Bali Experience

Tourism, many Balinese claim, has brought a renaissance to the Balinese arts, especially to dance and dramatic performance. Encouraged by a steady stream of Western guests eager to witness Bali’s famed traditional spectacles, and supported materially by their patronage, Bali’s dance troupes are flourishing like never before. Yet this foreign sponsorship of the Balinese arts has not come without a cost. Troubled by the extent to which tourism was leading to a commercialization of sacred arts - with holy dances like the stately rejang created to welcome the gods to the temple performed to welcome a busload of beer-swilling tourists to a hotel ballroom - a group of dance scholars and religious experts met in the 1970s to try to address the problem. They decided upon a classification system for dances: those sacred dances that should be performed only in the inner temple, those ceremonial dances and dramas that could be performed at festivals in the outer temple courtyard, and those secular dances that could be performed outside the religious setting. Of course, like most things Balinese, these categories have become quite flexible in practice, and tourists are now permitted to watch many dances deemed to be holy. But the visitor lucky enough to witness one of these powerful performances should remember that these are not mere entertainments created for worldly consumption, but are highly spiritual art forms designed to please the gods with their beauty and grace. The Balinese feel their participation in such dances to be far more than just a job or a chance to display their skill for public acclaim, but to be a religious service, a way of offering the grace and passion of their bodies up to the heavens.

One of the most powerful of these ritual dances is the Baris, or the warrior dance, which is a familiar sight at many temple anniversary festivals and cremations. In this performance, men armed with ancient weapons, including wavy-bladed keris daggers and sharply pointed spears, act as the guard of the visiting gods. The Baris often involves a dramatic mock battle between dozens of men adorned with gold headdresses and elaborate costumes, a spellbinding sight which has earned the Baris a reputation as one of the most ferocious, passionate and masculine dance forms in the world.

The Pendet or Mendet is a sacred processional which, depending on the custom of the village in which it is being held, is danced either to welcome the gods who have come to visit their earthly shrines in the temple or to send them on their sacred journey back to their home at the close of a ceremony. It is performed by the younger women of a temple congregation, who carry flower and incense offerings as they dance in a stately line around the shrines, stopping to present their gifts to the gods.

The Rejang is perhaps the most egalitarian of Balinese dances. Anyone can join in, from little toddlers who have just learned to walk to white-haired old grandmothers. No special training is required to perform it, for it is learned by watching and participating. Like the Pendet, it is a processional, where women carry offerings, performing slow, spellbinding, trance-like movements backed by the mellow tones of a gamelan orchestra.