Wayang Wong (Dance Drama), Indonesia
A ritual enactment of cosmic duality, courtly poise, and Javanese metaphysical structure
Thinking Through Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908–2009)’s work, La Pensée Sauvage
Introduction
Wayang Wong (also spelled Wayang Wwang or Wayang Orang) is a form of classical Javanese and Balinese dance-drama that combines theatrical storytelling, dance, music, and stylized gesture to depict episodes from the Ramayana and Mahabharata, India’s great Hindu epics. Unlike the Wayang Kulit shadow puppet tradition, Wayang Wong uses live dancers whose movements are deeply codified and who embody characters of gods, demons, and humans.
From Claude Lévi-Strauss’s philosophical vantage point—especially in The Savage Mind—Wayang Wong stands as a paragon of myth as structural performance. It mediates oppositional categories not by argument, but through choreographed ritual logic, integrating cosmic balance, aesthetic stylization, and ethical instruction into embodied semiotic systems.
Wayang Wong as Bricolage: Ritual Theatre as Mythic Machine
Lévi-Strauss describes myth as a recombinatory matrix, drawing symbolic fragments into ritual structure. Wayang Wong is constructed through:
Heirloom choreography, where each gesture (abhinaya) holds moral or cosmological weight.
Costume archetypes—elaborate headdresses, sashes, and color schemes that identify moral alignment, caste, or power.
Gamelan music, guiding mood, tempo, and emotional tension.
Poetic dialogue in Kawi or Javanese, merging Sanskrit influence with local linguistic rhythm.
These elements are not decorative. They are ritual semiotics—each encoding a mythic function. The dancer is a bricoleur-priest, whose role is to assemble cosmic fragments into dramatic totality.
Wayang Wong is not “theater”; it is cosmic diagram danced into reality.
Structural Oppositions: Order and Chaos, Human and Divine, Stillness and Motion
The mythic epics that inform Wayang Wong are structured around dualities:
Binary Opposition Choreographic Expression
Dharma / Adharma Deliberate, balanced motion for righteous characters vs. erratic, fast moves for demons
(cosmic law / disorder)
Heaven / Earth Gods glide; humans step heavily; demons stomp or twitch
Refinement / Rawness Dancers embodying nobles move smoothly, while villains are brash
(alus / kasar)
Masculine / Feminine Controlled vs. flowing gestures; complementary not competitive
Speech / Gesture Much of the performance is gestural; dialogue is stylized poetry
Lévi-Strauss emphasized that myths exist to structure these oppositions without resolving them. Wayang Wong places these tensions on stage, choreographically navigating them through stylized embodiment rather than debate.
The audience does not just witness myth. They are drawn into a ritual logic of suspended contradiction.
The Body as Structural Tool: Movement as Ontological Coding
Every movement in Wayang Wong is codified:
A raised palm may signify divine command.
A gliding step signals purity, while a wide stride may imply violence or chaos.
Eye movement (lirikan) is charged with intention, ranging from erotic tension to cosmic recognition.
These motions form a choreographic lexicon, where each dancer becomes a walking syntax of myth. As in Lévi-Strauss’s conception of the bricoleur, the dancer does not invent meaning—they recombine the inherited signs into a ritual articulation of universal struggle.
Wayang Wong and Temporality: The Eternal Epic in the Present
Performances of Wayang Wong often unfold over many hours, with cyclical musical themes, recurrent character entrances, and ritualized pacing. Time is not linear—it is mythical.
Lévi-Strauss sees myth as a structure that collapses time, making the past ever-present. In Wayang Wong:
A single gesture may echo millennia-old cosmologies.
Characters act not just in a story, but in a reenactment of cosmic cycles—a Yuga staged before the community.
The dancer enacts not a plot, but a structural recurrence. Every performance is a ritualized reanimation of dharma, and every gesture becomes a temporal loop, drawing now into forever.
Gamelan as Structural Pulse: Sonic Architecture of Myth
The Gamelan orchestra is integral:
Different instruments mark transitions in emotional tempo.
Percussion sets ritual rhythm, often signifying the inner state of characters.
The melodic cycles (gongan) structure the ritual time of the dance, much like mythic metrics in oral cultures.
Lévi-Strauss considered music to be a structural analog of myth—both are formal systems that resolve contradiction into aesthetic pattern. In Wayang Wong, music mirrors cosmic rhythm, binding body, myth, and audience into ritual harmony.
Event and Structure: Reperformance of Mythic Mandates
While every Wayang Wong performance may adapt to local needs or settings, its ritual form persists:
Characters reappear across performances.
Ethical dilemmas repeat (loyalty vs. betrayal, restraint vs. wrath).
Choreographic codes stay intact across generations.
Lévi-Strauss would call this the absorption of event into structure. A village may stage Wayang Wong for a wedding, a political anniversary, or spiritual celebration—but the myth enacted transcends the occasion, affirming structure over ephemerality.
Social Mapping: Courtly Ritual and Cosmic Hierarchy
Wayang Wong emerged in royal courts but filtered into villages, encoding:
Court ideals of poise, civility, and spiritual self-control,
Ethical guidance through example: Rama and Arjuna model dharma,
Cosmological hierarchy, with deities, humans, and demons arranged by symbolic gravity.
Lévi-Strauss would see this as totemic mapping—not of animals, but of character-archetypes. Wayang Wong does not reflect society—it creates society ritually, offering symbolic templates for ethical behavior.
Modernity and Continuity: Myth in a Postcolonial Frame
Today, Wayang Wong:
Faces pressures from mass media, tourism, and cultural hybridization.
Is staged in urban centers for national pride and foreign diplomacy.
Serves as both heritage performance and ritual re-assertion of identity.
Yet, as Lévi-Strauss would affirm, myth endures through structure. As long as the performance’s ritual logic, gestural grammar, and musical scaffolding survive, the dance remains mythic, regardless of venue.
Conclusion
From a Lévi-Straussian perspective, Wayang Wong is a total structure of mythical thinking: a choreographic cosmos in which gods, demons, and humans perform their symbolic roles across generations.
It is not just theater, nor dance alone. It is ritual structure embodied—a performance that renders myth tactile, resolving tension not through action but through form, gesture, music, and motion.
Each performance is a mirror of the universe, in which the audience sees not entertainment, but the eternal dance of oppositional harmonies—myth that glides, twirls, fights, and bows before the ever-turning wheel of dharma.