SENI DOLALAK PURWOREJO JAWA TENGAH: PERAN PEREMPUAN DAN PENGARUH ISLAM DALAM SENI PERTUNJUKAN

Abstract

The role of women artists in the performing arts, also within the arts as well as the other broader life, in
Indonesia, seems to be strengthening in recent years. It doesn’t mean that it is a new issue, of course. But
perhaps it happened since Indonesia experiencing and witnessing a great change of mainstream within
it self since 1998; this issue, as well as the other critical issues gaining a more free momentum and space
of expression. Of course, this still needs further scrutinization. The superiority of women is not limited
to the mith in which giving special space for them, but indeed women have strong key role as the escort
of performing arts. Women have the central key in promoting traditional arts; however, there is women
role shift in the stage of performing arts. Women artists in the culture posseses inevitable duality of
position. They are praised as high as the sky, in the other hand they are also insulted, abused, and used
as a profit-making commodity. Besides their beautiful manner and behaviour, women are also capable
of breaking through the boundary of culture. Women as the mother earth who’s also identical with
the symbol of fertility, paragon, and the parameter of values and norms that is expected by the social
community, are also capable of fulfilling the promises attached into the miths that praise and adore
them. Therefore, it is their nature that they have the central role in the success of a performing art both
traditional and modern. Serious problems in the world of performing arts occur when women artists try
to promote tradition. Inner conflict uccur between their basic nature and their environemntal condition.
In this case, pressures are not only coming from the social environment but also from within. In fact,
the soul of tradition survives and sustain from their very hands. When the stage experiences shift, the
role of women as the escort of the tradition is also fading. Performance industry does properly place
stage women as a subject but only as a commodity to attarct the market for the capitalists. Together, we
should be able to solve this problem if we still want women to attend in the world of performing arts
and change the world into a more colorful one.