Dances Invite the God part 4

Tari Sanghyang ( Trance Dances )

           The state of trance lies at the very heart of traditional Balinese dance. In order to maintain the health of the village, the god is periodically invited down in the temple arena to help in the exorcism of evil and sickness-inducing spirits. When the deities descend, they reveal themselves by possessing certain people and using them as their medium. Sometimes the deities communicate in verbal form, which may or may not have to be interpreted by the priests, and sometimes the whole physical being is taken over and the devotee is moved to dance or to perform astonishing physical feats. The chosen medium is put into a trance state through a combination of special priestly chants and protective mantras, intoned exhortations by the Capella choir, and great clouds of pungent incense wafted heavenwards to attract the god attention. Trance dances are traditionally only performed when the village is suffering from particularly bad about sickness or bad weather - the versions that are reproduced at tourist shows have none of the dynamism of the real thing. Though it is said that performers do sometimes slip into trance even then.

          One of the most common trance dances is the Sangyang Dedari ( angel Deity ), which is widely believed to have been the inspiration for the popular courtly dance the legong. In the Sanghyang dedari, the deities possess two young girls who perform a complicated duet with their eyes closed and, in part, while seated on the shoulders of two male villagers. Although they have never learn the actual step, the duo almost in variably performs its movements in tandem  and sometimes continues for up to fours hours. when they finally drop to the floor exhaustion, the priest wakes them gently by sprinkling holy water over them. In the Sanghyang Dedari performed at tourist shows, however, the girls have almost certainly rehearsed the dance beforehand and probably  do not enter a trance state at all. They wear the same tightly bound green and gold sarongs as the legong dancers, and dance to the haunting backing vocals of an a Capella chorus of men and women.

         In the Sanghyang Jaran ( Horse Deity ) one or more men are put into a trance state while the temple floor is lettered with burning coconut husks. as they enter the trance, the men grab hold of wooden hobbyhorse sticks and then gallop frantically back and forth across the red hot embers as if they were on real horses. The all male kecak chorus fuels the drama with excited a Cappela crescendos untill, finally, the exhausted hobbyhorse riders are awoken by the priest.

TOPENG : MASK DANCES

          In the topeng or mask dance the performer is possessed by the spirit of the mask. Balinese masks are extremely sacred object, carved and painted with great reverence to the gods and spirits. Before every entrance, the topeng actor sprinkles holy water on his mask and recites a mantra. Women never participate in topeng. Female roles are played by men, and most actors play several characters in each drama.

          The storyline of most topeng dramas are much more important than in most other Balinese Dance-Dramas. They usually center around popular folk tales or well known episodes from history, and every character wears a mask which makes him or her immediately recognizable. Refined and noble characters always wear full masks, usually painted white with almond-shaped eyes, and thick black eyebrows for the men. They communicate with elegant gestures of the hands, arms and head ( speaking is impossible because of the mask ), and move with rather grand, often swaggering bravado. A royal servant always acts as a narrator figure, speaking on behalf of the voiceless nobles, and he, like the coarser characters, the clowns and the servants, wears a half mask and baggy shapeless clothing in which to roll about the floor and engage in comic antics.

           One of the most popular mask dances is the topeng tua, a solo performance by the character of an old man, a retired first minister, who recalls his time in the king's service. The mask is always shrouded in straggly white hair and beard, and the actor hobbles about with shaky legs and wavering fingers. Another classic tourist topeng is the frog dance - performed to the gloriously evocative music of the Balinese Jew's sharp or Genggong - which tells how frog turns into a prince. The Jauk is a masked dance of a slightly different nature, in which the solo dancer portrays a terrifying demon - king. His red and white mask has huge bulging eyes, horribly goofy smile and a thick black mustache, and his hands are crowned with foot - long fingernails which flashes menacingly throughout the dance. To the clashing strains of the full-blown gamelan who take leaps mischievously about the stage as if darting from behind trees and pouncing on unsuspecting villagers.



Keyword :
Sanghyang Jaran Dance, Sanghyang Dedari Dance, Balinese trance Dance, Spectacular Balinese performance, Topeng Dance, Balinese Frog Dance, Topeng Tua, a solo mask performance, Genggong Music, Jauk Dance

Dances Invite the God part 3

           A great wave of artistic experimentation hit Bali in the 1920s, particularly in north Bali, where a group of young musicians started playing around with the traditional gamelan form. They came up with a vibrant and much brasher type of music, which they named Kebyar. The new sounds  soon struck chords with musicians in the south as well, and by 1925 had also inspired the talented young dancer, Mario, to choreograph a new piece. He performed this dance while seated on the ground and so called it Kebyar duduk ( seated kebyar ). It's a stunningly camp piece of theater, starring just one man, who alternately flirts with the gamelan, plays the kettle gongs ( Trompong ) that are placed in front of him, and flutters his fan in beguiling self-dramatization. Some year later, slightly different version of this dance was invented, the kebyar trompong,  in which the dancer sits and plays the trompong for only part of the performance, in between mincing coquettishly about the stage and making eyes at the audience.

