Dancing Out of Bali

by John Coast

  They answered tactfully, ‘’London is full of friends of the President enemies. These newspapers all quote London sources.”

  There was one other yet more revealing press cutting. It reported that according to rumour a coup d’etat was being plotted against the President.

  If this were so, our group might again become politically so “hot” that our friends in Indonesia, in their uncertainty, might not dare to defend us.

  I now fell ill with a streptococcal infection, brought about, I was told, through sheer exhaustion, and was ordered to take a train with Luce soon afterward to rest for a couple of days in the New England home of the Lashar family. But though the Lashars only woke us up to feed us, I found myself so restless and irritable just before curtain time that I would phone the Fulton to be assured by Tom Skelton that all was well and the cast not lost.

  When we returned to New York, the pace seemed to accelerate rather than slow down. One night our Storyteller failed to turn up. So Luce, who knew almost every note of the music and each step of the dancing, reluctantly took over at a few minutes notice. Her reception was then so warm, and so easily could she joke Balinese in faultless English, that she was pressed to continue.

  Outside our theatre work we had televised in Ed Sullivan's "Toast of the Town" programme, showing parts of the Bumblebee and Monkey dances to an audience of thirty million; and all the time we kept our eyes open for a film. The Road to Bali was finished, we knew, and Fair Wind to Java, which Dick Tregaskis had spoken of in Bali, was almost complete, too. Our friends advised us to wait till we reached Hollywood on our tour, and to hope for a film in the New Year.

  The Balinese, meanwhile, were each continuing to find their own experiences. The Anak Agung went to meet the timpanist of the New York Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra, and came back sniggering contentedly, saying to us, "Kalah dial I beat him!" and related that the American had been staggered—as may well have been the case at what the Anak Agung had done to his drums.

  Sampih was teaching the Oleg to a class of Americans, and his pupils included Michiko, the dancer from The King and I, whom he and the Anak Agung referred to as Made Michiko. Raka, having seen her photograph in countless journals, was becoming conscious of her ballerina status, and when her understudy once danced her Bumblebee role to lighten her work for her, she refused ever again to wear the golden kain which the other girl had sullied. Their American dressers, Mac and Kelly, were devoted to the children. Listening outside their door, one might hear a peremptory: "Big pin, Mac!" or "Kellyslow poke! Come queek, come queek!" It was the dressers who established the children's much publicized taste for vanilla ice-cream, which they ate nightly in the intermission.

  Old Serog had already been given a complete set of new dentures with Freddie Schang's help, but only on consideration that he never wore them on the stage, which he always wanted to do. For the old man would then simper sweetly at the audience, where before he had grinned and clowned. With his teeth in, he dared not open his jaws for fear they should leap across the footlights into the front row of the orchestra stalls.

  The worst life of all was that of our harassed manager, Suprapto.

  His was the dreary routine work of administering the Balinese, and it drove him nearly demented. Sometimes he would mutter furiously, "What do they think I am? Am I their budak, their serf, perhaps?" I never tired of hearing his English which, though very efficient, often landed him, literally, in Dutch. When telephoning a Chinese restaurant, for example, he would invariably start his inquiries for food like this: "Good evening, I am Mr. Suprrrapto. I am the Manager of the Dancers of Bali. Have you, perhaps, some flesh...?” For in Dutch,. the word for meat is vleesch. On one occasion I was overjoyed when he ran up to relate what he had just suffered at the hands of a "very brutal laundryman." Brutaal, in Dutch, means insolent or cheeky, But Suprapto was conscientious and invaluable to us, and his few temperamental outbursts were wholly justified.

  Originally booked for four weeks in New York, our success at the Fulton caused us to extend the season by another three weeks. But between our fifth and sixth New York weeks we had to go out on tour to fulfil certain engagements that could not be cancelled, all in towns within an easy radius of New York.

  We left the city in buses, heading first for Boston, and as if to speed our departure a driving blizzard of snow blew through the fiords of Manhattan and we next met the sun when approaching Boston.

