Dancing Out of Bali

by John Coast

  "And then what happened?"

  "He fell in love with one of the nymphs and stole her kain. When he revealed himself, all the other nymphs snatched up their kains and flew up into the heavens. But the one whose kain he had stolen cowered down into the water, hiding her nakedness. And he wouldn't give it back to her till she consented to take him as her lover."

  "Charming," they both said. "Please tell him we find his Raja Pala story quite delightful."

  Though time did not permit any of the Balinese to travel outside London, we were able to hear some of their views on this city. They couldn't begin to understand what English people lived on—where were their rice-fields and coconut palms, they kept asking? They went to the zoo and hated it—it was tiring to walk and the animals smelled horrible. They grabbed at their own photographs in the newspapers, and condemned all save the few which portrayed them with modest smiles not showing their teeth, or in perfect dance poses. They were happy when Mrs. Churchill came to see the show and wished them well on their tour, but the Anak Agung was crestfallen to learn that the Royal Family was in Scotland, and that he therefore would not be able to shake hands with Queen Elizabeth.

  On one of our last afternoons there was a coming together of officials from Indonesian Embassies throughout Europe, who wanted us to bring the dancers to their capitals on the way home. But when we were pressed by these eager young men for dates, our replies were diplomatic. If the Balinese were not homesick—and some of them wanted to go home already!—and if spring in Europe coincided with the end of the American tour in the warm South, there was nothing that we personally would prefer than to bring them to Paris, Rome, Copenhagen, Brussels and Amsterdam—where the best dance audiences were. But November to March were out of the question.

  "You'll let us know by November?" they kept insisting.

  "Everything depends on the timing," we replied. "Midwinter weather in northern Europe would to say nothing of the children." And with that they had to be content.

  On the last night in London, while packers were taking down the scenery in the theatre and putting the costumes into theatrical costume baskets, ready for our take-off next morning, two of the younger dancers came up to me, clearing their throats, smiling, intimating that they had been a month now from home, and-well, hadn't seen a woman for a long time. As their elder brother, was it not my English duty to do something about this for them?

  So, after tramping the streets for hours while they stared and commented dadong, grandmother, or djegegeg, not pretty, till I was walking almost on my knees, we at last bumped into a pair of buxom and expensively-dressed wenches who stopped the Balinese open mouthed in their tracks. Some little while later, as I sat drinking the girls' champagne in a kitchen, while two bedroom doors were left slightly ajar, I was called upon to carry out my most intimate role of interpreter yet. And thanks to this satisfying interlude, two of the Balinese who still lived out in the wilds of Surrey, left England with feelings of rather more warmth.

  When the plane was flying over the Irish Sea next day, I made them a brief speech.

  "Don't blame anyone for the chaos in London," I said. "They had only six weeks to prepare for us, and in America they've had three months. Tuan Schang asked me to promise you that there will be no photographers in New York at all for two days; no rehearsals for five days; that the hotel is near the theatre, and warm; and that there are sacks of rice there awaiting you."

  And with that we tried to compose ourselves to sleep.

  11

  Balinese in America

  *

  To the casual pedestrian walking along the pavement of West 45th Street, the old Hotel Schuyler wore its habitual chromium-entranced air; but to its normal theatrical clientele, the entire building seemed to have been invaded and taken over by the Orient. Our group's fortress, in fact, consisted of the top five floors of the Schuyler Annex, where Balinese in sarongs and pyjamas cooked and gossiped and lazed, commenting and speculating upon the unbelievable city of New York.

  During the first days they kept close to the hotel. They had found thirty sacks of specially milled rice with meats, vegetables, hot spices and cooking utensils, ready and awaiting them there; and their first days were spent in rest.

  But while they stayed at home, we went swiftly to work. On the first morning I went to Freddie Schang's office, which occupied most of three specklessly sanitary floors in the Steinway Building, and where there was indeed a fine collection of Paul Klees. He took me to his room, summoned his secretary, planked down a cheque for our first week's guarantee, and said two things—that now the group were in business and I had better go around to the National City Bank on Fifth Avenue to open up an account there. Then, with his jaw coming forward a pugnacious two inches, he said that we'd find his company strict until they got their investment back—the pre-opening expenses to cover the rent of the theatre, the making of the set, union fees, bonds, salaries, publicity and heaven knows what besides came to well over thirty thousand dollars.

  Next I went down to look at the Fulton Theatre, just off Times Square, and only two blocks walk from our hotel. It was a perfect small theatre, seating just under a thousand people, intimate and admirably suited to our show. The dressing-rooms were well equipped, the building was warm, there was no orchestra pit to separate the audience from the dancers, and on the stage Dick Senie, the designer responsible for our Balinese gateway set, and for the flaming draw curtains figured with a pair of fighting cocks battling in midair, was supervising the hoisting up of the lighting paraphernalia.

  I learned here, too, something of the wages which the theatrical unions had won for their members. The forty-four of us were dividing our weekly guarantee equally, and we all received about half the wage of our unionized wardrobe mistress....