KECAK DANCE

          Sometimes called the monkey dance after the animals represented by chorus, the kecak gets its Balinese name from the hypnotic chattering sounds made by the Capella choir. Chanting nothing more than " cak cak cak ", the chorus of fifty or more men use seven different rhythms to create the astonishing music that accompanies the drama. Bare-chested, and wearing lengths of black and white check kain poleng cloth around their waists and a single red hibiscus behind the ear, the men sit cross-legged in five or six tight concentric circles, occasionally swaying or waving arms and clapping hands in unison. The narrative itself is taken from a core episode of Ramayana, centering around the kidnap of Sita by the demon king Rawana, and is acted out in the middle of the chorus circle, with one or two narrators speaking for all the characters. 

Unlike nearly all other Balinese dances, the kecak has no ritualistic purpose and was in fact invented by a foreigner in the 1930s. When the German artist and musician Walter Spies was commissioned by a film director to put together a Balinese spectacle for the movie, The Island of Demons, he and his collaborator, Katharane Mershon, came up with the Kecak, drawing inspiration from the Sanghyang trance dances, in which the chorus chants the " Cak ....Cak...Cak " syncopation as part of the trance - including ritual.

LEGONG 

Undoubtedly the most refined of all the temple dances, the quintessentially Balinese Legong is rather an acquired taste, which can seem tiresome to the uninitiated because of its restrained movement and lack of dramatic narrative. Its beauty is all in the intricate weaving of arms, fingers, torsos and head. The legong is always performed by three pre-pubescent girls who are bound tightly in sarongs and chest cloths of opulent green or pink, with gilded crowns filled with frangifani blossoms on their heads. When village elders and former dancers are selecting aspiring legong dancers, They look not only for agility and vitality, but also for grace and poise, as the spirit of the legong is considered the acme of Balinese femininity. As a result, Legong dancers have always enjoyed a special status in their village, a reputation that endures long after they retire at the the onset of menstruation. In the past, many a legong dancer has ended up as a raja's wife or latterly, as an expatriate artist's muse and subsequent partner. 

The dance itself has evolved from a highly sacred sanghyang trance dance and take several different forms.By far the most common is the legong keraton ( dance of the court ), based on a classical twelfth-century tale from Java. It told the story of King Laksem, who is holding a princess, Rangkesari, captive against her will. Rescue is on the way in the form of Prince Daha, who plans to wage battle against King Laksem. The princess tries to dissuade the king from going to war, encouraging him to set her free instead of risking lives, but the king is adamant and setts off. As he leaves, he is attacked by a raven, an extremely bad omen, after which he duly loses the battle and is killed.

The performance begins with a solo dance by a court lady, known as the condong ( dressed in pink and gold ). She picks up two fans from the ground in anticipation of arrival of the two legong ( literally "dancer" ). Dressed identically in bright green and gold, the two legong enact the story, adopting and swapping characters with no obvious warning. The condong always returns as the raven, with pink wings attached to her costume. The final fatal battle is never shown on stage.

TAG
Taditional Gamelan, Kebyar duduk, Mario, Kebyar Trompong, Kecak DanceMongkey Dance, cak cak cak, Kain Poleng, Ramayana Dance, Balinese Dance, Sanghyang Dance,Balinese Legong,Legong Keraton

Dances Invite the God part 2

           Featuring the most spectacular costumes of all the Balinese dances, The Barong-Rangda Dramas are also among the most sacred and most important. Essentially a dramatization of the eternal conflict between the forces of good and evil, the dramas can take a variety of forms but nearly always serve as ritualized exorcisms.

The Mythical widow-witch character of Rangda represents the forces of evil, and her costume and mask present a duly frightening spectacle. The Barong Ket cuts a much more love-able figure, a shaggy - haired creature with a bug-eyed expression and mischievous grin on his masked face, something like a cross between pantomime horse and Chinese dragon. The Barong Ket ( lion ) is by far the most common persona adopted by this mythical creature, but you might also see Barong Macan ( tiger ), Barong Bangkal (Wild Boar ) and Barong Celeng ( pig ). All Rangda  and Barong masks are invested with great sacred power and need to be treated with due respect and awe. When not in use, the masks are kept wrapped in magic cloth and stored in the temple.