  Accompanying us was our tour manager, Dick Skinner, a plump and gentle man, born and bred in the theatre, enjoying his exotic education. During the bus trips the children were generally in boisterous spirits. The Anak Agung, however, sat silently, his eyes glued wistfully to the road, sighing after each station-wagon that he saw.

  Boston Opera House, then, was the start of our tour, and we played to two packed and friendly houses. In our hotel I shall never forget the masked dancer, Rinda, calm and dignified, appearing in the main lobby clad only in a pair of combinations and an open overcoat, in his hand a bottle half filled with oil, seeking the stairs to the kitchen where we had permission to do our own cooking. The hotel staff straightened their smiles and courteously conducted him below.

  Philadelphia was the city where Raka proved her artistic integrity.

  She danced her Bumblebee dance in the first half of the programme, but inexplicably refused to eat her ice-cream in the intermission while changing costume. In the second half she danced in the Legong, played her Golden Bird role, took her final curtain-calls—and burst into uncontrollable tears. At length Oka explained. The little tot had felt part of her costume coming loose in the Bumblebee Dance and was afraid it had been noticed. She had contained her weeping, however, until the whole performance was over.

  In Newark the gamelan members wore flowers in their headdresses, sent them by the children of a girls' school; and in Washington we played before sixteen Ambassadors.... We were up the next dawn and on our way to play again in New York that same evening. The girls slept later, and Luce brought them along by a midday plane. We had played seven performances in seven days in five towns and had sampled our first "one-night stands.” I sat next to the Anak Agung in the bus and said, "If you want to make money in America, Agung Adji, you would have to go on playing like this for six months. That's what the western ballet companies have to do."

  Returned from this tiring week, the company were given an advance out of their future profits. I had easily persuaded Freddie Schang to do this for psychological reasons, though it was not in the contract. Touring was not only far harder work, but by the time I had paid the hotel bills, Chinese restaurant bills, doctors bills and other travelling expenses, there was less pocket money than usual left from the guarantee to divide among them: and the Balinese cared only for the cash in their pockets, grudging each superfluous cent spent on comfortable hotel rooms or on food other than rice and spices.

  The Anak Agung, meanwhile, was so possessed by his innocent desire for a station-wagon, that his absent-mindedness was becoming chronic. One midnight he banged at our hotel room door in a terrible frenzy, sobbing out that he had lost his talisman rings. The stone of one came from Bali's most holy temple on the slopes of the Great Mountain, while the other came from the also sacred Peak of Tabanan. These rings held the magic power to protect them all, he stammered. Furthermore, they were only a loan.... I dressed at once, for this could be serious, and together we went down to the theatre. We searched for his black jacket costume in the empty dressing rooms, for the rings he usually placed in its pockets just before the curtain rose since they interfered with his drumming The jacket was nowhere to be found. We searched the corridors, groped our way over the entire floor of the stage, lifted up the musical instruments, shook out every costume. There was nothing.

  Then we looked through the telephone numbers at the stage door and found our wardrobe mistress listed there. We phoned her at once. She was very sleepy, but told us that
the jacket had gone to the cleaners. We phoned the cleaners. They were shut. We phoned the wardrobe mistress again, asked for the name and address of the owner of the cleaners, telephoned him, and he woke up a boy who went down to look in the black jacket's pockets, which was lying on one of his shop's shelves. A long hour later he phoned us back to report that no rings had been found. Then I told the Anak Agung that it was past three and time to sleep. On the next day we would go to the cleaners' place, which was far away, and look for ourselves.

  Minutes later, it seemed, a timid but persistent knocking woke me again. I opened our door irritably, to find the round-eyed Anom smiling apologetically outside, and well behind this decoy stood the Anak Agung, still trembling with anxiety, ready for the search again. The rings, he now said, had undoubtedly been stolen by an enemy and had probably been sold already. Thank God we discovered them about one hour later, deep down in the lining of his black jacket on the cleaners' shelves.

  "The soul of our club might have been destroyed" said the Anak Agung, "if those rings had been lost."

