Gender, Representation, Experience: The Case of Village Performers in Java

This article explores how gender representations are deployed in anthropological analysis with reference to female performers (ledhek) in rural Java during the last decades of Suharto's New Order Indonesia (1966–1998). 1 It shows how the negative ascriptions given to ledheks were consistent with state promulgated gender ideologies in Indonesia, and explores the women's experiences in performances and everyday life. This different standpoint allows us to understand their dancing from the performers’ points of view, rather than from that of official state endorsed ideas of acceptable performance culture.