subordinated, men’s roles as figures of authority at the top of the social and political hierarchies were articulated and reinforced (Suryakusuma 1996:95; Shiraishi 1997:90-2). Through these constructions of women as mothers and men as fathers, the government solidified the nuclear family (and hetero- sexuality) as the foundation of social order necessary for the survival and prosperity of the nation. To implement official constructions of womanhood and manhood – based on heterosexuality and the nuclear family – the New Order government instituted programs to ‘upgrade’ dance traditions rooted in its own ideas of orderliness.29 Writing about Javanese dance parties (tayuban), Amrih Widodo (1995) and René Lysloff (2001-02) have shown that upgrading programs included mandatory courses for performers in New Order ideology and ‘proper’ ways of performing; permits required to host performances; and surveillance of performances by police and government officials. Such totali- tarian surveillance extended to many spheres of social and cultural life
28 See Tiwon 1996:65; Suryakusuma 1996:99; Sunindyo 1996:124-5; Wieringa 2002:309. 29 For more on the impact of New Order policies on tradition and the arts in Indonesia, see Pemberton 1994; Yampolsky 1995; Hughes-Freeland 1997; Weintraub 2004.
Downloaded from Brill.com09/24/2021 07:07:24PM via free access 472 Christina Sunardi during the New Order era. Both women’s and men’s behaviour and aspects of performance were subject to control, as the men involved in tayuban as musicians and masters of ceremony were required to take the same courses as women dancers.
My own observations of tayuban in Malang corroborate Lysloff’s and Wido- do’s points that the masters of ceremony and musicians, as well as police and local officials (also men), assume responsibility for controlling the actions of men in the audience, acting when they must to keep the audience a ‘respect- ful’ distance from the dancers. In these cases, too, performance onstage had offstage implications. From a New Order perspective, illicit relationships between men and women – including what could be perceived as forms of prostitution – had to be contained in order to maintain the integrity of the nuclear family and to prevent conflicts resulting from jealousy that might threaten social order. The sanctity of the nuclear family and heterosexuality was also enforced through the government’s efforts to control men’s behaviour inReyog Ponorogo, a tradition of East Javanese masked dance. Ian Wilson (1999) writes that his- torically, the lead dancer (warok) has been a spiritually powerful figure. To preserve his potency, a warok avoided sexual intercourse; instead of living with a woman as his wife, he took in young boys called gemblak to help with household chores. Gemblak also perform with the warok, sometimes wear- ing female dress (Pigeaud 1938:300-1; Kartomi 1976:87). Further reflecting the changed political dynamics after 1965, the New Order government and conservative Muslim groups found this warok-gemblak relationship – with its rumoured overtones of homosexuality – morally offensive and unacceptable (Wilson 1999:4-5). The New Order government was also suspicious of any powerful figures not under their direct influence. For these reasons, among others, Reyog Ponorogo and warok lifestyles were ‘upgraded’, and in some cases girls replaced boys as gemblak in performance (Wilson 1999:4-5). One result, Wilson (1999) argues, is that Reyog Ponorogo was reconstructed as a symbol of East Javanese identity, thereby becoming an apolitical regional tradition rather than a practice that could potentially undermine official con- structions of masculinity, fatherhood, and the family. In the context of these ideological pressures and visible enforcement by the state, musicians and dancers of the 1970s-1990s generation in Malang both upheld and rearticulated official constructions of gender. As with the 1940s-1960s generation, they believed that female dance should be refined and polite, while male dance should be ‘strong’. However, they recognized that male dance was not necessarily best when performed by a man, and female dance was not necessarily best when performed by a woman, thus subtly destabilizing official constructions that map gender to biological sex.