  Then came the work with our press agents. They were "the tops", Freddie Schang had said. They were exceedingly active, we soon found out. Life, in fact, after the first 48 hours, developed into a necessary and daily hell of photo calls and broadcasts and television appearances. But first we gave a lunch at Sardi's to the press of New York, cooked by Luce in Sardi's kitchen and served by the Anak Agung in person to the representatives of the big dailies and magazines. This was most wearying work, but it founded for us a nationwide publicity, and the lines in front of the box office soon reflected our efforts.

  Our opening night brought a packed and curious house. The public, though friendly enough, were wondering how authentic was the material they were about to see. Dr. Ali, the Indonesian ambassador, came down from Washington with his wife and a smile of officials. He showed a rather anxious hopefulness. The Balinese, though, feeling more atmosphere in the New York decor and lighting, and a greater physical nearness to their audience, and observing, too, the professional stage crew around them, led by Tom Skelton, our stage manager, who began to learn the Indonesian language within a day of meeting them, excelled themselves in a truly brilliant performance. From the first shimmering crash of the opening chord of music, we played to an audience sitting on the edge of their seats. The overture quite literally stunned them. Then the little Olegs danced to their more lightly tinkling orchestra, and before the audience could wonder much at their stylized, exotic patterns, the Olegs had vanished and the Monkey Dance chorus was chanting raucously on a dark, moonlit stage. The utter difference and unexpectedness of the Monkey Dance won over even the most bored habitual first-nighters, and by the time Raka made her first entry as a gilded and scarlet bumblebee, her glittering antennae aquiver, the audience was solidly with us. During the intermission I wandered through the foyer, and nearly burst with internal satisfaction to hear the mixture of delight and astonishment with which New York was receiving us so far.

  And it was exciting after this first night to have our stage as crowded as Times Square, with ecstatic and beaming enthusiasts congratulating us all, with officials from the embassy now proud of their c
ountrymen's success, with ballet dancers and actors and actresses being photographed with Raka and the Anak Agung, with the ambassador, with us, while the team from Columbia Artists congratulated not only us, but themselves, for already they could sense a friendly press reception and hope that their financial outlay would be returned in due course.

  At length the children escaped to remove their make-up, and bundle themselves into their new shoes and fawn-coloured socks, into Indonesian kains and kebaya coatees of silk, gaily flowered, and wrap themselves up in their neat grey overcoats. Then together we walked through intrigued crowds who smiled and waved at the Balinese, frustrated by the Tower of Babel, and climbed into buses to drive to the Park Avenue penthouse of one Matty Fox. Matty was an astute financier and friend of Indonesia, and tonight he was opening his home to the entire cast, to embassy officials, to as many dancers and persons from the kindred arts as we had cared to invite. He provided mounds of rice and curries and Chinese vegetables for everybody, and there, pecking at her plate, I was delighted to find Alicia Markova, with Lucia Chase, the director of Ballet Theatre, who had written to me long ago in Bali, asking about my work there, of which she had already heard. And then suddenly there strolled in Martin Flavin, white eyebrows ajutting, and with an elegant cane, crowing loudly over our success, which he had so long ago prophesied. To complete our family circle were three well-groomed young gentlemen, affecting crew-cuts and dark flannel suits, those hall marks of the better-known American universities, whom we with difficulty recognized as the former hands on the brigantine Yankee, who, in shorts and sarongs, had stayed with us in our Kaliungu house—none other than Jim Ford and his friends once again.

  The Balinese, ever practical, seldom romantic, finished their food and were at once ready to leave. So, most of them departed with their full bellies to a place where they could at leisure discuss the luxuries, quite meaningless to them, of such an American penthouse.

  "Beh! This man seems to be very rich," said one of them, stepping into the elevator. "Perhaps he would care to give us an electric generator for the club?"

  It was long after midnight when we went cruising around in Jim Ford's car to look for the first editions of the morning papers. We pounced on them near our hotel, thumbing through their pages with a painful excitement. Ah! Here we were! Lots of notices! And, by all the gods, another editorial about us—this time in the Herald Tribune! They were wonderful reviews, all of them. That day each of New York's nine major dailies raved about us at length. Their generous acclaim was exhilarating, yet I remember that Luce and I felt a certain humility, fearing that it just could not be true, that this was just too much to expect. But perfectly true it was. When the weekly trade paper, Variety, with its own esoteric and incomprehensible jargon, appeared that week, the "Dancers of Bali" were proclaimed in bold black and white print, wholly comprehensible, as the first Broadway hit of the 1952

  Before very long, though some of them naturally worried about their families in Bali, they began to enjoy parts of their strange new existence. Jim Ford, as a start, took them on a sight-seeing bus tour. They were all speechless with surprise, I remember, when I pointed out some "Bowery bums," (echoing our guide,) who had added casually: "Look! There are two drunken women on the pavement. Drunken women are rather rare here—you are lucky to have seen them," all in tones that might be indicating some unusual specimen of the local fauna. And when we came to the Empire State Building, the Legongs, who had been taken up once already by a too energetic newspaperman, said quite simply and sincerely to Jim, who couldn't believe it, "We want to stay in the bus. We have been up already, thank you."

