Dance, Music, and Theatre of Bali
Art is everywhere in Bali. From the intricate flower decorations in a Barong dancer's headdress, to elaborately carved temple facades and beautiful oil paintings. Bali's performing arts are also an integral part of Balinese culture. Music and dance play a huge part in significant rituals and religious ceremonies.
Known as " the Island of the Gods" hardly a day goes by without a ceremony or festival taking place. Traditional dances with full gamelan orchestras are performed for tourists daily in addition to the day to day religious ceremonies. Definitely worth seeing.
Dance, music, and the theatre of wayang are forms of expression laden with religious connotations. The Trance Dance, for example, is performed when a village is suffering, say from an epidemic or bad harvest. The dance is intended to appease the gods and goddesses, with the hope that they will bless the village. Other dances also
manifest the great complexity of Balinese daily lives which are never detached from their religious beliefs. Throughout the year, you can regularly find scheduled dance performances, especially the Balih-balihan or entertainment dances.
Dance
Along with the Hindu religion, the Indian influence in Balinese dances is also significant. Balinese strong identity adapts these various influences with indigenous religion of animism and folklore traditions, creating an expression distinctively flavored by Balinese ethnicity.
Much like the training of gamelan orchestra players, dance training begins when one is still very young. The teacher will stand in front of the children and start dancing. The children will follow her every movement. Once the teacher feels that a child understands the basic sequence, she will stand behind the child, and direct the
child by holding her wrists. Practicing with a gamelan orchestra will only happen when the dance is considered to have entered the student. The dancer must learn to fully express the character that she is dancing for; self expression is not a known concept.
Based on their religious functions, Balinese dances can be categorized into three:
1. Wali (sacred) Dances
These dances are considered sacred and must be performed in the inner courtyard of the temple.
Rejang
Danced by females, Rejang dance is a procession of those who have just barely learned to walk to those who can barely walk, moving in a slow and stately fashion towards the altar, twirling fans or lifting their sashes. Their costumes range from a very simple attire to an elaborate dress complete
with headdress as you would likely find in Tenganan.
Baris
Literally means warrior formation. Baris is a warrior dance usually danced by men. The movements are dramatic. It is hard to distinguish whether it is the dancer that follows the orchestra, or the other way around. You could say that they both go off into their own dimensions, yet at certain
well-defined times meet to create an astounding tapestry. The dancers wear elaborate head decoration, from a gold-colored head band to leaves and strings of cempaka blossoms. Variants of this dance are sometimes danced by children and women. You can find this dance performed in Sanur, Tabanan, and
Ubud.
Pendet
This dance is usually performed by married women, moving in very dignified and elegant way to carry and present offerings to the gods and the goddesses.
Sang Hyang Dedari (Trance Dance)
This dance is normally performed to entertain the gods and the goddesses to appease them or to ask for their blessings. A bad harvest or an outburst of an illness may warrant such a dance. The preparation for this dance may take months, as prepubescent girls who have never danced are trained to
relax their mind to be able to get into a trance state. Day after day they visit the priest at the local temple to receive their lessons. When the priest concludes that they are ready, and the time is right, the dance will be performed in the court of the temple. Dressed in elaborate attire and
immersed in the smoke of burning incense, the two young girls slowly dance as the accompanying chant of the village women gradually relax them to get into trance. The gods and the goddesses will enter their bodies as they enter trance, and they will dance with movements that they have not mastered
in their normal state. They may act and sound like a horse or a monkey; at times, they end up dancing while balancing their back on a piece of bamboo supported by two men on both ends. When they collapse, the village women will chant to ask the gods and the goddesses to peacefully leave the bodies
of the young girls. If they refuse, dancing will continue until they agree, at which point the girls will simply collapse.
Barong
Barong is probably the most well known dance. It is also another story-telling dance, narrating the fight between good and evil. This dance is the classic example of Balinese way of acting out mythology, resulting in myth and history being blended into one reality. The Barong is a triumphant
display of graceful movement and vibrant colour. The dance is basically a contest between the opposing forces of Rangda - chaos and destruction, and Barong - order.
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2. Bebali Dances
These dances are ceremonial, and usually performed in the middle court of a temple. In the spectrum of sacred and secular, these dances fall in the middle.
- Gambuh
Gambuh is a danced drama. It tells the courtly story of a Javanese prince in his quest for a beautiful princess.
3. Balih-balihan Dances
These dances are often considered secular and entertaining. They are performed in the outer court or even outside the temple. |
Janger
Janger is performed by young girls. Peacock crown shaped headwear made from intricately woven gold-colored, dried coconut leaves rests gallantly on their heads. The girls are open shouldered, dressed in a piece of cloth wrapped around the chest, and a batik wrap on the waist down. Most of the
dances are performed sitting down, with highly coordinated hand, shoulder, and eye movements.
