ABSTRACT
My earlier research on the classical Balinese dance-drama Arja (Kellar 2000) confirmed that the performing arts have an important and enduring role in Balinese society and lend expression to the specific socio-political issues and currents of each particular historical period. In this chapter, I show how the performing arts reflect changes occurring in Balinese society during the current period of national crisis and cultural transition. More specifically, I aim to substantiate the observations of other scholars of Balinese and Indonesian performance that the theatre is an important repository of the gender values of a particular period. In its engagement with contemporary gender concepts, the theatre is a key site of reproduction and confirmation for Indonesian society's cultural values and ideals. The theatre is also a site for the contesting of such values, however, and within it one may find innovative deviations from mainstream gender ideology—particularly so at a time of political crisis and cultural change.
