With over 100 troupes on the island, dance is at the very center of
Balinese life and will probably be the most impressive thing you'll see
and remember. In all, there are over 200 kinds of dances, though only around
20 are performed regularly, many still religious and each a composite of
not only dance but drama, music, spoken poetry, opera, and song.
There are frog dances, monkey dances, bumblebee
dances, epic ballets, martial dances, dances for choosing a mate, and dances
to exorcize evil spirits. Dances are roughly divided into those of Hindu
origin and those of animist, Old Indonesian derivation, which are usually
performed in the innermost courtyard (jeroan) of the temple.
In the classical Hinduized dances, invariably
there's a princess to rescue or a kingdom to conquer. Some are danced only
by women, others only by men. Each is performed in many different styles,
depending on the locale and artistic influence.
For the most part, dance and dance-dramas have come down to us remarkably
well preserved because it's an art form zealously supported and well cultivated
by the community. Old plays, completely rearranged and with recast choreography,
are periodically revived by the Balinese and staged at the island-wide
Denpasar Arts Festival.
Although Westerners lament that Bali's arts
have suffered from the flood of tourism-not to mention TV, video, Hollywood
films, and B-grade kung-fu movies-the arrival of tourists has actually
preserved, fortified, and revitalized the island's performing arts. Again,
the Balinese have shown themselves to be dynamically resilient.
Religion and Dance
Over a thousand years ago Chinese and Indian pilgrims to Bali were
struck by the ritual and frenzy of the island's dances and celebrations.
They named the island Wali, a Sanskrit word meaning "religious festival."
In Balinese, the word wali is still
used to refer to stately row or circle dances offered to the gods as opposed
to balih-balihan dances which are performed as commercial entertainment
only. In the 20th century, visitors from Charlie Chaplin and Margaret Mead
to Mick Jagger and Antonin Arthaud have been transfixed by the island's
elaborate temple festivals put on to entertain the Hindu gods.
Because all Balinese dances were originally
religious in nature, a gift for the visiting gods, the Balinese have always
attached great importance to their dances. To this day no large cremation,
temple ceremony, wedding, or important social rite is complete without
a dance drama or wayang kulit performance. Certain dances are even
prohibited from being staged in public.
A fuzzy boundary is maintained between what
the Balinese do for themselves and what they do for visitors. In 1992,
Governor Ida Bagus Oka decreed that 11 sacred or wali dances may
no longer be performed in hotels or at the usual commercial dance venues.
This policy was a long time in coming: during President Reagan's 1986 visit,
the holy pendet welcoming dance was cut from a 10 minutes to a pathetic
two minutes at the request of the White House.
Dance and drama also serve as important mediums
through which centuries-old culture, history, values, notions of religious
piety, and even political philosophies flow to contemporary and future
generations. Before the opening of native Malay schools in the 1920s, theater
was the only way to transmit traditional values and knowledge, such as
the purpose of a village's three temples, the importance of carrying out
your parent's cremation, what happens if you don't meet your banjar
obligations.
Reference
The following books give valuable insights into Balinese dance and
drama: Dance and Drama in Bali, by Beryl de Zoete and Walter Spies;
Island of Bali, by Miguel Covarrubias; Music in Bali, by
Colin McPhee; Masks of Bali, by Judy Slattum, photos by Paul Schraub.
Publishers and short annotations for the books are listed in the Booklist.
History and Development
About 1,500 years ago, Indian influences began to make their way via
Java to Bali. Thus, the characters of the Hindu Mahabharata and Ramayana
epic poems are today the heroes and deities of Hinduized Balinese dancing,
and strong traces of 10th-century Tantric rites and magical sorcery as
well as several Indian mudra are found in several Balinese dances.
Since the mass infusion of the Javano-Hindu
culture into Bali that followed the Majapahit collapse, the Balinese have
created their own dances and characters. The clowns (bebanyolan),
for example, are a personification of the Balinese genius for assimilating
new influences without destroying the integrity of the old.
The first commercial tourist performances
were staged in 1928 at KPM's Bali Hotel in Denpasar and at the Kuta Beach
Hotel. In the 1930s, with the decline of the aristocratic houses, dancing
and musical instruments were taken over by the villages. As a result, dancing
became more dynamic, fast-moving, and enthralling. Nurtured by the stability
of the colonial period, musical activity in the villages flourished and
dance clubs proliferated.
