Two weeks ago, my lecturer named Mr. Eddy Pursubayanto, Drs., DIP.TESL., M.Hum. gave me an assignment to do research about the form of culture in Indonesia as the Final Project. And according to Geertz (1973, 89), culture is "an historically transmitted pattern of meanings embodied in symbols." we chose THE PHILOSOPHY BEHIND WAYANG WONG'S EYEBROWS. We did the research in Solo for two days and took the video in a whole week while we edited the video in three days. One of the most popular cultural performances in Solo is Wayang. Solonese knows two kinds of Wayang, First is Wayang Kulit (Shadow Puppet) and Wayang Wong (Literally Human Wayang). Wayang Wong is is a type of classical Javanese dance theatrical performance. It is total theatre involving dance, drama, music, visual arts, language, and literature. A highly cultured sense of formality permeates every aspect of its presentation. Wayang Wong usually performed in Sriwedari Building which located 2 kilometers on the west of the court of Kasunanan Surakarta on Slamet Riyadi street. Wayang Wong traditional dance uses Mahabharata and Ramayana epic as the story base. Wayang Wong Sriwedari dance drama group has been performing since 1910 at Wayang Orang Sriwedari Building with 75 people as crew. Since then, the traditional dance drama group performs everyday except Sunday at 8.30 pm. They also have different story everyday, so they've performed thousands different story. Actually they have no script, so the director only explains the outline of the the story. The director only tells who the actors or actresses will meet at stage and either the actors or actresses have to do the improvisation at stage. So all of the actors and actresses have to know about performance. Basically to be the actor or actresses there, they have to know about Javanese language; the old, the new one or even Sanskrit (called Ontowecono in Wayang Wong), tembang and lelagon (Javanese song), the rhythm of karawitan (Javanese traditional instrument), how to act in stage with improvisation or even do the traditional dances as Mr. Sulistyo (the director and also actor) said. There are two kinds of shapes for the woman of Wayang Wong, the first is 'LURUH' for the protagonist character who has an elegant and smooth movement and 'LANYAP' for the antagonist one. And four kinds of shapes for the man. There are 'ALUS LURUH' for the protagonist, 'LANYAP' for antagonist, 'GAGAH, TELENGAN' and 'GAGAH, PRENGESAN' for the heroic character who has more masculine and powerful dance movement, used commonly for the roles of strongly built kshatriyas, soldiers and generals.

• published: 15 Dec 2013
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