It was a dark and quiet night. We were seated in a large circle on cemented ground somewhere in the paddy fields of Sekinchan in Selangor, Malaysia. In front of us lay flat wooden horses awaiting their dance partners to pick them up and get the show going. It wasn't long before the sounds of "dings" and "dongs" started filling the warm air of this tropical Malaysian night; sounds created by the musicians or rather percussionists hitting on their musical ensembles, marking the start of the performance that we have been patiently waiting for.
Shortly after, out came the leader of the troupe, a shaman who started doing some rituals to open the doors between our world and that of the spirits. Suddenly the warm air turned cool with temperatures slowly dropping and the dancers picked up the flat wooden horses starting off the show. Holding their flat wooden horses against their bodies they danced in circles following the lead of a princess that rides on a white flat wooden horse. Along with these dancers are three friends from our group who volunteered to take part in the dance not knowing what was to come.
Suddenly a few of the dancers gave out loud screams, dropped their flat wooden horses and masks on the ground. The air went from cool to cold in matter of milliseconds and it was now that the performance took a nightmarish turn. Dancers started acting out the roles of their mask and horses taking on the personalities of their dancing tools.
It is all just a performance right? A show put on for us, the media folks who so wanted to learn about the Javanese culture and traditional dances brought over by Javanese folks decades ago; right? I will let you think so for now as I go on.
Things got really weird as some of the possessed dancers started doing things that humans usually do not do. One of the boy dancers started biting the husk off an unopen coconut the way a monkey does. Another dancer started slithering on the ground like a snake. Those who took on the personalities of the horses continued galloping in circles; strangely all of them in perfect rhythm.
Not long later things took to a slightly violent turn. Someone then reassured us that as long as we do not go into the circle we will be okay. The shaman has created an unseen fence in front of us surrounding the dancers and the spirits will not be able to cross over it. Feeling reassured we continue watching the show as some of us went around shooting photos.
If you are thinking that nothing worse could possibly happen, well, wrong. Suddenly the shaman who was trying to contain the spirits by removing them from some of the possessed who have gone a little too weird, gave out a scream too. Just what we needed; the one who is supposedly in control is now himself possessed and in a trance.
Now, dancers in their animalistic personalities started breaking out of the circle and they started "running" up trees. Two of them actually; one a tiger and the other, a bird (the shaman). There goes the assurance of the unseen safety fence. I quickly shot as many photos as I could from below taking precaution just in case they started throwing coconuts at us.
Without any unforseen incidents the shaman came down from the tree and still had the ability to contain the spirits although in a trance like state. He managed to remove a few spirits before being possessed by another spirit, this time an elephant. Makes "perfect" sense. Here's why. He tried removing the spirit of a tiger from one of the dancers and failed. A stronger animal that would have a chance against the tiger would be an elephant.