In the early 1930s, the Peliatan legong
troupe was the first Balinese dance company to perform abroad. They were
feted in London and New York and played at the 1931 Exposition in Paris.
During the Japanese occupation (1942-45), Bali became a rest and recuperation
center for Japanese soldiers; the taste of the occupiers gave rise to such
dances as the prembon and wiranata, still occasionally staged
today.
Under the sponsorship of the nation-building
Sukarno regime, the dancers and musicians of Ubud-Peliatan were again dispatched
on a world circuit tour in the 1950s. Also in the 1950s, the same troupe
costarred with Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, and Dorothy Lamour in the very forgettable
Hollywood film Road to Bali.
Starting in 1967, with Suharto's New Order
regime reopening Bali's doors to foreigners, dances were staged at the
newly inaugerated Bali Beach Hotel in Sanur. By the late 1960s, the number
of foreign visitors had reached 30,000 per annum, and Bali was adopted
as a showcase for Indonesia's efforts to promote "cultural tourism."
This development of tourism undeniably stimulated
performing arts-a cultural renaissance. Even at this relatively early date,
Balinese dancing represented the island's trademark for outsiders and a
yardstick of artistic activity for the Balinese themselves.
Ever since the late '70s, Balinese dance
troupes have regularly made world tours, but the exoticism and spectacle
of a Balinese performance is no longer in itself sufficient to guarantee
spellbinding success with Western audiences, who have become increasingly
sophisticated over the years. According to the critics, a group of professionals
on tour in 1989 was deemed "perfunctory and devoid of all feeling,"
falling far short of the intoxicating presentations of the 1930s and '50s.
Characteristics of Balinese Dance
On Java dance is in large part the prerogative of the courts, but on
Bali it's a living, popular art form, most active in the villages. On Java
a fine classical dancer is frequently a member of the sultan's retinue.
On Bali, a dancer is an ordinary villager with unusual skill who performs
pleasingly before the gods-for community prestige, for the entertainment
of friends and family, and for tourists for money.
Balinese dance is much influenced by Javanese
dance movements, which are a mirror of the Javanese wayang kulit
theater in which all emotion is expressed through rigidly controlled gestures,
the eyes unfocused, the lips closed, and the face fixed and mask-like as
if the actor were a marionette. In both female and male dancing, the limbs
form angles with the head sinking down so far that the neck disappears.
At other times, the eyes flicker and dance.
In Balinese classical dance, all movements and limbs are very expressive-the
face, fingers, wrists, neck, eyes, hips, knee, feet, ankles. Unlike in
India, the majority of Balinese dance movements-a tilt of the head or twist
of the fingers-are decorative and do not carry any specific meaning.
The exceptions are the pronounced gestures
that convey anger or prayer; nose kissing, greetings, and impassioned speeches,
which have their inherent emotional meanings; or those that obviously represent
daily tasks, such as opening a curtain, holding a cloth, or weaving.
The names of a few basic gestures describe
an attached meaning in metaphorical terms. These gestures are often taken
from nature, usually from flowers or animals-a sudden whirl might be named
after a tiger defending himself, the flutter of hands after the flight
of a bird.
Sudden changes of direction and precise,
jerky accentuations mark Balinese choreography. Each basic posture (agem)
evolves into another posture through a succession of smaller, secondary
gestures (tandang). The transition from one series to another is
marked by short steps (angsel).
A typical posture is legs half bent, torso
shifted to one side, elbow raised and then lowered in a gesture displaying
the suppleness of the dancer's hands and fingers. The torso is always shifted
in opposition to the arms-if the arms are to the left, the shifting is
to the right, and vice versa.
In the celebrated, acrobatic sanghyang
dedari, entranced little girls perform acrobatic backbends (ngelayang)
that defy logic. Balinese dancing is nearly as preoccupied with the upper
half of the body as European dancing is with the lower half. In certain
dances, like the kebyar, the legs don't move at all.
The Balinese don't dance upward and away
from the earth, but move along its surface in slow, horizontal zigzagging
circles or in movements describing lines and rows. The leaps, runs, lifts,
and spins so familiar in Western ballet seldom appear in classical Balinese
dance. In fact, only demonic and bestial characters jump and move in a
broad and brusque manner. Noble characters move with refined gestures.
Balinese dance is subtle, drawing the audience
into the dancer's world. Simultaneously, it is blatantly erotic. Female
postures are characterized by bent legs held close together, open feet,
off-center shoulders, and spines curved to sensuously push out the buttocks.