          Barong - Rangda dramas can be self-contained as in the Calonarang or they can apper as just one symbolic episode in the middle of a well - known story like the Mahabarata. Whatever the occasion, the format tends to be fairly similar. Rangda is always called upon by a character who determines to cause harm to a person, a family or a village ( unrequited love is a very common cause ). She generally sends a minion to wage the first battles, and is then forced to appear herself when the opposition calls in the Barong, the defender of the good. In this final confrontation, the Barong enters first, occasionally joined by a monkey who teases him and plays tricks. Suddenly Rangda appears, fingernails first, from behind the central gateway. Flashing her white magic cloth, she harasses the Barong, stalking him at every turn. When the Barong looks to be on his last legs, a group of village men rush in to his rescue, but are entranced by Rangda's Magic and stab themselves instead of her. A priest quickly enters before any real injury is inflicted. The series of confrontations continues, and  the drama ends in stalemate: the forces of good and evil remain as strong and vital as ever, ready to clash again in the next bout.

The Story of Calonarang is basically an embellished version of Barong - Rangda conflict, grafted on to an ancient legend about the daughter of a witch queen whom no one will marry because they're scared of her mother. The witch queen Calonarang is a manifestation of Rangda who, furious at the lack of suitors for her daughter, demands that her followers wreak destruction in all of the villages. This drama is acted out on a regular basis, whenever there are considered to be evil forces and impurities affecting the community, and sometimes the whole neighborhood take part, the men parading with hand-held kulkul drums and the women filing in to make offerings at the temple shrines.

          There's also an unusual human version of Barong, called Barong Landung ( Literally "tall Barong ) These are huge puppets, one male and one female, each one operated by a single performer. The male puppet looks forbidding, his masked face is black and he has a fanged mouth and grimacing features. As a representation of the legendary Jero Gede, a giant from Nusa Penida who brought disease and misfortune to Bali, this enormous figure is also meant to scare away any similar giants. Jero Gede is always accompanied by a far sweeter looking female puppet, known as Jero Luh, who wears a white mask with a smiling face and faintly Chinese eyes. Together they act out a bawdy comic opera which has exorcist purposes as well

DANCES INVITE THE GOD

Barong - Rangda Dances

           

         Most Balinese dance-dramas have evolved from sacred rituals, and are still performed at religious events, with full attention given to the offertory and devotional aspects. Before the show begins, a pemangku ( village priest ) will always bless the players and the performance area with sprinklings of holy water, and many performances open with a pendet or welcome dance intended for the gods. The exorcist Barong -  Rangda dramas continue to play a vital function in the spiritual practices of every village and the baris dance reenacts the traditional offering up of weapons by village warriors to the gods to invest them with supernatural power. Some of the more secular dance-dramas tell ancient and legendary stories, many of them adapted from the epic Hindu morality tales, the Ramayana and the Mahabarata, that came from India more than a thousand years ago. Others are based on historical events, embellishing the romances and battles that characterized the royal courts of Java and Bali between the tenth and the fourteenth centuries.
           With the advent of mass tourism however, it's becoming less and less easy to see a traditional performance staged in its natural environment, at a temple festival or village event for example, rather than as a commercial performance. Nonetheless, some of the tourist shows are very good, performed by expert local troupes with traditional finesse.
           There are few professional dancers in Bali; most performers spend their days working in the fields or in shops, donning costumers and make-up only at festival times or for the regular tourist shows. Almost every Balinese boy and girl is taught to dance - small boys learn the most adept are then chosen to perform at community function, as part of the established local troupe. Dancers learn by imitation and repetition, the instructor often holding the pupil against his or her body and manipulating limbs until the exact angles and tensions are reproduced to perfection. Personal expression has no place in the Balinese theater, but the skillful execution of traditional moves is always much admired and trained dancers enjoy a high status within the village.
           Female dancers keep their feet firmly planted on the ground their legs and hips encased in restrictive sarongs that give them a distinctive forward-angled posture. They express themselves through a vocabulary of controlled angular movement of the arms, the wrists, the fingers, the neck and, most beguilingly, the eyes. Each pose and gesture derives from a movement observed in the natural rather than the human world. Thus a certain type of flutter of the hand may be a bird in flight, a vigorous rotation of the forearms the shaking of water from an animal's coat. Dressed in pantaloons or hitched-up sarongs, the male dancers are much more energetic, and whirl about a lot, emphasizing their manliness by opening shoulders and limbs outwards, keeping their knees bent and their heads high.
         Most dramas are performed in superb natural settings, either within a temple compound, or in the outer courtyard of a noble family's palace. Because the stories are so familiar to the islanders, the costumes and masks give immediate clues to the identity of each character-and to the action which is to follow. Some dramas are performed in a combination of contemporary Bahasa Bali and the ancient poetic Language known as Kawi, while others stick to modern speech - perhaps with a few humorous English phrases thrown in for the tourists.
          Although most of the dances and nearly all the dances and nearly all the dance movements have long-established histories and traditions, Balinese dance is by no means a dead or stultified art form. In the last fifty years the repertoire has expanded quite considerably, not least because of the efforts of the island's most famous performer, the late I Ketut Mario, this superb dancer was also highly imaginative choreographer, adapting old forms to suit the modern mood, and most famously to fit the modern gamelan style, known as kebyar, in the 1920s. Thirty years later, he was commissioned by a British entrepreneur to create a new " boy-meets-girl" dance - The resukting piece was the oleg tambulilingan or bumblebee dance.