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B. Supriono Hadi Prasetya (born 1976), a musician and dancer, articulated a commonly held perspective by explaining that one had to consider the character of the individual dancer and what dances best fit that individual’s character.30 However, when I pressed the issue of the dancer’s biological sex, performers admitted that female-style and male-style dance has a different impact depending on the sex of the performer. At the same time, the gender of the dance style, and sometimes the specific dance, affects their preference for a man’s or a woman’s body. In some cases, dancers and musicians preferred a dancer’s body to be con- sistent with the gendered dance style. Some found a man’s body structure and movement execution – sharper, stronger, more energetic – to be more appro- priate for the character of male-style dance. Dancer Luluk Ratna Herawati (born 1967) preferred ‘a man who really looks strong’, because then the dance looks manly (jantan) and strong (gagah). If it is a woman dancing, Luluk said, ‘even if she is strong, her womanliness is still there’.31 She preferred women for female-style dance, finding women more refined. Luluk explained that no matter how good tandhak ludruk are, they still don’t look like women. Despite her initial difficulty in pinpointing exactly why, she emphasized the impact their bodies can have:
Basically it is apparent if a real man, I mean a real woman, is compared to a woman who is not. It looks rather…there is a little stiffness…perhaps in the neck or some- where else…
Sometimes we think, ‘Hey, she’s beautiful, her body is good’, it seems. But if s/he is compared to a real woman sometimes the difference is still apparent.32
Even though some tandhak can be more beautiful than women, Luluk acknowl- edged, she identified several features that make tandhak look different from ‘real women’ (putri asli): their voices (suaranya), their movements (geraknya), and their awkwardness (janggalnya).33 In other cases, musicians and dancers enjoyed the ways cross-gender
30 Personal communication with B. Supriono Hadi Prasetya, 10-11-2005. 31 Kalau putri biarpun dia gagah, tapi kan masih ada keputriannnya, itu ada. (Personal communica- tion with Luluk Ratna Herawati, 4-1-2006.) 32 Pokoknya kelihatanlah itu kalau laki-laki asli…eh, kalau perempuan asli sama perempuan yang nggak itu mesti kelihatan. Kelihatannya agak, ada kaku-kakunya sedikit…mungkin di leher atau mungkin di apa itu ya… Kadang-kadang, kita kan ‘eh, cantik, bodinya bagus’, kelihatannya. Tapi kalau dibandingkan sama putri asli itu kan kadang-kadang masih kelihatan berbedaannya. (Personal communication with Luluk Ratna Herawati, 4-1-2006.) 33 Personal communication with Luluk Ratna Herawati, 4-1-2006.
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Figure 1. Wahyu Winarti (aka Yamti) poses in a position from the female-style dance Beskalan Putri dance subverted the mapping of gender to sex. Recognizing the particular effect that tandhak who are men give to ludruk, Supriono said that when men do not play the female roles, the aura (aora) is different; he speculated that the Surabaya RRI (Radio Republik Indonesia) group is not so popular nowadays because they have women performing the female roles.34 Mulyono35 (born 1976-77[?]) expressed his pleasure in watching women perform male-style dances because of the contradictions. He said that if a woman performs a male character, he enjoys the dance more, asking rhetorically how it is that a woman can dance male-style dance and be strong (gagah). His face brightened as he continued, saying that he really likes it when there is a coquettishness to the dance.36
34 Personal communication with B. Supriono Hadi Prasetya, 10-11-2005. 35 Mulyono has spelled his name also as Muliono and Muliyono. 36 Personal communication with Mulyono, 3-1-2006.
Downloaded from Brill.com09/24/2021 07:07:24PM via free access Figure 2. A tandhak ludruk performs the female-style dance Ngremo Putri
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Sometimes a performer’s preference depended on the individual dance and the performance context. For example, Ngatmuji (born 1961), a musi- cian, said that he prefers a woman for Beskalan Putri (Figure 1), but a man for Ngremo Putri in ludruk (Figure 2).37 Ngatmuji explained his preferences in terms of his own sense of history, saying that in the past only women danced Beskalan Putri.38 In contrast, it was normal for men to perform Ngremo Putri in ludruk, and women’s per- formance in this context can fall short of men’s. Gendered and sexed bodies also affected performers’ perceptions and experiences of the degree to which men and women transformed into the opposite gender onstage and offstage – transformations that reinforced official categories of gender but subverted the mapping of masculinity to men’s bodies and femininity to women’s bodies.