A dance teacher can often be heard reminding her students to strike provocative
poses, "Tits and asses! Tits and asses!" she'll exclaim over
and over.
In men's dancing, legs are arched and shoulders
pulled up, with sharper gestures meant to give the impression of dynamic
power, reinforced by the male's strong, broad features. While women's dancing
is pure form, in men's dancing the content of the dance is more open to
interpretation.
In contemporary dance, women play numerous
male roles, for example, the prince Rama and Laksmana in the Ramayana story.
The easiest way to recognize masculine from feminine forms is by the costuming.
Male dancers or male impersonators have a short sarung or pants
down to the middle of the calves, with a long tongue handing down between
the legs.
Female dancers wear a long sarung,
the end of which often drags a meter or more on the dance floor. Women
have long hair while men wear crowns or headdresses. High, square-shaped
crowns are attributes of kings, claw-shaped crowns of princes, and the
lower-castes wear simple headdresses. Women wear flower crowns.
Although movement between dancers is highly
synchronized, rarely in traditional dance do two dancers come in contact
with each other. Mockery and stylized violence may, however, be shown on
the Balinese stage, though they would never be permitted in real life.
The complete lack of emotional expression
on the dancer's face can be likened to a state of trance, a frame of mind
which seems to render dancers immune to fatigue. Few show any trace of
exhaustion after dancing for hours on end.
Entranced dancers, considered to be in contact
with the spiritual world and thereby holy, are left free to express themselves,
always under the guidance of a temple priest and the protection of several
strong guardians, ready to intervene should the trance get out of hand.
The Balinese dance with a mesmerizing intensity,
as if they're always being startled. Like their music, Balinese dance is
abrupt, dramatic. All the excitement gives Balinese dance an air of spontaneity,
yet hides a mastery over a highly technical set of motions and a rigidly
stylized technique.
Precise directions are laid down for seledet
or nyledet, those quick eye flicks to the right and left, up and
down, which convey so much expression. Eyebrows often lift and eyeballs
roll sideways either slowly or extremely quickly. In the whole of Indonesia
such energetic eye movements appear only in Balinese dancing; without these
movements Balinese dancing would lose much of its allure.
Training
Dancing is a difficult science, requiring years of physical training
and practice. A strong cadre of professionals work in the dance academies
of Denpasar, but the vast majority of dancers arise from the community
at large. Every Balinese is a potential artist-a bricklayer or farmer by
day may transform into the glittering Rama for the kecak dance by
night.
The postures and movements of dance stem
from the work the Balinese do: they are just working gracefully and wearing
beautiful clothes when they dance! Men climb coconut trees with prehensile
toes, which you also see utilized in some dance steps. When a man carries
coconuts or cans on a pole, it is excellent training for male dance roles,
giving him rhythm and a breathing sense, enabling him to rise and fall
almost imperceptibly in dance.
On the street women carry offerings, jugs
of water, piles of bricks on their heads, flicking their eyes in the same
way as in dance to greet each other and to watch their step along the path.
Carrying everything on their heads gives Balinese women straight backs,
a sure, steady step, and extraordinary grace. Life becomes dance.
Children are first exposed to dance long
before they can walk. An astounding one-quarter of Bali's children learn
to dance, and about as many play a musical instrument. Prospective dancers
are chosen for their attractiveness, physical fitness and coordination,
or aptitude for a specific dance. A pupil always learns a particular dance,
such as legong, baris, or janger, but never dancing in general.
Especially sought after because of the suppleness of their limbs are very
young children. If a dancer is double-jointed, all the better.
A significant number of movements have to
be acquired at a very early age through long and arduous training, and
are impossible for the untrained. Little girls for the legong are
chosen from four- to five-year-olds, and famous dancers in Bali are reputed
to have been able to dance before they learned to walk. Many girls retire
at age 12 or 13, when they are considered full grown and too big and awkward
to dance.
Teachers, usually unpaid, are generally former
dancers of great repute who know every fine detail of certain dances. Some
pupils become so expert at such a young age that they begin teaching
dance at age fourteen. Choreographers are frequently also dancing masters
themselves. Teachers are often called upon to travel to different communities
to impart the finishing touches to a well-trained troupe.
The value of a dancer rests not only on the
boy's or girl's talent but also on personality, emotional intensity, and
the expressiveness of the face. Dancers must have fire, and it must come
from the eyes.
