A Women's Troupe Named for 'Femaleness' Takes On the Male Repertoire

Founded in 1995 as an offshoot of a pioneering gamelan wanita, or women's orchestra, the thirty-member Luh Luwih troupe is composed mostly of middle-aged women who have, as scholar Catherine Diamond puts it, set about performing the all-male genres one by one. Diamond points to a paradox built into the name. Luh means female, and luwih is the quintessence of femaleness in the positive sense — yet, she writes, the group demonstrates its femaleness by appropriating the male forms. That is a stranger proposition than a simple claim that women can dance what men dance. The troupe's identity as quintessentially female is being asserted through a repertoire associated with male performers: the name announces an essence, and the programme answers with a takeover.