 Oleg Tambulilingan Dance

BARIS DANCE

Baris Tombak Dance

             The baris or warrior dance can be performed either as a solo or in a group of five or more, and either by a young woman, or more commonly a young man. Strutting on stage with knees and feet turned out, his centre of gravity kept low, the baris cuts an impressive figure in  a gilded brocade cloak of ribboned pennants which which fly out dramatically at every turn. In his performance, he enacts a young warrior's preparation for battle, goading himself into courageous mood, trying out his martial skills, showing pride at his calling and then expressing a whole series of emotions - ferocity, passion, tenderness, rage - much of it through the arresting movements of his eyes.

            Traditionally, the solo baris has always improvised a lot, leading the gamelan rather than following it. In its original sacred form, known as the baris gede, this was a devotional dance in which soldiers dedicated themselves and their weapons to the gods. ( To be continued.... ) 

(See all Museums & Collections Books)

BALINESE BELIEF

Over ninety-three percent of Balinese Are Hindus, and religious activity permeates almost every aspect of island life. In the morning, the pavements doorsteps and shop fronts of every town and village are graced with fresh little palm leaf offerings laid down for the gods and spirits who need 24 hours propitiation; in the afternoon, processions of men and women parade the streets en route to temple celebrations, towers of offertory fruit and rice cakes balanced on their heads. This one of the description when there is holiday and temple festival in Bali.
        At the root of agama Hindu lies the fundamental understanding that the world-both natural and supernatural is composed of opposing forces. These can be defines as good and evil, positive and negative, pure and impure, order and disorder, gods and demons, or as a mixture of all these things - but the crucial fact is that the forces need to be balanced. The desire to achieve equilibrium and harmony in all things dictates every spiritual activity. Positive forces, or Dharma, are represented by the gods ( dewa and Bhatara ), and need to be cultivated, entertained and honored - with offerings of food, water and flowers, with dances, beautiful paintings and sculptures, fine earthly abodes ( temples )and ministrations from ceremonially clad devotees. The malevolent forces, adharma, which manifest themselves as earth demons ( Bhuta, kala )and cause sickness, death and volcanic eruptions, need to be neutralized with elaborate rituals and special offerings.
      To ensure that malevolent forces never take the upper hand, elaborate purification rituals are undertaken for exorcism of spirits. Crucial to this is the notion of ritual uncleanes  ( sebel ), a state which can affect an individual ( during a woman's period for example, or after a serious illness ), a family ( after the death of a close relative, or if twins are born), or even a whole community ( a plague of rats in village rice-fields, or a fire in village buildings.) The island  can even become sebel, and island-wide exorcisms are held every new year (Next Nyepi celebration will be held on 21st March 2015) to restore the spiritual health of Bali and all its people. More elaborate island cleansing rituals are performed every five, ten and twenty-five years, climaxing with the centennial Eka Dasa Rudra rite, which is held at the holiest temple, Besakih. In addition, there are all sorts of purification rituals ( yadnya ) that a Balinese must go through at various significant stages in their life.
      The focus of every purification ritual is the ministering of holy water - such an essential part of the religion that agama Hindu is sometimes known as agama tirta, the religion of holy water. Ordinary well ar tap water can be transformed into holy water by a pedanda  ( high priest ), but water from certain sources is considered to be particularly sacred - the springs at Tirta Empul in Tampaksiring and on Gunung Agung, for example, and the water taken from the lakeside Pura Danu Batur.
      As the main sources of these life-giving waters, Bali's three great mountains are also worshiped: The highest, and the holiest, of the three is Gunung Agung, associated with the sun god Surya, and site of Bali's most sacred mother temple, Besakih; Gunung Batur and Gunung Batukaru also hold great spiritual power, as do the lakes that fill their volcanic craters. From this concept comes comes the Balinese sense of direction and spatial orientation, whereby all things, such as temples, houses, and villages, are aligned in relation to the mountain, upstream, and is the holiest direction; kelod is the downstream direction, the part is closest to the sea and therefore impure.
      Finally, there are the notions of karma, reincarnation, and the attaining of enlightenment. The aim of every Hindu is to attain enlightenment ( moksa ), which brings with it the union of the individual and the divine, and liberation from the endless painful cycle of death and rebirth. Moksa is only attainable by pure souls, and this can take hundreds of lifetimes to attain. Hindus believes that everybody is reincarnated according to their karma, karma being a kind of account book which registers all the good and bad deeds performed in the past lives of a soul. Karma is closely bound up with caste and notion that an individual should accept rather than challenge their destiny.

