ABSTRACT
This chapter explores gendered genres of West Java. Men in West Java, by contrast, were generally prized for dramatic expertise in puppetry and mask dance. The chapter describes the contradiction between a gender-neutral performance ideology – which is beyond gender – and contrasts with actuality that, except in modern dance and theatre, in tradition women had the gender-defined space of bedaya or ronggeng. Ideologically the puppet and mask genres of West Java are gender-free. As in Western film, youth and sexual potency seemed more essential to the female performer than her male counterpart. Women play the sweet young thing and deliver subtle jokes about sexuality, as pasinden do. Female dancers playfully push off men as they try to grab a shoulder or touch a waist. Maintaining feminine behaviour in public limits the female range. The top traditional performer of wayang or topeng genres may be the male who can "do" the female perfectly.
