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span class="inline inline-left">Sacred dance: Rejang Dewa, the sacred dance imitating heavenly nymphs, is performed by female students of Holy Cross.Balinese performing arts, took to the stage in Massachusetts, some 16,205 kilometers from Denpasar, earlier this month to highlight the need to preserve the island’s rich cultural heritage.

The highlight was the Topeng Panca, a theatrical performance about the death of King Bedahulu, also known as the Sumpah Palapa Gajah Mada, based on a 1976 book A Story of Majapahit, which was written by professor Slamet Muljana.

It tells of the military expedition launched by East Java’s mighty Majapahit kingdom to annex Bali, which at that time was ruled by the king of Bedahulu from his palace in the present-day Pejeng in Gianyar.

The expedition was part of a series of similar incursions staged by the kingdom’s prime minister Gajah Mada in his effort to bring the archipelago under the command of his throne.

Gajah Mada made an oath, later known as Sumpah Palapa, that he would not taste the palapa fruit until all the kingdoms in the archipelago bowed before the king of Majapahit.

At the end of the arduous campaign, Majapahit had become an empire stretching far and wide, from the Malay Peninsula in the west to Papua in the east.

Topeng Panca is a semi-sacred masked play usually performed in the temple’s outer courtyard during major religious festivals. It plays an important role in providing devotees with the philosophical teachings and objectives behind the religious ceremonies as well as serving as an emotional outlet through which the public’s opinions and criticisms about contemporary conditions can be voiced, which are externalized by the performers.

The unique element of Topeng Panca lies in the fact that one performer has to play several different characters throughout the performance. Therefore, Topeng Panca demands a high level of skill and versatility from its performers.

Bali arts maestro and educator I Made Bandem directed and acted in the play along with three senior professors from Holy Cross College, visiting lecturer Suasthi Wijaya Bandem, Lynn Kremer and John Emigh, all of whom deeply cherish Balinese performing arts.

In addition to the presence of a 200-year-old musical organ, the college’s music hall was decorated with a Balinese candi bentar (split gate) with a langse (cloth screen), spears, parasols, and colorful umbul-umbul (banners) made of cloth painted with a gold perada color, which created an atmosphere resembling the original odalan (temple rituals) commonly practiced in Bali. Holy Cross College’s spring art performances included a joyful gamelan composition, tabuh gilak patopengan, and scores of Balinese traditional dances, including pendet, kupu-kupu and the sacred baris presi and rejang dewa. It also featured a Gita Sari gamelan concert.

Overall, the performance involved 20 dancers and 25 gamelan musicians, all of whom are students of Bali arts and cultural classes at the Holy Cross College for liberal arts in Worcester, Massachusetts.

In the 45-minute, bilingual Kawi and English play, performing director Suasthi played the role of Majapahit King Dalem Ayam Wuruk; Kremer took the role of Patih Gajah Mada; and Emigh played both the Penasar Kelihan and the Bedahulu King Dalem Sri Sura Ratna Bumi Banten, while Bandem played Penasar Cenikan.

Collaboration: Holy Cross students perform Baris Presi, the sacred warrior dance usually performed in temple festivals in eastern Bali.Meanwhile, the buffoon and the clown, known as the two bondres, were brought to life by Bandem and Emigh.

In his role as an American tourist bondres, Emigh deeply articulated the moral story of the Sumpah Palapa Gajah Mada that established Indonesia as the world’s largest multiethnic and multicultural country.

“Thus, it is of high importance that the current Indonesian government preserves the integrity of the whole archipelago and gives due attention to the development of Bali as a cultural island,” wrote Bandem in a release provided for Bali Daily.

“Foreign tourists who come to Indonesia do not wish to see Bali falling apart and deprived of its cultural identity,” he continued.

Prior to the performance, Bandem was accompanied by a banten gebogan carrier, which emerged at center stage, where he sat cross-legged and, as if in prayer, softly recited a Balinese Hindu mantra. He then approached the gamelan players, sprinkling them with the tirta (holy water) for good luck during the performance.    

While the dialogues between the King (Raja), Prime Minister (Patih) and messenger (utusan) were translated from the ancient and intricate Kawi language into formal English, fresh jokes introduced by the bondres Emigh and Bandem drew smiles and laughter among the audience of around 350, which far outnumbered the college’s 250-seat Brooks Hall.

Many audience members were more than happy to sit on the hall’s red-carpeted stairs, as all the seats had been taken.   

Bandem, who played a female bondres in the play, praised Holy Cross College’s policies in liberal arts, multiculturalism and multiethnic programs, but he nonetheless criticized US government policy, which has so far failed to solve the country’s gender issues, such as repeated incidents of sexual assault and rape, as well as recent reports of US Secret Service agents hiring prostitutes while traveling abroad with the US president.

In traditional Topeng Panca, the bebondresan, the hilarious part of the story where the buffoons and jesters reign supreme, is essential to the whole performance. First, through funny and sometimes erotic jokes, it captures the attention of the audience, at risk of becoming bored by long Kawi language narratives. Second, it serves as a medium through which the jesters launch witty repartee heavily laden with poignant social criticism.

Since the criticism is presented by jesters, who are commoners just like most of the audience in Balinese social structure, and not by the King or other regal characters, the audience does not feel that they are being patronized. Instead, they see it as a sort of self-criticism and they enthusiastically join the chorus of laughter, fully understanding that they are laughing at themselves.

During the past five years, Bandem and wife Suasthi have given lectures on Bali arts and culture and Indonesian ethnomusicology at the oldest Jesuit campus in the eastern part of the United States.

Maestros: I Made Bandem and her wife Suasthi (center) lead their students in the chorus of Kecak during a performance early this month at Brooks Hall in College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts.The Topeng Panca and the Shackled Spirits contemporary theater company, which is led by Kremer, as well as the arts installations by famous fine arts practitioner I Made Wianta, displayed the ongoing efforts by devotees of Bali’s performing arts to continue to preserve and promote Balinese arts and culture abroad.

Bandem himself has performed for some of the world’s most prominent figures including the founding father of the People’s Republic of China, chairman Mao Tse Tung, the former Soviet Union leader Nikita Khrushchev, England’s monarch Queen Elizabeth II, former US president Ronald Reagan and many other foreign leaders during their visits to Indonesia.  

Bandem, called “the Joseph Papp of Bali” by the New York Times for his expertise in promoting Balinese professional theater internationally, has received numerous international awards including the UNESCO International Music Council award in 1994, the 2003 Habibie Award and the Fumio Koizumi prize for ethnomusicology in 2006.