Tai Chi? Kungfu? Chi Kung? Hmm. It is SOLAH TRI DJAGAT, if you mind.

(here photo of my father and mother in 195...., and photo grandfather in trance during a Balinese ceremony)

SOLAH TRI DJAGAT

These words come from Balinese tradition, as taught by my father (teacher, musician, sculptor, writer, sport-man, and my uncle was master in Pencak Silat, Indonesian martial art, and grand pa was monk/Pemangku in temple Panembahan Badung of King Pemecutan, Denpasar Bali)

Tai Chi, Chi Kung ? Not exactly. Silat, Tongkat (Stick)? Yes, but precisely: Solah Tri Djagat, is movement Tri Buana (three worlds of human being) : thought, emotion/ sound/ voice and body movement. Solah Tri Djagat is a body movement that contain brain activity, digestive organs involvement with their sound/voice expression.

Let us observe in elementarily detail what is in a movement.

A movement is a chain of successive postures, and each posture contain its meaning or its suggestion or its association or its propositions that the person may understood/ aware of it or do not. It is a way to cultivate poetical expression. The conscious and the subconscious are always present. Our awareness, as five senses are able to perceive them is our mirror of our consciousness. But beyond these five senses, there are the “sixth-sense” that could be called intuition, or animal intelligent, or “the incomprehensible things”.

To hear these “incomprehensible that animated a movement or action”, we must listen to the breath, the air manifestation of the energy, which could be heard if breath transforms itself into sound. The fine and sensitive friction of air with the vocal cords will transform breath into sound magically, we hear it, we feel it deeply in, so we can trace the centre of the sound /breath/ energy where it comes from. This point, or this centre corresponds to a certain “chakra” as the Indian names it. The sound that we hear, I call them “sacred syllable. A number of sacred syllable when they are pronounced cyclically, as the movement is done repeatedly, it produces a repetitive musical rhythm. This will give us another inner music in doing a movement, in dance Solah Tri Djagat. It may becomes a song, words of pray, sacred recitation, rapt song,

As we observe each posture that makes a movement, we may find some of them contain an expression of thought. So, this analytic examinant observation will give us a work on text expression. Text contains words. So, work on the text, is to understand well the meaning of each word, its nature to honour. So, this work open us how to honour the nature of “the things” that we use as instrument of expression. These “instruments” is somehow the prolongation of our member, it prolongs our consciousness, it becomes part or our member, to remember, to be aware of it, to take care, to honour. To give life to these sleeping words is to pronounce them with its proper energy, like feeding a baby, not to loud not to soft, to be just, to find also their proper emotion, otherwise if we give them to much energy or to much meaning words will “cry”. Have you heard word cry? It is weird. Hmm. Well. To reach a quality of a honourable act, actors of Tri Buana theatre of life must cultivate daily work, exercises that feed their vocabulary that is bank of experiences. Experiences are kept in memory to be transformed into language.. Awaken those memories in action, voice and thought expression there we are, movement Solah Tri Djagat, actors and actresses Tri Buana Theatre.
To be: dancer, actor singer and musician at the same time is the way.

Let me take you in a little tour to Bali, where I was born in 1945.
In Balinese word : pragina is actor-dancer, mesolah is to be in action in a situation, that is to act as an actor. A Balinese Topeng actor must be able to intertain children adult and old-wise people. The performance start around 22H00 in the night and can last until 4-5o clock in the morning, where chldren sit on earth, old people bring their own chair to sit, and young boys and girl stand around, it was one of the chance they can be in "touch" while seeing the "show". A show in Bali is often for the fulfillmen of a ceremony, religious ceremony for human, temple, spirit of dead people (cremation) as an offering. ritual is present in every act. Balinese believe in God the one and also gods and spirit, energy that animate tree, mountain, river, sacreed place where often we found there a temple, shrine as materialisation of energy of a spirit or god or goddes.

A movement is to be offered to the invisible and to be presented to the life (three life: human, animal, vegetal, or other three energy of life/spirit: human, god and demon, the life that created by divine sky and real earth/material)

The tri buana, the three spheres, 1: is the sky associated as light, information, idea; the 2: is material, mass, reality, earth that carry us and give material of life; 3: is the life as the wedding fruits of both the 1 and the 2.

The tri buanic energy can be transparent like vapor, can be liquid like water, can be firm like mass/ice, three forms of water, where life comes from, was initiated.

Solah Tri Djagat awaken the awareness of movement, sound/voice and breath the bridge to grasp idea.Let's say that the steam of the breath/energy/bayu/pnefma is idea/ logos, the invisible to guess, to realize.

Theatre make real/visible the invisible. The invisibility of this reality is a kind of spirit(gods or goddes or demons) that haunted human being with an eternal fight between like and dislike, this state of inner fight I call mental illness, or mental work, mental medetative work that can elevate human value if it was well done.....(article to be continued in next days coming………by TAPA SUDANA.)

(photo family I Gede Madera + his 13 children, 2 wifes: very left I and very right II)

I Gede Madera/father and I Gede Tapa Sudana the eldest child of the 13 children