Men ‘becoming’ female
Musicians and dancers of the 1970s-1990s generation valued a tandhak’s ability to look like a woman, and not like a man trying to look like a woman, thereby implying that these performers should uphold ideal constructions of female- ness. Supriono asserted that tandhak can be ‘over’, using this English loan- word to indicate that tandhak sometimes overdo or exaggerate femaleness to the point of looking unconvincing as women. Dennis Suwarno (born 1957), a drummer also present during that conversation, said that the drumming has to precisely match the dance in order to avoid that exaggerated effect.39 Musi- cians reported that although they know most tandhak ludruk are men, the way they play and feel can be affected by tandhak who are particularly convincing as women. Kusnadi (born 1944) explained that because tandhak can ‘be the soul of a woman’ (menjiwai wanita) and are coquettish, he does not feel like he is drumming for a man.40 Providing insight into the contradictions of his own sexual desires, Suryantono (born 1955) explained that when he sees a man perform female- style dance, he is affected by the femininity of the dance and the dancer, not their maleness. When he sees tandhak ludruk, he finds them beautiful, not handsome. Admitting that his passion (nafsu) cannot always be controlled, he confessed that he has sometimes fallen in love with tandhak, even though he knows they are men. He clarified that he fell in love ‘just in his heart’, infer-
37 Photographs appearing in this article were taken by the author. 38 My conversations with men who used to dance Beskalan Putri contradict Ngatmuji’s asser- tion. 39 Personal communication with Dennis Suwarno, 8-8-2006. 40 Personal communication with Kusnadi, 12-8-2006.
Downloaded from Brill.com09/24/2021 07:07:24PM via free access Pushing at the boundaries of the body 477 ring that although tandhak aroused or attracted him, he did not try to pursue a relationship. Asserting his assumptions about the normalcy of heterosexu- ality and yet recognizing the sexual appeal of tandhak, he said that falling in love with a tandhak is actually not allowed (tidak boleh sebenarnya), but that his feelings were driven by passion. He indicated that his desires were not unique by reporting that he has many friends who are crazy (tergila-gila) about tandhak because they have large breasts and are incredibly sexy, even though they are known to be men.41 Suryantono described his desire in terms of heterosexuality, which was also characteristic of the 1940s-1960s generation’s responses to tandhak, evi- dence that many attitudes have remained largely unaffected by official dis- courses. By talking about the appeal of tandhak in terms of desire for women, men continued to simultaneously reinforce and subvert official discourses promoting heterosexuality. Gender categories, and with them ideas about gendered behaviour and conventions of performing that behaviour, were not challenged even as homosexual desires were articulated, and in some cases (although not Suryantono’s), acted upon. The core of the issue was maintain- ing appearances: men appeared to conform to heterosexuality by what they said, even as they undercut it by what they did (including the bodies they desired) to make sense of their own masculinity. The impact of the New Order’s efforts to normalize the nuclear family and heterosexuality on the 1970s-1990s generation is also evident in some tandhak’s ambivalence about living openly as waria. A man who lives as a woman, Samsuaretho or Mama Samsu (born 1955), an important figure in the ludruk and waria communities in Malang, and her42 husband Totok Suprapto explained that waria since the 1970s have started to have the confidence to live openly. More waria started to appear nationally and internationally in events such as fashion competitions and beauty pageants. The anthropologist Tom Boellstorff has also found that during the New Order era, waria asserted themselves more visibly in national culture – seeing themselves as very much part of national culture – by more openly wearing women’s clothes and establishing themselves in salon work. He shows that while transgender- ism was not condoned by the regime, it was tolerated (Boellstorff 2004b:165, 176). Tolerance, however, is not synonymous with acceptance. Mama Samsu, like the individuals Boellstorff consulted, talked about waria’s struggles to be accepted by their families and communities, and by institutions of higher learning: Mama Samsu’s BA thesis was failed (in the late 1970s or early 1980s) because she dressed like a woman.
