M. Soleh Adi Pramono is a choreographer, dhalang, dhalang ruwatan, guest lecturer and artistic director of the Mangun Dharma Art Center. His mission is to maintain the vibrancy of the traditional arts and local rituals by bringing them to the community at large. Where traditions have mostly disappeared throughout the rest of Java, Soleh maintains the traditions of making spiritual offerings at life-changing events such as weddings, circumcisions, 7-month ceremonies for unborn babies, touching the ground ceremonies, and community purifications.
"As far back as I can remember, my gramma used to drag me out of bed at night and take me with her to watch any show by any group that came to town. A lot of the performances we'd see were wayang kulit, and the sound would stay in my ears for a week afterwards. If we knew the performers I would go up and sit by the musicians, falling asleep at their feet; when we didn't, I stayed with my gramma and she fed me dry coffee and sugar to keep me awake, it was as good as candy. When I didn't go with her I would go out with my dad, a dhalang mocopat, or my uncle, a mask dance dhalang, or my grandfather, a dhalang wayang kulit. And as I got older, my friends and I would sneak into the itinerant theaters, knocked-up from bamboo, and peak up at the performers from below the bamboo stage. I remember spending more time watching shows and performing myself -- both as a dancer and a dhalang -- than actually attending school. When I did go to school I doodled wayang figures on my papers or worked on my versions of the wayang stories I'd learned at the theater where we performed, never really listening to my teachers. Somehow I made it through school and all the way to Yogyakarta where I fulfilled my dream of becoming a professional dancer. I wanted to learn about the arts in the 'center of the world,' that is central Java, so that I could return to Malang and rebuild the local arts here! With the birth of the Padepokan Seni Mangun Dharma, I fulfilled another dream: to give new life to the art center my grandfather built in 1915.
There is still nothing that fulfills me as much as performing wayang, especially with a challenging story like a ruwatan (ritual purification) which is very demanding spiritually. I fast and do a lot of preparation in advance of the actual show. It's in the ruwatan that I really feel I help people: often families can't afford to have the purification ritual all by themselves because it's very expensive. We give them the chance to join events at the padepokan and they are ritually purified: saved from the ogre Murwokolo who eats unlucky children. These people become my children, and I've got children all over the world now. Dhalang have historically been highly regarded and much in demand: they are considered to be akin to doctors and shamon and kyai (religious readers), but now dhalang have to work just to get gigs because of how much the audience has changed over the years: it has to be a 'show' now instead of something sacred."