Balinese Dances

With over 1000 troupes, dance is at the very center of the Balinese life. On Java dance is the prerogative of the courts, but on Bali it's most prevalent in the villages. The Balinese consider Javanese dancing boring, while Javanese think Balinese dancing noisy and vulgar. Dancers on Bali perform for the pleasure of the gods, prestige, and the entertainment of friends and family. Gambuh, wayang wong and topeng are dance drama, when legong is the classical dance of the princely court. Gambuh is the oldest known dance drama in Bali, it is inspired by the Javanese literature. Very few active village gambuh troupes remain. The wayang wong, is a drama where the dancers play the roles of the shadows puppets of the Javanese Wayang kulit. The players are masked and their movements follow the style of the shadow puppets. Topeng Dance Sacred masked theatre based on the literature of genealogical legends (babad); with wayang kulit, one of the traditional media of cultural instruction. A set of archetypal masks representing dynastic figures is danced in sequence, to the accompaniment of gamelan orchestra. The Vibrant Ritual These ceremonial dances anddramasdirect ly relate to religious ceremonies by serving as an offering, a prayer, or an exorcism of evil spirits. Presented with the active participation of the pemangku (the people's priest and caretaker of the village temple), they are a dramatic form of contact with.... Legong Keraton In legends, Legong is the heavenly dance of divine nymphs. Of all classical Balinese dances, it remains the quintessence of femininity and grace. Girls from the age of five aspire to be selected to represent the community as Legong dancers. Connoisseurs hold the dance in highest esteem and spend hours discussing themerits of various Legong groups. The most popular of Legongs is the Legong Kraton, Legong of the palace. Formerly, the dance was patronized by local rajas and held in e puri, residence of the royal family of.... Calonarang It may be the bewitching hour on the first night of the full moon, when long shadows spread like phantoms on the ground, that village crowds gather round a clearing near the temple of the dead to watch the drama of Calon Arang,... Barong And Rangda The Barong is the magical protector of Balinese villages. As "lord of the forest" with fantastic fanged mask and long mane, he is the opponent of Rangda the witch, who rules over the spirits of darkness, in the never ending fight between good and evil. During the Galungan Kuningan festivals, the Barong (there are many types, including barongket, barong macan, and barong bangkal) wanders from door to door (nglawang) cleansing the territory of evil influences. Janger The flute begins an eerie tune, and faraway voices chant a strange song that flows from a loud melody to a nearly inaudible high pitch. Two girl singers appear wearing splendid, floral crowns with multi-coiored spikes. They advance, allowing another pair to enter, until twelve girls have filed on stage. Slowly, they kneel opposite each other, cocking their heads and darting their eyes to accent the rhythm of the orchestra. Wayang Kulit This is a puppet show, usually performed in rituals ceremonies. The puppets is made out of a dried, engrave and graphicaly coloured Cow skin. It shape relates to its character. There are monster puppet that characterized a bad person and a good person will be presented with a goodlooking puppet. In every " Wayang Kulit " story it always tells the audience that a good person always win and the bad one will be loss.Traditional shadow -puppet theatre, generally based on the Mahabharata and Ramayana epics; performed late at night on ritual occasions for the pleasure of the gods and the moral and spiritual instruction of the community. The central player is the priest-puppeteer .... Sang Hyang Dance In the temple, two girls kneel before a brazier of smoking incense. The pemangku priest makes offerings to the deity of the temple, requesting protection for the village during the trance ceremony. Behind the girls are seated a group of women who chant the Sanghyang song, which asks the celestial nymphs to descendfrom heaven and dance before the people through the bodies of the girls: Arja is a Balinese form of theaterical combining dance ( known as OPERA by the international society ) with its indigenenous story ,singing and comedy. The characters speak with the highest Balinese' caste manner both in the dialogue and quoting poetry. What they say is then translated into day today Balinese common language by the clowns. Baris Dance Just as the Legong is essentially feminine, Baris, atraditional wardance, glorifies the man hood of the triumphant Balinese warrior. The word baris means a line orfile, in the sense of a line of.... Jauk Dance as a classical solo performance expressing the movements of a demon, Jauk is derived from a traditional play in which all the dancers, wearing frightening masks of the raksasa or demon type, enacted episodes from the Kawi versions of the Ramayana and Mahabharata. Like the dramatic Baris, the Jauk play was prefaced by.... Oleg Tamulilingan a modern dance choreographed by the late M ario in 1952, Oleg Tambulilingan has become a popular addition to the repertoire of dances included in a Legong performance. Originally, it was danced by only one girl and called Oleg, a general term meaning the swaying of a dancer. Later, a male part was added to make it a duet, and the dance gained a new theme depicting two bumblebees (tambulilingan) flirting in a garden. The female enters first. In light, quick .... Kecak Dance Contary to belief, the Kecak dance itself not particularly old. It was probably firsts performed in 1930. A The chorus is originated from a very ancient ritual of Sanghyang ( trance ) Dance, which is until today is still performing this ritual dance in some of the villages. During the Sanghyang, a person is in a state of trance, communicates with God or the acestors and convey his wishes to the people. ... Barong Landung On the island of Nusa Penida there lived an incestuous demon, Jero Gede Mecaling, the Tusked Giant. Once he came to Bali, followed by a horde of devils. He landed in South Bali in the form of a Barong and waited there while his henchmen went inland to destroy. The people grew alarmed and consulted a priest whotold them they must createanother Barong like Jero Gede Mecaling; that alone could scare away the demon. So they made a big Barong and succeeded in frightening the giant back to Nusa. Since then, the Barong has been used for driving away illness and evil spirits. Kebyar Duduk Like the Baris, the Kebyar is a soloexhibition dance, but of a more individualistic kind. The Baris portrays the movements of a generalized Balinese warrior. In Kebyar, the accent is upon thedancerhimself,who inter pretseverynuance of the music in powerful facial expressions and movement. Kebyar originated in North Bali around 1 920, but the .... Cupak Cupak, a boisterous man possessing a huge belly, is Baii's notorious glutton. Cupak's story, performed as a comic dance, is more like an epic drama: it has a kingdom, a mysterious forest and deep ocean; a villain, princess, witch and hero, disaster, resolution, and great joy. Pendet is the presentation of an offering in theform of a ritual dance. Unlike the exhibition dances that demand arduous training, Pendet may be danced by everyone: male and female pemangkus, women and girls of the village. It is taught simply by imitation and is seldom practiced in the banjars. Younger girls follow the movements of the elder women who recognize their responsibility in setting a good example. ... Kings and Comics In the following dramas, the accent is upon the unraveling of a story more than the heightened counterpoint between music and dance. The gamelan orchestra is always essential, but it is not as commanding as the development of p ot and the colorful spectrum of personalities included. Tales of passion, historical romances, love adventures, and military chivairyare popular themes of these dramas. The majority of the... Gambuh "There broods over Balinese dance an ancestral shade; every dance-form, one is often told, is ultimately derived from Gamboeh; all dance-technique originates in its movements, all scales and melodies from its peculiar gamelan..." Topeng Balinese Dance In 1938, Antonin Artaud described the dancers of Bali as "animated hieroglyphs." Today, their otherworldly gyrations continue to conjure up images of ancient mystery. Balinese performance overwhelms the spectator... Topeng: "Topeng Pajegan" In the ancient dance drama of Topeng, ancestral history, Bali Hindu religion, and satire of regional situations are combined with music, dance, song and mime to celebrate the heroes of the past and their relevance to the contemporary workaday world. Like other traditional... Traditional Balinese Orchestra Visitors to Bali almost always come away with the sounds of the unique and flamboyant 'gamelan' ringing in their ears. Something perhaps in the elaborate instruments - cast in bronze using centuries-old techniques and hand-fitted into elaborate-wood and Wayang Wong The heroes of the great Hindu epics, the "Ramayana" and "Mahabharata", have served as role models for the Balinese for many generations. In the Wayang Wong, the ancient stories of the Ramayana are converted to mask dramas enacting the battle between truth and justice and Drama Mask Dramas masks are used in four traditional Balinese Dramas and processions: the Topeng, which enacts stories from the times of the old Balinese kingdoms and establishes a link with the ancestor world; the Barong, which involves giant puppets and animals that serve as protective spirits enabling a village to ward off evil; the History of Balinese Dances After the Majapahit warriors subdued Ball in the 14th century, Javanese mini principalities and courts soon appeared everywhere, creating that unique blend of cour and peasant culture, which is Bali highly sophisticated, dynamic and lively. The accompanying narrative for dance and drama is to a large extent based on court stories from pre-Majapahit Java. Even the Indian epics, another favourite of the stage, especially the wayang, use Javanese, cornplete with long quotes from the ancient Javanese Kakawin poetry. So Javanese culture, which disappeared from Java following Click Details Balinese Music A tight interaction of melodic, rhythmic and textural components sustains the powerful orchestral gamelan music of Bali. The building blocks of the music share many traits with the larger social organization of Balinese villages, which provide a compelling setting for music that is an integral part of daily life. Click Details Gamelan Manikasanti It is the opening day of the temple feast, and the children have assembled at the house to carry their gamelan to the temple. I give them each a cloth of large black and white check for a headdress, which will mark them as a club, and they all proceed to pick bright red blossoms from the hibiscus shrubs and put them in their hair. They then take their instruments and go out in dignified single file, while I follow behind......Click Details