41 Personal communication with Suryantono, 31-7-2006. 42 I use feminine pronouns because Mama Samsu lives as a woman.
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Mama Samsu explained that as a result of these pressures and prejudices, many tandhak who are ‘men with women’s hearts’ have chosen not to live openly as waria. Particularly in villages, she said, people are still closed- minded, and the families of ‘men with female hearts’ often make them live as men and marry women, sometimes with tragic consequences. She noted that although people in the city tend to be more tolerant, not all ‘men with female hearts’ in cities have the confidence to live openly as waria either.43 The stage is thus an important space – a socially accepted outlet – for some men to more fully embrace and embody their female hearts. Tandhak of the 1970s generation negotiated a variety of pressures – social, familial, institutional, discursive – in order to conform to official constructions of masculinity, while embodying to their own tendencies towards femininity. They accomplished this through particular strategies of gender transgression. One tandhak who has lived as a man, Lestari (born 1954), pointed to feminine aspects of his own self by explaining that dancers have to find the character of Ngremo Putri and its beauty themselves, such as how to move the neck coquettishly and smile sweetly. He said that when he steps onstage, he feels like a woman. When he is completely finished performing, he again feels like himself, that is, like a man.44 Reinforcing their female roles onstage and their ‘female’ tendencies in their hearts are tandhak’s references to themselves and others as seniwati, the feminine form of the word seniman, artist. This is analogous to a man referring to himself as an actress. Because tandhak still conformed to New Order expectations of womanhood through their perfor- mance of Ngremo Putri while living as men, they upheld New Order ideology even as they subverted it, effectively rearticulating state-sanctioned ideals in their own ways, as did women who performed male-style dance.
Women ‘becoming’ male
Women dancers in the 1970s-1990s generation rearticulated official gender ideology in a way that did not overtly challenge the state’s authority. As they performed male dance in conformance with accepted conventions, women briefly ‘became’ men. In the moment of performance, they were not the refined wives and mothers the government promoted. Despite this transfor- mation to maleness during performance, the eight women I interviewed nei- ther described themselves as a third gender nor lived as men in their daily lives. However, some did attribute their affinity for male roles to their strong
43 Personal communication with Samsuaretho, 9-5-2006, 16-5-2006. 44 Personal communication with Lestari, 30-4-2006.
Downloaded from Brill.com09/24/2021 07:07:24PM via free access Pushing at the boundaries of the body 479 personalities. Tri Wahyuningtyas (born 1973) explained that she prefers male- style dance because of its freer movements and clothing. Female-style dance is too constricting for her own ways of moving and behaving:
Perhaps it is the character, too, the character of the movement that is stronger, also wider and more open. I just feel more comfortable performing it […]. When I think of female [movement], it is smaller, more… I don’t know, one has to – ah, too much! I think it’s more intricate than male movement, which is freer and has strength.45
Clearly, Tri did not identify with an ideal femininity projected through the figures of Sumbadra and Kartini, but instead found her own models in male- style dance (see Figure 3). My point is similar to Sylvia Tiwon’s argument (1996) that women pro- duce their own senses of who they are as women despite New Order ide- ologies that portray them as either ideal models (Kartini) or uncontrollable maniacs (Gerwani). Given the precedent of violence against women who pushed too hard against official constructions – not only the destruction of Gerwani in 1960s but also several highly publicized cases of murder in the 1980s (Sunindyo 1996) – dance was a ‘safe’ strategy women could employ to articulate alternatives to official gender ideologies, using the stage as a space to rehearse and formulate ways of moving and acting that to some extent they could also take into their daily lives. Women used several techniques to ‘become’ male during performance. For some, the transformation was linked to cosmetics. Anik Nurdjanah (Aka Kanik, born 1951) highlighted the pencilled-on moustache, thick eyebrows, and heavy red blush as markers of maleness.46 Others specified movement conventions of male-style dance, such as the high arm position, wide leg stance, and strong head roll.47 A third technique was portraying the character from the heart, the importance of which Tri discussed. If there are no dis- turbances, she feels like the person she is performing and no longer herself, effectively embodying the male role.48 These techniques, however, did not detract from the performers’ woman- hood. In most cases, for those watching, the femaleness of the dancer’s biologi- cal sex had a stronger impact than the maleness of the dance style. Suryantono
45 Mungkin karakter juga, ya, karakter dari gerak itu yang lebih keras, kemudian lebih lebar dan lebih terbuka begitu, saya lebih enak membawakannya itu lho […] Kalau saya mikirnya putri, itu lebih kecil, lebih anuh harus – aduh, wis! Saya pikir lebih rumit gitu lho, daripada gerak putra yang lebih bebas dan punya kekuatan gitu lho. Personal communication with Tri Wahyuningtyas, 1-7-2006. 46 Personal communication with Anik Nurdjanah, 9-2-2006. 47 Personal communication with Anik Nurdjanah, 9-2-2006; and Sumi’anah, 3-4-2006. 48 Personal communication with Tri Wahyuningtyas, 1-7-2006.
