Aims and approaches -- Maintaining female power through male style dance -- Negotiating pressures in terms of gender : male dancers and female style dance -- Constructing gender and tradition through senses of history -- Maintaining the representation of female power through Beskalan Putri -- Where tradition, power, and gender intersect : performer interactions
Summary
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