  * * *

  Indrosugondho was sick, so Sutaryo, the Anak Agung and I were talking with the Indonesian Foreign Minister in New York. He had come to America to attend the United Nations Assembly. He was very happy at our success. He said he would make a statement when he returned home to counteract the malicious rumours that had arisen from “certain sources”.

  Then he said, “It is politically important that the group come home through northern Europe and perform there under the auspices of our Embassies in January and February. How do you feel about that?”

  I answered, “Didn’t we agree that human and artistic contacts were the strongest and best? If you want to politicalize our tour, I think you weaken the strength of the appeal of the dancers. And if the group were ordered to return in midwinter, with all due respect, I would resign as a token of my protest. It would be risking their health.”

  Said the Minister, “It must be January. Sutaryo has canvassed the group, even to the little girls. They all say that they are willing to visit Europe in January if the Government asks them to.”

  I considered this. Then I looked at Sutaryo, whose eyes flickered away quickly. This, I could see, was the oblique, but gentle, way of dropping the alien pilot. This Minister had long been my friend and supporter, but new national pride goes far deeper than mere personal friendship. So I said, “I would prefer to resign then. My idea has already succeeded. That must be enough for me.”

  The Minister turned to Sutaryo—was there relief in his face? He said, merely, “Then the Foreign Ministry will assume all responsibility in Europe for the tour. And whatever you decide to do, John, I shall stand behind you.” Smiling, he put his ann round my shoulder.

  12

  End of his Journey

  *

  New York was still quite warm on November 9th when we left the city, heading eventually for California. Ours was an impressive departure. Only thirty minutes before the train was due out of Grand Central, 108 pieces of unwieldy baggage were being lined up by a sweating Suprapto on the pavement outside the Schuyler Hotel. The train was as good as lost, moaned Dick Skinner. But, shouting like a drill-sergeant, I mobilized sixty male Balinese hands and the baggage went in higgledy-piggledy—but all of it was inside those buses within two minutes. The express train was only held up fifteen minutes, as the Pliatan club slouched up the long platform, humping on their shoulders sacks of rice, which they stubbornly refused to leave behind.

  This was our second and last week of one- and two-night stands, and we had long distances to cover between four cities. On the eighth weary morning our trek across the continent, two thousand miles to Las Vegas in Nevada, began. Good warm weather had been guaranteed us there.

  Travelling with the Balinese was seldom dull. When other passengers passed through the train, our Pullman impinged on them like an unseen glass door. They would suddenly find themselves in a brown-skinned coach, where men and girls were sprawled out asleep and snoring, or chatting with one another in an unknown language, while Kakul would probably, in a high oriental and nasal tremulo, be chanting for his friends' delectation some extract from an Ardja play.

  For Luce and myself, the journey across the great plains and through the Rocky Mountains was a delight because we could open the door between our bedroom and that of the little girls, and of a morning Raka and Anom jumped into Luce's lower berth, while I joined Oka, and there we all sat wrapped up in blankets like Indians, watching America flash by. The children were so confident that we were heading for warm weather that when we looked out at vast expanses of the Middle West's gritty mountain snow, they were sure it was the hot white sand of a desert.

  Our Las Vegas engagement was to last a week before we went on to Los Angeles. That we loathed cabaret work was inevitable. However, our objectives in Las Vegas had been warmth and an engagement that would pay our expensive way across America, and this much the Thunderbird Hotel helped us to do.

  And what a town was Las Vegas! Young, raw, the home of the Golden Nugget gambling house of "Western" fame, it looked as if it had erupted from the pink and grey Nevada desert but a few nights ago. It existed for the gambling. In the Thunderbird alone, hundreds of thousands of dollars changed hands nightly at the green baize tables, while the pull-handle slot machines, known as "one-arm bandits," were not only in all the hotels and gambling houses, but in each shop and drugstore to tempt the buyer of a tube of Kolynos to gamble with his change. The currency of the place was silver dollars. And here the Balinese, renowned cockfighters, received official, if optimistic, orders not to gamble.