Downloaded from Brill.com09/24/2021 07:07:24PM via free access Figure 3. Tri Wahyuningtyas poses in a position from the male-style dance Beskalan Lanang
Downloaded from Brill.com09/24/2021 07:07:24PM via free access Pushing at the boundaries of the body 481 explained that when he sees women perform male-style dance, the feminine aspects of the dancer and the dance affect him, and he finds the dancer beau- tiful, not handsome.49 Similarly, Dennis Suwarno said that for Ngremo Tayub, although women are wearing male costumes, the character and feeling of the dance are still coquettish (see Figure 4). He thus drums ‘coquettishly’ by mak- ing the strokes sound higher and lighter, and by playing relatively sparsely.50 Robert Hefner, an anthropologist who studied dance parties (tayuban) in rural East Java in the late 1970s and 1980s, was also struck by the Ngremo dancer’s womanly beauty despite the male clothing (Hefner 1987:79). By rearticulating pre-existing constructions of both femininity and masculinity in their own ways, dancers asserted their own senses of themselves as women. As both women and men pushed at the boundaries of gender ideology through performance, they maintained spaces for an array of men and women to exist despite the New Order’s efforts to control men’s and women’s behav- iour and activities. Performers thereby contributed to an increasing demand for social and political change that characterized the end of Soeharto’s reign in the late 1990s and the Reformation Era that followed.
The 1990s to the present generation
By the mid to late 1990s, young people were more directly questioning Soe- harto’s nepotism and corruption, actions made all the more apparent and unacceptable to them after an economic crisis swept through Southeast Asia in 1997 and devastated the value of the Indonesian rupiah. Increasingly dissat- isfied with a government perceived to be using its citizens for its own finan- cial gain in tough economic times, university students organized mass dem- onstrations demanding Soeharto’s resignation and calling for political reform. Soeharto resigned in May 1998. The Reformation Era can be characterized in many ways. Ushered in by student activists, a youthful energy, idealism, and optimism has imbued this period of radical change in political culture. There is a sense that problems can be solved through openness, frankness, and determination; that those in power can be held accountable for their actions without fear of violent reprisal; and that election processes can be democratized. Censorship of mass media, scholarly publications, and literature has lessened, contributing to a burgeoning of entertainment industries (Heryanto 2008b:5-6). Furthermore, people have been allowed to directly voice their criticisms of the Indonesian
49 Personal communication with Suryantono, 31-7-2006. 50 Personal communication with Dennis Suwarno, 8-8-2006.
Downloaded from Brill.com09/24/2021 07:07:24PM via free access 482 Christina Sunardi government, foreign nations (such as the United States), and big businesses. With this increased freedom of expression, people have been organizing politically through public demonstrations, protests, and strikes.51 Jan Mrázek (2000:159) emphasizes that expectations for change permeate Reformation Era discourses, writing that ‘criticism of the status quo and a tendency to criticize everything is also a matter of fashion’. At the same time, many Javanese have felt uncertain, anxious, and confused about the social and political changes taking place (Mrázek 2000:163). My friends and my teachers expressed disappointment with the slow pace of economic recovery, and due to an onset of massive earthquakes, tidal waves, and volcanic eruptions, had a sense that political leadership is out of sync with nature. Similarly, Andrew Weintraub (2004:218-9) has found that performances of wooden-rod puppet theatre (wayang golek) on cassettes and VCDs from West Java reveal a distrust of political leadership and emphasize self-reliance. In this era of reform and anxiety, ‘the strange and new are especially mar- ketable’, Mrázek (2000:167) observes. Musicians and dancers in many parts of Indonesia have taken advantage of this marketability to perform in ‘strange’ and ‘new’ ways. This comes at a time, too, in which people have been using newly liberated mediascapes and new technologies to more aggressively assert the presence of those identifying with subject positions marginalized during the New Order era (Heryanto 2008a:73), including ethnic Chinese (Heryanto 2008a), homosexual (Boellstorff 2004a), and transgendered iden- tities (Boellstorff 2004b). Sometimes this increased visibility has sparked backlashes, such as the violent acts of homophobia analysed by Boellstorff (2004a). In this context of change and instability, some performers in Malang are pushing at the limits of pre-existing constructions of gender, making gen- der transgression more obvious in both onstage and offstage realms. They are more directly confronting dominant assumptions, and more blatantly reartic- ulating gender categories, gendered behaviour, and gendered social roles.
