Reyog: More Than Art. Identity Construction in an East Javanese Regency, Ponorogo, Indonesia

263 p.Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1999.The title for this paper comes from a series of bumper stickers produced by Ponorogo residents to advertise and make claim to the reyog performance. As implied, reyog, for the Ponorogoans at least is more than art. Reyog for the Ponorogoans is about life, about religion, politics, economics; it is who they are. Reyog for the Ponorogoans is a means of strengthening or reducing their position within the nation-state through the choice of symbols that toy choose to manipulate and narratives they choose to tell.Through consideration of the (1) attitudes toward reyog and Ponorogoans, (2) characters in reyog legends, (3) local narratives on space, place, and time, and (4) use of indigenous videos I explore how reyog performances are a means of identity construction. I posit that, the dash between "official" and "unofficial" accounts of reyog provides a space in which Ponorogoans work out tensions between pro- and anti-government sentiments and assert or downplay their relation to the government.*Dissertation includes an audio CD-ROM.U of I OnlyRestricted to the U of I community idenfinitely during batch ingest of legacy ETD