Stunning males and powerful females : gender and tradition in East Javanese dance / Christina Sunardi.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Sunardi, Christina, author.

Series:

New perspectives on gender in music

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Folk dancing, Javanese--Indonesia--Java.

Folk dancing, Javanese.

Dance--Indonesia--Java.

Dance.

Dance--Social aspects--Indonesia--Java.

Dance--Sex differences.

Dance--Social aspects.

Java (Indonesia)--Social life and customs.

Java (Indonesia).

Manners and customs.

Indonesia--Java.

Physical Description:

xxxiv, 217 pages : illustrations, map ; 23 cm.

Place of Publication:

Chicago : University of Illinois Press, [2015]

Summary:

In east Javanese dance traditions like Beskaian and Ngremo, musicians and dancers negotiate gender through performances where males embody femininity and females embody masculinity. Christina Sunardi ventures into the regency of Malang in east Java to study and perform with dancers. Through formal interviews and casual conversation, Sunardi learns about their lives and art. Her work shows how performers continually transform dance traditions to negotiate, and renegotiate, the boundaries of gender and sex-sometimes reinforcing lines of demarcation, sometimes transgressing them, and sometimes doing both simultaneously. But Sunardi's investigation moves beyond performance. It expands notions of the spiritual power associated with female bodies and feminine behavior, and the ways women, men, and waria (male-to-female transvestites) access the magnetic power of femaleness. A journey into understudied regions and ideas, Stunning Males and Powerful Females reveals how performances seemingly fixed by tradition are instead dynamic environments for cultural negotiation and change surrounding questions of sex and gender. Book jacket.

Contents:

1 Aims and Approaches 1

2 Maintaining Female Power through Male Style Dance 33

3 Negotiating Pressures in Terms of Gender: Male Dancers and Female Style Dance 63

4 Constructing Gender and Tradition through Senses of History 94

5 Maintaining the Representation of Female Power through Beskalan Putri 127

6 Where Tradition, Power, and Gender Intersect: Performer Interactions 158.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780252038952

0252038959

9780252080593

0252080599

OCLC:

893454462