Kebyar
Kebyar is usually danced by two women with beautiful, long, shiny black hair, accentuated at the top by a band of cempaka blossoms. Fans on one hand, they move dramatically. Feet are strongly grounded, and hands and feet move abruptly.
Legong
The dance of Legong tells a story. It is the most feminine dance. The Legong is a very difficult dance requiring great dexterity and is generally performed by young girls. The dance is choreographed to the finest detail, to a set pattern with no improvisation allowed. It is usually danced by two
females before they reach puberty.
Kecak
Kecak is a spectacular dance usually performed at night, surrounding a bonfire. Westerners called this dance The Monkey Dance, for the movements may remind us of a monkey's movements. The only music to accompany them are the beats of their palms hitting their chests, their thighs, or other parts of
their bodies, or their claps, rhythmically accompanied by shouting and chanting. The dancers move in unison, creating a spectacular choreographic performance. Either hands stretched out, pulled in, rested on the shoulder of the next person, or waists gyrated left and right, etc. The kecak is a
ritual dance which was created in the early 1930's for the movie "Island of the Demons" by the German painter and intellectual Walter Spies. The dance combines the chorus of the "Sanghyang" trance dance with a dance story from the epic "Ramayana." It is extremely impressive with its circular chorus
of sometimes over 100 bare-chested male singers surrounding the bonfire, led by a priest in the middle .
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Balinese Dancer |
Gamelan |
Wayang (shadow puppet) |
The Music of Bali
The music of Bali is extremely complex and vibrant. The original purpose of music here again is to serve religious beliefs, accompanying dances or wayang theaters. The traditional Balinese orchestra, known as gamelan, is composed of various forms of percussions, with notes overlapping and criss-crossing among the various kinds. There
is a number of string and woodwind instruments, but most of the players, which can range from a few to several dozen, sit behind various kinds of metalophones, gongs, and xylophones. Each gamelan has its own tuning, preventing instruments from being interchanged from one gamelan to another.
The music of Bali has inspired well known composers from all around the world. Bela Bartok titled his No.109 piece "From the island of Bali." It is also said that Debussy, after having met a Balinese musician and seen a Balinese orchestra performed in Europe, is very impressed and affected, and that much of his later works contain
distinct colors of Balinese music.
But Colin McPhee (1900-1964), a Montreal-born author and musician, was probably the one most affected as well as most influential in Balinese music. Story has it that his life-changing moment happened in New York, when he first encounter a vinyl of Balinese gamelan. He set sail, so to speak, to Bali, and immersed himself in learning
about and contributing to Balinese music. His compendium of Balinese music is an extremely well-researched collection of the various aspects of Balinese music. His Tabuh-tabuhan: toccata for orchestra won him the coveted Pulitzer Prize.
Tabuh-tabuhan is a collective noun that literally translates into a collection of percussion instrument - the Balinese gamelan. It consists of three movements: Ostinatos, Nocturne, and Finale. McPhee's nuclear gamelan consists of two pianos, celesta, xylophone, marimba, and glockenspiel, with special Balinese gongs and cymbals added
for certain sounds. Premiered in Mexico in 1936, this piece fuses Balinese motifs, melodies, and rhythms into a symphonic work. The signature of a Balinese flute melody inspires the Nocturne, unmistakably similar to what you can hear as you walk by the village temple today. The syncopated finale is kindred to the tapestry formed by the
village orchestra accompanying a popular dance.
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Balinese Wayang (Shadow Puppet) Theater
Wayang Kulit, is an Indonesian shadow puppet play, which uses intricately made and beautifully painted, gilded leather puppets. Although only the puppets' shadows are seen by the audience, the performances are fascinating. The stories told by shadows are often from the spirit world and are full of symbolism and
mysticism.
A single, highly skilled puppeteer controls hundreds of puppets; plays out the roles of different characters with a different voice for each character; and leads the traditional musicians. Wayang kulit plays can play for several hours or be several days long.
The wayang kulit or shadow puppet is the most prominent theatrical expressions in Bali. In a wayang kulit performance, flat cut-out figures are silhouetted against a translucent, white screen, with a coconut-husk lamp as its source of light. It is mostly expressions or enactments of religious mythology blended into one with
historical facts that will keep a Balinese entertained all night long.
These wayang figures are manipulated with rods by the puppeteer or dalang, who tells the story accompanied by a gamelan orchestra and occasional chanting or singing of a singer. gamelan can also accompany voices, Outside the theater, the dalang commands a high respect from his community, for he performs the job of an actor, a
teacher, a historian, and often a priest. The dalang is one mechanism that successfully passes culture and tradition from one generation to another.
While the night wayang performance is considered pure entertainment, there exists another variant that is purely religious. This religious wayang performance usually takes place in the broad day light, without the coconut-husk lamp. In place of the translucent screen, a piece of string is drawn to separate the dalang from the
audience, which may not even exist. This variant may be performed prior to a ngaben or cremation ceremony. |
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