Performers and Professionalization in Java

Abstract

This paper draws on a ten-year study of the styles of performance patronage in Java – patronage by the state, the tourist industry and individuals, in contexts from the sultan's court to remote highland villages. It focuses on the latest findings about traditionally-and academically-trained performers in the court city of Yogyakarta. Supported by a number of case studies and survey results, it asks how performers have been surviving the economic crisis that began in August 1997, how they evaluate the different spheres of patronage, and how they see their best options for future survival. The answers to these questions elucidate the ways in which performers' identities are being altered, from both individual and collective perspectives.² The data also raise questions about professionalization, and whether this ubiquitous sign of modernity and globalization is able to deliver the promises it holds out to those who aspire to identify themselves as ‘professionals’.