and a commitment to the continuity of both the practices and the particular emotional/spiritual relationship that nourishes them” (1997, 60). Practice therefore provides a means for thinking through how performance traditions are connected to social spheres. Tradition, such as wayang kulit, operates within the body and is passed along from one body to another—reverberating within society.
I want to focus on the moment of transmission as key for unpacking how tradition functions as practice and connects to the greater structures of power within a society. The theories of Pierre Bourdieu, as he is concerned with “the mode of generation of practices,” highlights the relationship between what people do and systems of hierarchy within their society. Bourdieu describes society’s overlying system as habitus:
The structures constitutive of a particular type of environment (e.g. the material conditions of existence characteristic of a class condition) produce habitus, systems of durable, transposable dispositions, structured structures predisposed to function as structuring structures, that is, as principles of the generation and structuring of practices and representations which can be objectively “regulated” and “regular” without in any way being the product of obedience to rules, objectively adapted to their goals without presupposing a conscious aiming at ends or an express mastery of the operations necessary to attain them and, being all this, collectively orchestrated without being the product of the orchestrating action of a conductor. (1977, 72)
Habitus, for Bourdieu, is created through primarily unconscious action, or action that because of the “natural” way it is experienced seems to be unconscious. I propose that if habitus is executed through repeated behaviors, therefore “tradition” is a way of identifying one of these kinds of behaviors. Because tradition singles out behaviors or items as having particular meaning in society, tradition is therefore related to the structures of society in an efficacious way. The source of the tradition need not be traceable, and the history of wayang kulit is likewise difficult to recount, so therefore wayang kulit must be studied in the moment of generation as it is passed from teacher to student. So, just as the structures of habitus “are determined by the past conditions which have proceeded the principle of their production” (ibid.), the tradition of wayang kulit is also produced and determined in relationship to the established aesthetics and content of the performance.
Learning a theatrical system physically and mentally, or spiritually, changes the student. Richard Schechner describes how the study of noh, kathakali, or ballet involves “learning new ways of speaking, gesturing, moving. Maybe even new ways of thinking and feeling”; the form changes the body through diligent training and practice, thus “deep, permanent psychophysical changes are wrought.” The performer becomes a shite, the character of Rama, or a dancer and this process changes the performers way of being and relating to the world around him or her—“they are marked people” (1993, 257). Schechner notes that the student brings a blank slate, a tabula rasa, to the training because many of these initiates start learning their craft at a very young age. I, however, began studying wayang kulit as an adult and my exposure to the art form was limited before I arrived in Bali.11 Even so, the bodily experience of learning the form changed me. I was left to wonder, as an outsider, how do I participate in and contribute to Balinese arts and “tradition”? What implications does my participation have for forming a definition of “tradition” in Bali?
Kathy Foley, writing from her own experience learning wayang golek, or rod puppetry, in West Java provides an explanation for the kind of “Balinese” character I could occupy. She writes that learning to perform with the puppets and masks allows performers to “multiply their bodies” through the performance, and that “through the one body we inhabit in this life we can, with the help of these puppets or masks and the ideas they encode, embody the whole cosmos” (1990, 61). The body changes because learning to use puppets begins “by moving away from oneself,” unlike many systems of actor training that begin from the actor’s own personality and life history (65). One of the women dalang I interviewed explained the different skills necessary to perform wayang kulit: “If you are going to perform wayang it is important to practice it all. You need to practice the voice, dancing the puppets, and the foot also. You must become one [menyatu] with the puppets. It is very important. It is important to be able sing and do the voices” (Trijata 2009). Whether in Java or Bali, the performer in puppet theater must learn to physicalize, vocalize, and think a variety of characters that are connected to society through the myths those characters embody and the culture that informs them. Performance provides insight into tradition, as Henry Glassie states: “the performer is positioned at a complete nexus of responsibility” and as such must account for his teachers, the audience, and himself (1995, 402). I inserted myself into the structures of Balinese society by working within the system of the performance tradition. Foley writes, “I feel that my body is still open to the meanings of the practice in itself. Indeed, practice is the only way to get beyond the simple introductions that are found in books and the fragmented, albeit tantalizing information about meanings that come from performers” (1990, 77).12
That I had changed as a result of my experience was noticed by others as well; as this story illustrates: “Om swastiastu!” I called out to my friend Eka as he walked down the path to where I was living in Bali. We met at Ohio University when he was a student there and I was taking my graduate coursework. Now, after living for a few years in Washington, DC, Eka was back in Bali, and after seven months of fieldwork, I was happy to see a familiar face. “Om swastiastu,” he responded with surprise in his voice. “Om swastiastu” is a Balinese rather than Indonesian greeting, typically not known by foreigners. “You speak Balinese?” Eka asked me. “Abidik sajaan,” I answered in Balinese, meaning “only a little.” Eka laughed as he came up the stairs to my balcony. We sat at a little table and sipped hot tea while Eka admired the view of the garden and rice fields that I had from my room. We talked about my research in Bali and I told him I had studied dance and performed at a couple of temple ceremonies. He was especially curious about my experience with wayang. He peppered me with questions: “Do you perform in Kawi? What story are you doing? Are you using an oil lamp? What kind of music? Do you have your own puppets? How often do you go to the temple? You mean you are learning to make the puppets, too?” Eka was truly surprised with all I had been doing. Finally, before he left, he exclaimed with a smile, “My goodness! You are more Balinese than me!”
On the one hand, I knew Eka’s comment was purely out of friendly admiration for all I had been learning and doing over the past year, as there are a lot of foreigners in Bali but very few of them learn Balinese language or spend time doing “Balinese” things. Eka’s words also reflected an awareness that many more Balinese, like himself, are spending less time doing traditional performance and art; the artists I spent my time with do not represent “typical” Balinese. Many people in Bali work in hotels, shops, or for the government and do not make their living as dancers, puppeteers, or musicians. Young people prefer television to topeng and like pop music better than gamelan. Eka’s exclamation, which I received occasionally in some form or another from other Balinese people, reflects a perception, however, that language, culture, and the arts, especially wayang kulit, play a role in the formation of a “Balinese” identity.
Teachers in Bali transmit knowledge and skill of performance to their students through the body. Students stand alongside or behind their teachers to copy movements—teachers will often physically adjust or move their students into the correct pose. The process is not always easy. Emigh describes the difficult nature of his own training in topeng: “daily [my teacher, I Nyoman Kakul] wrench[ed] my resistant body into something approximating the proper shapes for Balinese dance” (1979, 12). I often observed dance teachers with their Balinese students use their hands to adjust a dancer’s hip, head, hand, or leg. If I made a mistake in executing a motion with the puppet, my teacher, Pak Tunjung, would take my hand so he could guide my body and make my movements more precise. Likewise, Pak Tunjung would sometimes sit with his son, Nandhu, on his lap and guide his hand holding the puppet across the screen (fig. 2.2). This is a typical method of teaching in Bali,
