"IT’S because you’re not Javanese”, he said with a smile of pity. “That’s why you don’t understand it….”

The performance had just ended. I was relieved. Frankly, I did not like the dance—a classical 17th century work that didn’t move me. Maybe that was why he (who was sitting beside me) concluded I “didn’t understand it”.

He (someone semi-fictive) is a European who lived in Solo for 20 years, speaks Javanese well, and i