Men ‘becoming’ female
Men of the 1990s generation who perform as tandhak make gender transgres- sion more obvious by more visibly assuming female personas in their daily lives. Many identify themselves openly as waria and go by feminine terms of address such as ‘mama’ (mama), miss/sister (mbak), or madam (nyai). In addi- tion to performing, many work in professions that are gendered female. At the time of my fieldwork Mama Samsu owned a successful salon and bou-
51 My observations during several stints in Yogyakarta, Jakarta, and Surabaya from 1997 to 2004 as well as my fieldwork in Malang have informed my discussion of this time period.
Downloaded from Brill.com09/24/2021 07:07:24PM via free access Pushing at the boundaries of the body 483 tique, and has had years of experience as a make-up artist and seamstress. She explained that these occupations appeal to waria because they can dress up and wear make-up every day, something that would be inappropriate for selling fruit or wares at the market.52 Waria do other kinds of cultural work through being active in these pro- fessions. First, they have achieved a form of self-reliance. Mama Samsu has trained many waria performers as seamstresses and make-up artists so that they can supplement their earnings and enter careers with steadier incomes – particularly as they age and become less able to rely on their own beauty to earn a living. Second, waria have been engaging in a form of social activism. Samsu indicated that waria can make positive contributions to the community and improve their image through good work in the beauty industry.53 This is important because they still face prejudice. Samsu explained that some orthodox Muslims say it is a sin to have their make-up done by a waria. I have observed that waria must also confront negative assumptions about their licentiousness and availability as prostitutes. Samsu believes that if waria dress politely, both onstage and offstage, and stand by their good work, the general public will come to respect them.54 The backstage behaviour of tandhak who are waria indicates that many consider their bodies female, reinforcing their gender transgression to other performers and audience members who peer at them. As I was photograph- ing tandhak doing their make-up at one ludruk performance, one of them covered his bare chest with his hands and shook his head when I pointed my camera his way. I was struck by his reaction because he did not appear to have female breasts, as some tandhak have from surgical implants or hor- monal therapy. He behaved as though his bare chest – although physically a man’s – was a private part of his body, like a woman’s. My photographing him was thus inappropriate, impolite, and almost pornographic. Many waria wear brassieres, girdles, or loose dresses to keep their chests covered while they do their hair and make-up. Because most other performers know that many tandhak today are waria, their gender transgression in their daily lives is imagined when they are seen performing. This causes some discomfort, particularly among members of the 1940s and 1970s generations. Supriono told me that he enjoys watching waria perform as tandhak, but he is afraid of them and does not want to talk to them.55 Some musicians and dancers held the opinion that the behaviour of waria goes beyond propriety and that waria cannot control their emotions or
52 Personal communication with Samsuaretho, 9-5-2006, 16-5-2006. 53 Personal communication with Samsuaretho, 9-5-2006, 16-5-2006. 54 Personal communication with Samsuaretho, 9-5-2006, 16-5-2006. 55 Personal communication with Supriono, 10-11-2005.