BALI TEMPLE FESTIVALS

Aside from the daily propitiation of the household spirits, Agama Hindu requires no regular act of collective worship from its devotees - no daily mass or weekly service - and so, for much of the year, Bali's temples  remain deserted, visited only by the village pemangku and perhaps the occasion of the temple's anniversary celebrations, or odalan - a three day devotional extravaganza held at every temple either once every 210 days ( every210 days ( every Balinese calendar years ) or every 365 days ( the saka year ). With a minimum of three temples gracing every sizeable community in Bali, any visitors who spends more than a week on the island will be certain to see some kind of festival. Most temples welcome tourists to the celebrations, provided they dress respectably and wear the temple sash and that they don't walk in front of devotees as they are praying. For details on the major island wide temple festivals of Nyepi and Galungan, Kuningan. Although the majority of the other rituals - birth celebrations, toothfilling, mariage and death - that punctuate every Balinese Hindu's life also have strong religious ramiflications, most of these are conducted within the confines of the family's own compound, and are described in here

           The larger, ealthier and more important the temple, the more dramatic the odalan celebration will be. Whatever the size, the purpose is always the same: to invite the gods down to earth so that they can be entertained and pampered by as many displays of devotion and gratitude as the community can afford. in the days before odalan, the pemangku dresses the temple statues in holy cloths, either the spiritually charged black and white kain poleng, or a length of plain cloth in the colour symbolic of the community begin to contruct their offering towers, or banten, and to cook ceremonial food.

          Odalan celebration start in the afternoon, with a prossesion of women carrying their offerings to the temple. At the pura, the offerings are taken into the inner sanctum where the pemangku receives them and then blesses the devotees with holy water.Sometimes the gods will temporarily inhabit the body of one of the worshipers, sending him or her into a trance and conveying its message trough gestures or words. Elsewhere in the temple compound, there's generally some performance going on: the local gamelan orchestra play, and often sacred dances are performed as well, particularly the pendet or offertory dance and perhaps a barong as well.

BALINESE CREMATION

The ceremony that visitors to Bali are most likely to witness is cremation ( pengabenan or palebon ). The Balinese believe that the soul of each person inhabits a temporary receptacle, the body, during each life on earth. Following death, this body must be returned to the five elements of solid, liquid, energy, radiance and ether to become ready for reincarnation. The lengthy and complex rituals, the magnificent objects and the spectacular burning itself make this the most picturesque manifestation of religious observance on the island.
           Following death, the body is usually buried, sometimes for years, while the elaborate preparations for the cremation are made. Now days trend,  families will often share in the cremation ceremonies of other families in one banjar. The entire extended family and banjar is involved in building temporary shelters for shrines and preparing offerings. Animals must be slaughtered, holy water acquired and gamelan organized. An animal-shaped sarcophagus is built from a solid tree trunk, covered with paper and cloth and decorated with mirrors, tassels and tinsel. The cremation tower, representing the Balinese universe, supported by the turtle, Bedawang, and the two naga, Basuki and Anantaboga, is also built, with tiers similar to the roofs on the menu in temples. A small bale at the base of the tiers houses an effigy of the dead person and the body itself, or just the bones if  burial has previously taken place.
          The event itself is joyful, accompanied by the soft music of the bamboo gamelan angklung. The sarcophagus and cremation tower are carried to the cemetery and twirled around many times. At the cremation ground, the body is transferred from the tower into the sarcophagus, which is anointed with holy water and set alight. The tower is burned in a separate fire. After burning, the ashes are carried to the sea or to a stream which will carry them to the ocean. A further purification ceremony takes place three days after the cremation, another at twelve days, finishing with the ritual of nyagara-gunung when the family take offerings to important sea and mountain temples.  

Balinese Cremation ( Ngaben )