then music and puppet united as I dragged the puppet over to the lower right side of the screen for two small, counterclockwise circles. At the top point of each circle, I paused to take a quick breath with the music before the next circle. Next, the puppet slid over to the left and repeated the same circling motion, but clockwise. After I performed this movement again, once on the right and once on the left, I lifted the kayonan away from the screen. To the audience, the movement looks as though a great gust of wind came up under the kayonan and knocked it from its place. I then swept the kayonan against the screen in large figure eights. I learned to do these figure eights even before I began practicing with the screen, because Pak Tunjung wanted to teach my body and make my muscles strong in order to gracefully execute the correct movements.
Figure 2.3. The kayonan puppet begins the performance at the center of the screen. Photo by Tina (Cox) Goodlander.
This opening dance of the kayonan demonstrates aesthetic rules that connect the performance to Balinese society and religion. Anthropologists Bruce Kapferer and Angela Hobart suggest that the consideration of aesthetics provides a means to unite art with life:
The aesthetic and its compositional forms are what human beings are already centered within as human beings. This is to say that human beings are beings whose lived realities are already their symbolic constructions or creations within, and through which, they are oriented to their realities and come to act within them. To concentrate on the aesthetic is to focus on the dynamic forces and other processes engaged in human cultural and historical existence as quintessentially symbolic processes of continual composition and recomposition. If the aesthetic is to be equated with art, then art is life, an attention to its aesthetic processes being a concern with its compositional forms and forces in which life is shaped and comes to discover its direction and meaning. (2005, 5)
The kayonan dance thus acts as an aesthetic symbol and the practice of its use in performance demonstrates how wayang kulit makes meaning within Balinese culture.18
Missing from Kapferer and Hobart’s use of aesthetics as an interpretive tool is the judgment that a theory of aesthetics implies; there are “good”—or within the culture, desirable—aesthetics or “bad,” or undesirable, aesthetics. Bourdieu articulates how aesthetic judgment is connected to social hierarchy through his theory of taste. Bourdieu refers specifically to distinctions and comprehension of Western art, and thus not all his work is relevant; the idea, however, that understanding the art form and finding it pleasing and therefore worthwhile according to a set of established and learned rules reveals much about how wayang kulit is judged as pleasing or not pleasing and thus given a kind of tangible value within the society. If the viewer does not possess the “cultural competence” in order to understand the performance, he or she “feels lost in a chaos of sounds and rhythms, colours and lines, without rhyme or reason” (1984, 2). While in Bali, many of the foreigners I encountered expressed similar frustration with Balinese performance because they never acquired knowledge of the cultural codes and language being used in the performance. The value given the aesthetic codes also mitigates how women might be perceived and accepted as dalang.
Taksu, the primary Balinese aesthetic, describes an elusive quality that a performer or performance has in order to be judged as good, meaning that the performer pleases his or her audience and the performance is therefore deemed successful. Taksu connotes a certain spiritual connection or even age because it is something accumulated over time, and as a performer practices and gains performance experience, the performer’s taksu develops. Having taksu is different from being a skilled performer—even a master might have an off night and a beginner might give a performance with strong taksu. Hobart (2003, 115) dubs taksu “the god of inspiration,” which provides the dalang with the power to execute the performance. Edward Herbst calls taksu the means by which the dalang is connected to the invisible world of the spirits: “Once the shadow puppet is in the dalang’s grip, his hands and arms serve as a connector, a lightning rod, through which the puppet’s character, voice, and spiritual life-force, taksu, enter the dalang” (1997, 61). In order for this connection to manifest and create taksu, there must be, however, a logical connection between dalang and puppet. This connection is described as masolah, or “characterization”—“masolah in its fullest meaning implies the inherent taksu ‘spiritual energy’ that integrates the state of a performer with the physical form of his own body, and/or that of a mask or puppet” (57). Pak Tunjung explained to me, “within a wayang kulit performance masolah is extremely important. It is the medium of action—the dalang must dance together with the character of the puppet. In Balinese wayang kulit, masolah provides the means for the message or meaning of the performance.”
The realization of masolah, and the creation of taksu, depends on a logical connection between the puppet and the dalang. No connection, no taksu. Herbst describes several dalang finding difficulty with the animal characters in wayang tantri—because how can a human dalang become one with an animal character? In wayang “each character really must speak for himself, with no distance between dalang and puppet” (1997, 62). This creates difficulty for a woman dalang to have taksu because there is a greater social, vocal, and physical difference between her and the many male characters in the stories she performs. I had studied various styles of Asian performance while at the University of Hawai‘i and often played male characters. This experience helped me greatly in bridging the gender and cultural divide between myself and the puppets I held in my hand. A male dalang can play female characters and a woman dalang can play male characters. However, it is rare to see women characters in wayang—and perhaps the greater distance between puppet and character, which is an obstacle to taksu, is why.
“Liveness” and “balance” are two additional aesthetics that are important to master for wayang kulit—the connection of masolah does not depend on voice alone. From the Balinese perspective the universe is made up of three key elements—fire, water, and air—which are constantly moving and changing. Some change is visible and some change takes place over such long periods of time that it is not readily apparent. The Balinese consider the presence of this kind of subtle movement—called kehidupan, or liveness—to be highly desirable within the performing arts because a static puppet or dancer appears dead. Kehidupan explains why most Balinese wayang kulit is still performed with an oil lamp even while Java and most of Southeast Asia now prefers the stronger light given by an electric lamp. The flickering flame from the oil lamp creates the appearance of constant movement and “life,” even while the puppets are not moving. Pak Tunjung reminded me about the importance of my wrist; he explained that I needed to keep the kayonan in constant motion. The kayonan puppet is large but is made of thin leather that quivers with a slight wiggle of the wrist. I learned that it is important to coordinate this vibration with all the movements of the kayonan; it must look alive.
The ideal of balance, or the existence of two opposite yet complementary halves composing a whole, is a pervasive and long-standing foundation for Balinese culture and cosmology. Davies (2007, 21) asserts that balance is the primary criterion for judging whether something is beautiful, pleasing, or good—or in Balinese, becik. Balance in Balinese art forms is not just a matter of symmetry; it also depends on how the proportions relate back to both the human body and the cosmological configuration of the island. Balance, rather than finding expression through opposites, also recognizes a middle position between the two extremes, and much of Balinese ritual and performance strives to bring these extremes together in equilibrium. For example, temples are placed and designed in orientation to the ocean, mountains, and cardinal directions, linking sacred elements through position and proportion (James 1973, 145–48).
Balance can be expressed through gender within Balinese performance. Many elements of a performance can be coded as masculine or feminine, such as different pairs of instruments or specific types of movements. A performance can also find balance within the gender of the performers or characters. The aesthetic realization of balance within the