Downloaded from Brill.com09/24/2021 07:07:24PM via free access 484 Christina Sunardi sexual desires; for these reasons, they avoid being around them. Many older performers insisted that before the 1990s, tandhak were not waria (even though other evidence I discussed earlier suggests otherwise), linking their presence to the disintegration of ludruk. Several older performers pointed to the irony that most tandhak ‘nowadays’ cannot perform female- style dance well, even though they dress and live as women. They criticized tandhak for performing too much like men – dancing at faster tempos, using a wider leg stance and arm position, and using more dynamic musical accompaniment, criticisms I mentioned at the beginning of this article. Older performers also criticized tandhak for presumed offstage behaviours. Sutanu (1935-2008) said that nowadays it is as though tandhak are possessed by mis- chievous spirits; it is not ludruk, but waria looking for men.56 In short, the performers of older generations criticized tandhak because they know most are waria and are ambivalent about their lifestyles, and because tandhak are performing femaleness in a way that departs from an ideal based on Kartini and Sumbadra. As waria perform femaleness in what older performers see as a more manly fashion, the dancers not only challenge assumptions about what kinds of bodies can occupy femaleness, but also what constitutes femaleness. Despite older performers’ criticisms, tandhak’s transformation to female- ness remains convincing to audiences. Audience comments indicate that they enjoy tandhak’s ability to look like beautiful women, even though most watching know from convention or the tandhak’s appearance that they are men. When tandhak went on the stage one by one or in small groups to sing individually or as a choir (bedhayan), I heard whistling from men of a vari- ety of ages – from their teens to their mid-fifties – in the audience and from those running the sound system, calling out remarks to the sexier ones such as ‘beautiful!’ (ayu) and ‘let’s go, beautiful!’ (ayo ayu). Many in the audience seem to enjoy the confusion. I frequently overheard men and women of all ages make comments such as ‘Is that really a woman?’ or ‘That one looks like a real woman’. At one performance, a man in his forties and I formed a brief friendship as we tried to determine whether a tandhak was a woman or not. After about 15 minutes of debate, we concluded that the dancer was a man. Audiences continue to view tandhak as ‘peculiar’ – as Geertz (1960:295) found in the 1950s – but now in a Reformation Era context that foregrounds the ‘strange’ and ‘new’ (Mrázek 2000:167). Offstage, waria continue to insist on their visibility and acceptance, both socially and politically. Writing of the late 1990s, Tom Boellstorff (2004b:177) observes that ‘Waria are now familiar figures in the political sphere: they perform at party rallies, express preferences for candidates, and occasionally
56 Personal communication with Sutanu, 7-6-2006.
Downloaded from Brill.com09/24/2021 07:07:24PM via free access Pushing at the boundaries of the body 485 run for office themselves’, noting that a waria was a contender for mayor of the city of Malang in 2003 (Boellstorff 2004b:187, note 19). While waria are living in such a way as to change the status quo, they are also inspiring con- fusion and ambivalence. These feelings of uncertainty are characteristic of the Reformation Era and are evident in older performers’ attitudes towards women’s transgression of maleness.
Women ‘becoming’ male
Like men, women are rearticulating gender categories through performance. Particularly disturbing to older performers are the changes that have been made since the early 1990s to the music and movements of Ngremo, many of which are attributed to the singer-dancer Sri Utami (born 1957). The style of Ngremo she has popularized has come to be called Ngremo Tayub. She, and the other dancers and musicians who have worked with her, have drawn on a variety of sources, including Malangan masked dance, Sundanese dance, Banyuwangian dance, central Javanese dance, martial arts, aerobics, and ‘pat- a-cake’ hand games.57 Expressing an attitude that privileges innovation, Sri Utami explained that she has continuously tried different movements and ways of singing in the course of performance.58 Older performers have criti- cized Ngremo Tayub because the movements do not conform to those that have historically characterized male-style Ngremo; in their eyes the movements look too coquettish. This coquettishness, however, seems to be exactly what women dancers are trying to emphasize. In addition to movement, dancers are using cosmetics to make their femaleness increasingly apparent. A feminine style is evident in the colours and lines of the eye make-up, use of false eyelashes, less intense blush on the cheeks and on the forehead, and lighter shading of the nose. For male- style dance, both men and women performers usually draw on ‘masculine’ facial hair such as a moustache or a goatee (unless a man has a full enough natural moustache or goatee); however, as can be seen by comparing Figures 3, 4, and 5, women tend to draw such facial hair with thinner lines than most men do. Some women dancers pointed to their conscious decision to enhance the androgyny of their performance through their appearance. Karen Elizabeth Sekararum (born 1964), an American who has had a success- ful career as a vocalist and dancer in Java since the 1990s, said that when she performs Ngremo Tayub, she does not feel like or even try to feel like a man.
57 Personal communication with Karen Elizabeth Sekararum, 29-11-2005, 6-1-2006; Cuci Indra- wati, 21-12-2005; Sri Handayani, 29-3-2006; Sri Utami, 3-8-2006. 58 Personal communication with Sri Utami, 3-8-2006.
