Stunning males and powerful females : gender and tradition in East Javanese dance
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Stunning males and powerful females : gender and tradition in East Javanese dance
(New perspectives on gender in music)
University of Illinois Press, c2015
Available at / 2 libraries
-
No Libraries matched.
- Remove all filters.
Note
Includes bibliographical references (p. [195]-210) and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
In east Javanese dance traditions like Beskalan 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 (males who dress and live as female) 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.
by "Nielsen BookData"