  When they shopped they thought sensibly in terms of their family and village needs at home. Accordingly, in their never-ceasing search for gold, they continued to hunt after English sovereigns, which they assured us had a purer gold content than American dollars. They would drop mysteriously into pawnshops and jewellers, slowly articulating the formula: "I want gold money, please," while smiling and waiting. One or two of them meant to buy typewriters for relations at home who were officials or clerks; many of them wanted sewing machines for their wives or themselves, though they hastily dropped this plan when they reckoned that similar machines sold just as cheaply in Djakarta. Made Lebah wanted to buy motor spare parts. Gusti Kompiang was saving every cent, he said, to buy a rice-field, and I only hoped his cock-fighting enthusiasms would not undermine this wise decision when he returned home. The Anak Agung quickly set his heart on a Chevrolet station-wagon.

  As soon as their desires were specific, however, we found ourselves in a vicious financial circle. After our tremendous reception in the press, I had told them they were a great artistic success. This they saw to be true, for every night at the theatre, for seven solid weeks, the house was sold out, even to standing room. The Balinese, then, possessed themselves in patience for two or three weeks and then, very realistically once again asked whether they could not receive more money.

  "John, we are a success, are we not?" some of our grumblers of old would ask.

  "You are indeed."

  "And every night the theatre is full—all the seats are sold?"

  "That's quite true."

  "And the seats are very expensive?"

  "By our ideas, yes."

  "Well, couldn't we be paid more?"

  And then in the unwilling Indonesian tongue, I would have to try to explain about the $34,000 of pre-opening expenses which had to be paid off first, and about the modest cost of running our show, which at the Fulton was $14,000 a week. But, with devastatingly simple logic by their village standards, they would reply, "Beh! But in Pliatan we played for Americans and only for two hundred rupiahs."

  Or, "Why should the decor cost us 75,000 build a large guest house for so much money." And to relate these two standards was not possible. Trying to keep patient, I scribbled on piece after piece of paper in many a hotel-room conclave, showing them that our share of clear profit in addition to our guarantee would come in fast only after about the tenth week; while to reap the full benefit of our particular contract, we should be prepared to play for five months in America, and hope to make a film in the New Year. But the thing that silenced the grumblings a little was when Richard Rodgers came to pay a generous tribute to our visitation from the true South Pacific. When he had gone, I said to one of them:

  "That man writes successful musical shows for the theatre. He is very rich."

  At once they replied, "Hah! If he is a success and rich, why aren't we the same?"

  "Now listen carefully. Our show could run in New York for perhaps four months to a full house. We have 970 seats to fill. Tuan Rodgers has four or five shows playing at the same time, in theatres twice this size, and some of them play for four years in New York alone, and one of them has played for ten years in America without ceasing. If you want to be rich in this country, that is how hard you must work."

  They were dumbfounded, and at last, mercifully silent. Thanks to the authors of South Pacific, peace descended again on the island of Bali, and the Anak Agung was no longer so pestered. He had recently been so irritated by petty troublemakers that he had threatened to resign.

  "InB ali these were ordinary people," he would say, "but here they are lice." And when really moved, he would swear at them by leprosy, the curse of the Great Sickness. "Sakit Gde!” he would explode. But he and I both knew in our hearts, that these grumblings owed part of their origin to the suspicions lisped into our dancers' ears when in London.

  As the group found American friends, they began to move all over New York; and the further afield they wandered, the worse it became for Suprapto and me. It was nothing for the two of us to be dancing like dervishes at the stage door, jumping in and out to look for truants who had meandered off, watchless, and failed to think of the theatre in time. On occasions, a dancer or two would go to their hotel rooms and just sleep, and go on sleeping, only to be dis
covered by a perspiring manager still asleep in their rooms after the show. It was lucky that we had trained plenty of reserves.

  Foremost among our friends now was Colin McPhee. Like the few others familiar with Balinese art, he had at first had natural mental reservations as to the quality of the group we were bringing over. But having seen our rehearsals from the wings, and having met so many of his former household at the Fulton Theatre, he again became a member of the Pliatan club. He, with Margaret Mead, even showed us some old movies in which we glimpsed the prewar Legong of Saba, and saw Sampih dancing Kebiar as a nine year old, before a then slender drummer, our same Anak Agung.

  Every sort of invitation now came our way from friendly Americans, who could not understand how tied we were to our routine; and there were distinguished visitors galore who came to see the dancers in their dressing-rooms, only the barrier of language, in fact, preventing the Balinese from being nightly mobbed by their fans.

  In the bedroom of Indrosugondho and Sutaryo we were opening the first official mail from Indonesia. We read it avidly, but in silence, then looked dumbly at one another. It contained not one word of praise, not one syllable of thanks, but a bald cable from the Foreign Ministry forbidding any lengthening of the tour in America. There were press cuttings too, sent by friends. The presidential newspapers reported our triumph; but in three papers I learned that I had treated the Balinese like my slaves in London, that I had pocketed all the profits, and that Indrosugondho and Sutaryo spent all their time on pleasure jaunts.

  I asked them in weary disgust, “Who can have sent these lies tu Djakarta?”