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Figure 4. Sri Handayani models a costume typically used for the male-style dance Ngremo Tayub
She explained that the womanhood of the dancer is emphasized through the costume, the jewellery, and the make-up, despite the moustache and the maleness of the dance style (see Figure 4). She interpreted this subversion as part of Ngremo Tayub’s appeal.59 Similarly, Tri said that when she does her make-up for a male-style dance, such as Beskalan Lanang, she does it ‘beautifully’ – that is, not like a man’s – because it is normal for her to do so.60 Although she did her make-up beauti-
59 Personal communication with Karen Elizabeth Sekararum, 30-11-2005. 60 Personal communication with Tri Wahyuningtyas, 10-7-2006.
Downloaded from Brill.com09/24/2021 07:07:24PM via free access Figure 5. A man sings in the course of performing the male-style dance Ngremo Lanang
Downloaded from Brill.com09/24/2021 07:07:24PM via free access 488 Christina Sunardi fully for male-style dance, she also talked about the importance of becoming the character she portrayed, as referred to earlier. For Tri, a male character and beautiful make-up are not mutually exclusive (see Figure 3). As with previous generations, when women perform male-style dance, performers and audiences in most cases are aware that the dancer is a woman. At the performances I observed, audiences did not make comments indicat- ing that they were fooled or allowed themselves to be fooled into believing that a woman performing male-style dance was a man, or that they were judging the dancer’s handsomeness. Nor did I hear stories about women in the audience falling in love with a woman Ngremo Lanang or Ngremo Tayub dancer. As dancers make their femaleness more obvious when dancing a male-style dance, they make it more obvious that women can be like men, but without being men. As an influential artistic innovator in dance performance, Sri Utami has shown that women can and do lead. Women have been taking leadership roles in the Reformation Era in other ways both onstage and offstage. Jan Mrázek (2000:156) points to women’s roles as leaders in politics and in central Javanese shadow theatre: support- ing Megawati’s (a woman’s) candidacy for president of Indonesia in 1999, the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (Partai Demokrasi Indonesia Perjuangan, PDI-P) sponsored a performance featuring a woman puppeteer who performed a story about a woman leading and managing a country. During Megawati’s presidency (2001-2004), Andrew Weintraub (2004:221) found a ‘proliferation of [wayang golek] performances that featured female heroes’ in West Java.
Concluding remarks
While attitudes towards gender as expressed in cross-gender dance have been affected by the historical era during which performers were active, musicians and dancers have also rearticulated official discourses to produce their own senses of themselves both onstage and offstage. Gender discourses of the Old and New Orders were similar in that they mapped gender to sex, clearly sepa- rated roles and behaviours for men and women, and assigned men to posi- tions of social and political leadership and women to subordinate, domes- tic spheres. Yet, while performers of the 1940s and 1970s generations were affected by these discourses, to some extent internalizing and embodying them, they were not completely controlled by them. Musicians and dancers challenged assumptions about the types of bodies that could occupy maleness and femaleness, effectively pushing at the boundaries of official ideology in order to make sense of their own masculinity and femininity. More overt challenges to these discourses among the 1990s generation
Downloaded from Brill.com09/24/2021 07:07:24PM via free access Pushing at the boundaries of the body 489 suggest a return to the types of activities in which women and men engaged before Soekarno’s presidency. Spaces have been reopened for women to be politically active like men, and for men to live as women. The opening of these spaces is not without anxiety and resistance among older generations, who have internalized Old Order and New Order ideologies about gender. Performers of the 1940s and 1970s generations expressed their ambivalence about musicians and dancers who they perceived as exceeding the limits of acceptable gender transgression by criticizing them for failing to perform maleness and femaleness convincingly onstage and for taking that subver- sion offstage into their daily lives. In the eyes of older performers, the 1990s generation is more blatantly rearticulating gender categories, and in some cases going too far. While I have compared the views of three generations, I have given more attention to those of older generations – individuals who were very clearly dissatisfied with approaches to performance of the current generation, and who insisted that I learn what they believed were the older, correct versions of dances and music. Future work is necessary to explore further the views of the current generation and the continuing impact of Reformation Era discourses on current senses of gender in Malang. Cross-gender dance con- tinues to be an important site in which multiple ideas about manhood and womanhood are reinforced, questioned, shaped, contested, and subverted. As in the past, performers negotiate tensions between official ideologies and social realities, expectations about their onstage personas and offstage lives, and different aesthetic sensibilities. As they push at the boundaries of who and what they are perceived to be, cross-gender dancers continue to be some of the most captivating performers in Malang for musicians, dancers, and audiences alike.
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