Sukoharjo celebrates an anniversary with wayang kulit

Another all night wayang kulit performance in a town just outside Solo. Its considered a satellite city of Solo, so, its the suburbs of Solo. They are celebrating their anniversary. A young, very agile dalang was performing. At only 25 he is the son of a famous dalang and so is very respected at his young age not because he is the best dalang, but because he is actually one of the most agile and has the potential to be one of the best as he gains more life experience.
This performance had an unusual element, sponsorship. The performance was sponsored by the local government since it is the city's anniversary and partially sponsored by a bank whose banner was prominently placed. This is not common, I've been told, but when there is an issue that concerns some institution and it is in their interest to use the medium of wayang to disseminate some important information they will have the dalangs work their social message into their show. This night's issue of importance to the bank and the people is proliferate amount of counterfeit bills being produced and exchanged in Indonesia at the present moment. Another message that has been sponsored by government is family planning.
So this dalang was amazingly agile with the puppets. He was doing the move that I learned with Pak Sri Joko, the cancud, with one hand and two puppets at the same time and with such grace and crisp movements. It was quite outstanding. And the fight scenes were stupendous. Puppets were flying and flipping over each other. He was flicking them and making them flip by throwing them and catching them. He was basically juggling puppets (kind of like juggling knives) while they are flipping and making sound effects. It was like a choreographed kung-fu film. And they were funny too. The puppets would make these huffing sounds, groaning and grunting. The puppets really look like they grab each other and ram heads into the ground or punch them so hard they flip backwards. They have a slew of weapons and clunk each other with them, each one having specific sound effects and the puppets would switch alternate switching weapons. One came out with a club, the other took it away, smashes him with it, the other one then so quickly now has a spear, they go at each other and in a second the other one now has another weapon and they switch back and forth getting more powerful weapons to use against each other until the last one the good guy (I believe Arjuna's son) has a machete and slices the other guys head off.
We didn't stay until the end. We left at around 2am after the battle scene. After that it slows down and we were a bit aways from Solo and getting a cab at 3 or 4am isn't so easy around here.