Timothy P. Daniels (Ed.), Performance, Popular Culture, and Piety in Muslim South East Asia (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013)

Karen Sri Kartomi Thomas

    Research output: Contribution to journalShort ReviewOtherpeer-review

    Abstract

    I first came across Laurie Ross’s chapter ‘Performing Piety from the Inside Out: Fashioning Gender and Public Space in a Mask “Tradition” from Java’s Northwest Coast’ while compiling my findings on the many Malay masked performance forms in the Riau Islands and Lampung provinces of Sumatra in late 2013. Ross’s chapter provides a brief but informative overview of the recent history of the specific masked form, topeng Cirebon. In the socio-political context of the Indonesian arts since the time of Indonesia’s first President, Sukarno, she states of the masked dance that ‘its once overt tasawwuf (Sufi) nuances became muted. By removing topeng from its natural milieu’ in the 1970s, ‘a secularized, stripped-down version was created’ and placed ‘under the watchful eye of the authoritarian Suharto regime (Ross 15–16).
    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)334-338
    Number of pages5
    JournalAustralasian Drama Studies
    Issue number64
    Publication statusPublished - Apr 2014

    Keywords

    • Performance
    • Muslim
    • Southeast Asia

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