Contexts - The Rough Guide to Bali and Lombok - page 470

Although the gong kebyar is by far the most popular style of music and orchestra in Bali,
there are more than twenty different ensemble variations. The smallest is the four-piece
gender wayang , which traditionally accompanies the wayang kulit shadow-play perform-
ances; the largest is the old-fashioned classical Javanese-style orchestra comprising fifty in-
struments, known as the gamelan gong . Most gamelan instruments are huge and far too
heavy to be easily transported, so many banjar also possess a portable orchestra known as a
gamelan angklung , designed around a set of miniature four-keyed metallophones, for play-
ing in processions and at cremations or seashore ceremonies. There are also a few “bamboo
orchestras”, particularly in western Bali, where they're known as gamelan joged bumbung
and gamelan jegog , composed entirely of bamboo instruments such as split bamboo tubes,
marimbas and flutes.
Traditional dance-dramas of Bali
Most Balinese dance-dramas have evolved from sacred rituals , and are still performed at
religious events, with full attention given to the devotional aspects. Before the show, a pe-
mangku sprinkles the players and the performance area with holy water, and many perform-
ances open with a Pendet, or welcome dance, intended for the gods. The exorcist Barong-
Rangda dramas continue to play a vital function in village spiritual practices , and the Baris
dance re-enacts the traditional offering up of weapons by village warriors to the gods to in-
vest 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 Mahabharata, which came from India more than a thousand years ago. Others are
based on historical events , embellishing the romances and battles of the royal courts of Java
and Bali between the tenth and the fourteenth centuries.
There are few professional dancers in Bali; most performers don costumes and make-up
only at festival times or for tourist shows. Dancers learn by imitation and repetition and per-
sonal expression has no place, but the skilful execution of traditional moves is much admired
and trained dancers enjoy a high status.
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 them-
selves through a vocabulary of controlled angular movements of the arms, wrists, fingers,
neck and, most beguilingly, the eyes. Each pose and gesture derives from a movement ob-
served 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 an-
imal's coat. Dressed in pantaloons or hitched-up sarongs, the male dancers are much more
energetic, emphasizing their manliness by opening shoulders and limbs outwards, keeping
their knees bent and their heads high.