All members of the community-from toothless
old crones to Kuta cowboys-are astute dance critics, openly and publicly
evaluating a dancer's style, technique, and physical beauty. If a dancer
is not pretty-even though she might be a masterful dancer-she is pressured
into some other social pursuit.
Except for the sacred temple dances (rejang,
pendet), which are learned in performance, ceremonial and secular dancing
is taught by "osmosis." The master does not analyze or explain
individual movements, then string them together from start to finish. Instead,
he or she demonstrates for the pupils the whole dance, in its final form.
Mirrors-and nowadays video camcorders-are sometimes used.
The teacher then stands behind and guides
the movements of her pupils, forming and molding and prodding the dancers'
bodies, leading them vigorously by the wrists, adjusting a hand here and
a knee there, kneading an improperly tilted shoulder into place. Soon,
by sheer repetition, the student begins to gain confidence and the dance
"enters" him. Years later, famous dancers say they can still
feel their teacher's hands on their arms and shoulders.
Positions of hands and fingers are pivotal
criteria for judging the quality of a dancer; experts can tell immediately
who a dancer's teacher is by the complexity and suppleness of her little
finger. Balance is also all-important-rarely do you see a dancer trip or
stumble.
Along with training their visual memories,
the dancers must also learn the music to the point of being able to sing
it. The music guides the dancers; teachers are constantly reminding students
Dengar musik ("Listen to the music!"). When the teacher
exhausts her knowledge, she finds the student a new master, and another
until the child's talents reach their limits.
The Clowns (Bebanyolan)
No temple ceremony, wedding celebration, or dance-drama is complete
without a clown or two to liven up the performance. Just as the Javanese
venerate their clownish panakawan, the Balinese believe there is
a strong connection between the comic and the divine. The laughter is a
kind of offering, making the tales' morals more memorable. It also keeps
the classics from becoming too ossified.
The clowns and courtiers deal with themes
of topical interest and practical value. For example, to dispel some of
the tension generated by insensitive tourists, clowns have even invented
a caricature of a tourist. He is a disruptive, bad-mannered, wooden-nosed
buffoon wearing a ridiculous trenchcoat and galoshes, with a swinging camera
on his shoulder. Immensely popular, this character helps the Balinese preserve
their dignity.
By dramatizing and satirizing contemporary
problems and lampooning historical chronicles and heroes, these wily bands
of sacred merrymakers establish a continuity between past and present that
reassures the Balinese in their attempts to cope with a bewilderingly changing
world. As mass tourism and commercial development poise to destroy traditional
Bali, the clowns show the people how foolish they can be. All the laughter
and self-mockery serves as a catharsis.
For all these reasons, the Balinese clown
is looked upon not only as an entertainer but also as a highly respected
spiritual guide, filling a special role in Balinese and national culture.
Political parties use clowns to address prickly issues and woo voters.
During Balinese political rallies, opponents often mimic the clown's absurd,
singsong tonal alterations. In his wonderful book Subversive Laughter
(Free Press, 1994), the theater historian Ron Jenkins writes, "Claiming
the margin as center, the clown is the personification of cultural resistance."
Bebanyolan undergo rigorous physical
and intellectual training. From childhood they receive instruction in voice
and dance, as well as in the religious literature and historical chronicles
of the island. Their mastery of the old religious texts equals that of
Balinese priests. The clowns are master linguists as well as superlative
comedians, singing their parts in ancient Kawi, modern Indonesian, and
Balinese.
The bebanyolan improvisational skills
are masterful. Not having to adhere to a rigid script, they constantly
improvise, a fact that renders their verbal proficiency even more startling.
If the play is before a group of tourists, smart-alecky phrases in English
pepper the performance.
The clowns' talents can best be appreciated
viewing the masked topeng theater, a highly charged and still popular
wayang form on Bali. Royal characters speaking the higher literary
verse are usually accompanied by a comic servant speaking the commom idiom.
Except for a few expressions, most Balinese don't know the old language.
Consequently, the clowns play the same role of plot commentator as Shakespearean
fools do.
The clown, of course, falls prey to all the
temptations that the princely character spurns, and when he performs a
classical dance there is always something a little bit wrong or uncoordinated
with each gesture, all of which sends the audience into hysterics. Few
realize that this subtle burlesque requires a higher degree of technique
and muscular control than the proper dance.