Visual Takes on Dance in Java

This article addresses the questions of how performances have been represented in physical form (as verbal and visual texts) and of the role of indigenous concepts of performance. Rather than discuss historical examples of texts/products as others have done, I present some of my own "physical" forms of dance from my film and video work in Java. I argue that film is a valuable research tool as well as a mode of representing performance, with reference to the literature on the contribution of film/video to the development of cross-cultural understanding, in particular the writings of filmmaker David MacDougall (1995, 1997, and 1998).