Gamelan Sekar Jaya and Abhinaya Dance Company: Ramayana

East Meets East In a Hindu Epic:

`The Ramayana’ brought to life through traditions of India and Bali

Peter Stack, Chronicle Staff Writer

Link: sfgate.com

Sunday, March 30, 1997

An extraordinary event – starring a proud prince, his young bride and a cunning demon king – unfolds amid shimmering silks and hypnotic music next weekend when two traditions of Asia, the South Indian and the Balinese, meet for a new music and dance interpretation of "The Ramayana."

"The Ramayana" is the ancient epic poem of India’s Hindu culture. Its hero, Rama the prince, is held up as a moral model for men. But being the ideal guy is never easy, and in "The Ramayana" the hero is put to a test worthy of a Cecil B. DeMille movie when his bride, the ravishing Sita, is abducted by an evil demon king, Rawana.

"These two cultures from Asia only rarely meet, and hardly ever in performance, in spite of their historical and religious connections," said Wayne Vitale, director of El Cerrito-based Gamelan Sekar Jaya, one of the most famous Balinese gamelans (orchestras) outside Bali.

MUSIC, DANCE, CHANTING

More than 40 gamelan members – elaborately costumed musicians, dancers and chanting narrators – will participate in the spectacular premiere, scheduled for four performances. It first plays at 7:30 p.m. Saturday at Louis B. Mayer Theater on the University of Santa Clara campus, followed by a 2 p.m. Sunday show there. It also will be performed at 8 p.m. Friday, April 18, and Saturday, April 19, at Cowell Theater at Fort Mason in San Francisco.

Although "The Ramayana" was written in the ancient Kawi language, an English narration will make it accessible to Bay Area audiences. It should appeal to children as well.

"South Indians and Balinese have distinctive, entirely separate music, but they share `The Ramayana,’ the poem," said Vitale, who plays a kendang, or Balinese drum, in Gamelan Sekar Jaya.

"In a way you could say that `The Ramayana’ is to Hindus what the epics of Homer are to the Western world."

Unlike the Homeric epics, however, "The Ramayana," which dates from the fourth century B.C., is still an everyday influence in the Hindu worlds of South India and Bali. Written in 24,000 couplets, it is venerated as a teacher of moral behavior. The work is so popular in Hindu life, it was even made into a yearlong, episodic television series in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu.

The adventures of Rama, the poem’s hero who is the human form of the god Vishnu, frequently show up in film and theater in India — especially Rama’s confrontations with a cunning demon king named Rawana, who kidnaps Rama’s wife, Sita, the ideal female, and takes her to his island kingdom of Lanka (Sri Lanka). Prince Rama commands an army of monkey warriors, led by a valiant Hanoman, in the great contest against Rawana.

"We learn the stories as children," said Mythili Kumar, who grew up in Tamil Nadu and now is artistic director of Abhinaya Dance Company of San Jose, which is collaborating with Gamelan Sekar Jaya on the "Ramayana" performances. The Bay Area has a significant population of South Indians — about 60,000, a third of whom live in the San Jose area.

The collaboration began when the gamelan players and dancers from the Abhinaya company met backstage after performing separately at various ethnic and world music festivals in San Francisco.

CHALLENGING COLLABORATION

"We were impressed at each other’s accomplishments, and just got to talking about working together on something," Kumar said at a recent rehearsal in San Jose. " `The Ramayana’ was the link, but it hasn’t been as easy as we thought to blend our differing music and dance traditions."

The high-drama dance style of Bali gives "The Ramayana" performances extravagant movement — and an edge, too. In a vast language of gestures and postures, from quiv ering fingers to menacing crouches, dancers imbue their characters with larger-than-life qualities in a dramatically oversized world. Balinese topeng-style dancers conjure images of rain falling, arrows being shot as well as dodged, peacocks strutting, reptiles slithering, the passions of men and women and gods. Death, too, is a frequent player.

"The gestures are sharp and exaggerated, but fluid at the same time," said Vitale. "There are numerous female-only postures, as well as those just for men – but `The Ramayana’ is always concerned with ideals or godlike manifestations, so you get a sense of the characters as anything but ordinary."

The fiendish Rawana is the most imposing. The character is played by Balinese dance virtuoso I Ketut Kodi, current guest artistic director of Gamelan Sekar Jaya. He’s a big star in Bali, one of the greatest dancers in the venerable art of topeng, the island’s complex traditional masked dance. He is also a virtuoso in wayang, the famous shadow puppetry of Bali.

Kodi’s elaborate, gold-embroidered costume gives his wicked Rawana a puffed-up, spiky presence. His crown resembles a briar of gilded thorns, and his eyes look fiendish in a face painted with heavy makeup to capture a villainous look. Maroon, red and green robes of exquisite silks are the vestments of a supreme agent of evil — Rawana means to intimidate.

But in his movements, Kodi must also embody nobility, since the characters of "The Ramayana" are big, idealized types — humans of cosmic stature.

The melding of South Indian and Balinese musical styles posed the biggest challenge for the collaborators. Indian music is formulated from an array of 72 different
scales made up of five-, six- or seven-note patterns, said Kumar, herself an experienced dancer and musician. Each pattern has a well-defined tradition and purpose.
Instruments include drums, a violin, a veena (like a sitar) and an all-important drone.

Balinese music, on the other hand, has no standardized scale; the instruments, drums and xylophonelike instruments of various sizes, dominated by a large suspended gong, are simply tuned together. Each gamelan or ensemble "forms a sonic universe in itself," said Vitale. Five tones are the common form, and an effort is made to sound out dualities or create composites of dualities, through a system of expressive vibrations that create pulsing melodic lines.

"The styles are so different that we had to learn to compromise in adapting ‘The Ramayana,’ " said choreographer Kumar. "But it was good for us, because it is about what we learn in life, that compromise is a process for any cultures learning to live together."

`THE RAMAYANA’

Gamelan Sekar Jaya and Abhinaya Dance Company will perform India’s epic tale "The Ramayana" on Saturday and Sunday at the Louis B. Mayer Theater, Santa Clara University, Santa Clara; and April 18 and 19 at Cowell Theater, Fort Mason, San Francisco. Tickets: $10-$20. Call (408) 993-9231 or (415) 392-4400.

©1997 San Francisco Chronicle