L'arte del Jatilan, nella Java del XXI secolo

Abstract

The study of the Jatilan ritual, carried out between 2015 and 2018 on the island of Java, transcribes the choreography, dynamics and symbolic positions of the body dancers when they are offered to the public. Jatilan is an animist rite of which we have not yet traced its historical origins. This dance is conducted by elderly and by young spirit experts: the pawang. Dancers and pawang, present an ancient art form, through the movements of the bodies possessed by the spirits of the dead, by the spirits of the forest and by the spirits of animals. The body and the spirits invited into the bamboo enclosure, manifest paradoxical coexistences, where the body-medium becomes sacred as a manifestation of hierophany. By weaving chronologies pervaded by silent partitions, these dances draw in the space phenomenologies of immortality, thanks to the intentions and negotiations of the dance and its bodies.