  The weather, which had been promised at a steady 80° each day, was dry and blue skied, but by night very cold—so cold that before going to bed we put saucers of water outside the Motel cabins to freeze, the ice formed by morning persuading the Balinese to wear warm clothing.

  California, however, lived up to its reputation. As the train rattled through orange groves and the sun shone forth in a warm sky, we peeled off one layer of clothing after another. At Los Angeles station we were met by a barrage of photographers and a tall elegant lady, blue-grey haired and chic, who carried of fall the girls to the hotel in a fat Cadillac, for this was the home of Katharane Mershon, who had lived long in Bali before the war and had helped, with Walter Spies, to choreograph the original Monkey Dance.

  I shall always think kindly of the people of Los Angeles for giving our Legong no less than seven curtain calls. It was our record. In New York we had started off carefully with seventeen minutes of classical Legong, and the audience had always given us a glad three curtain calls; so, gradually, I had inserted fragments of the Lasem story, till from seventeen it crept up to twenty minutes, from twenty to twenty-three, and in Los Angeles to twenty-five minutes of pure classical dancing. The children, though, as they received their applause, bowing in solemn and slow tempo together, hands and fans clasped on their breasts, little gilded bottoms of dragonfly bodies emphasized in profile by the hollowness of their backs, scowled over at us in the wings each time the curtain fell, pretending great weariness and irritation at their ovation, but secretly delighted and proud.

  The Balinese were quite cinema conscious enough to be pleasantly thrilled at seeing Hollywood. This was to be the adventure to relate when they returned home. They clamoured for me to produce film stars on the stage for them to meet, and though Anna May Wong naturally intrigued them, the children seemed to like best the soft-spoken Olivia de Havilland. But if they were impressed by Los Angeles, the city was not without interest in them. The Anak Agung, as "mayor" of Pliatan, was invited to be the guest of honour at a mayors' convention attended by about three hundred mayors from all over the United States. In deep embarrassment, he even whispered a polite speech to them. And although Los Angeles' people claimed to be immune to sensation and accustomed to any impossible sight on their city's streets, when the An
ak Agung dressed up for this occasion, putting on a cerise and gold-threaded long kain, a jaunty golden head-cloth and a snowy shirt, adorning himself with a kris, the gold- and gem-encrusted handle of which projected above his shoulder, all the denizens of the most modem Statler Hotel fastened their eyes upon him in fascinated silence as he passed majestically through the lobbies.

  One day we went out to the Paramount studios to meet the stars of The Road to Bali. Having first watched Martin and Lewis for a moment making a comedy film about golf, we found Bing Crosby and Bob Hope running off some brief television publicity shots for the "Road" film which was soon to be released. In a minute the Balinese were joining in the laughter of the technicians at the unrehearsed clowning of Bob Hope, and after a while Bing and Bob looked up and saw the Legongs watching them, and came over to chat. It was a case of mutual love at first sight. The five of them posed together, first the two Americans getting into their Balinese positions, and Bob Hope almost gave Anom hiccups from laughing when he tried slowly, creakily, to make the Balinese neck movement. Then they all tried to put a sarong on Bob in the correct way, while the publicity cameras clicked again. From then on, Bing and Bob were part of the Legongs' family.

  It was after this and other excursions that the Anak Agung's cousin, the balean, who danced inside the Barong, said to us, "Now that I know how films are made, I dare go see them and enjoy them. I used to think that real events were filmed, and I always felt so sorry for the people who got killed."

  Perhaps there were too many stars around—anyhow, here Raka had her one and only real tantrum. The theatre auditorium was vast, and, knowing that the Balinese idea of make-up was that if they looked beautiful to themselves in the mirror they must look beautiful to the audience, I asked Tom to increase Raka's make-up for her, since her features just could not be seen from the back of the audience. Normally each dancer and musician did his own make-up, and Raka, though she was devoted to Tom, rebelled at his work. "Djelek!" she cried. “I am hideous!" and she was still weeping as she made her entry on to the stage.