Balinese Art

Art still plays an integral role in the ritual life of Bali’s culture, even though the artworks are produced primarily for the tourist market. Art surrounds the Balinese from earliest childhood and is ever present everywhere. The Balinese seem to make an art out of even the simple necessities of everyday life: fruit salad is served with flowers strewn on top, and coils of pigs’ intestines are used on temple decorations.

Since the start of the 20th century, the Balinese have never allowed artistic knowledge to become centralized in a special intellectual class. Everyone down to the simplest peasant can be both an artist and an aesthetically conscious art critic. A field-laborer might chide a clumsy instrument maker for a job poorly done, and even young dagang (foodstall sellers) from humble families are skilled practitioners of Bali’s classical dances.

While painting, sculpture, carving, and music have traditionally been the province of men, women have channeled creative energy into making lavish offerings to the gods. At almost any festival you can see spectacular pyramids of flowers, fruit, and cakes up to two meters high, fashioned with such love and adoration that they could only be meant for a higher being.

These religious obligations have also ensured that the arts be constantly practiced-the gods demand it! Feverish and backbreaking preparations go into the celebration of festivals as well as the transitional events in the life of a Balinese. In service to religion, each artist strives to make objects well-proportioned and pleasing. New shrines have to be built, relieves renewed, new prayer offerings made, dances and dramas rehearsed, and music practiced continually in order to please gods, appease devils, and honor ancestors.

Although put at the service of religion, Balinese art does not solely serve religion. Sacred symbols decorate speeding bemo, jackets, menus, motorcycles, and hotel doorways. Their use in such ordinary earthly objects is not looked upon as sacrilege.

An important factor contributing to the creative productivity of the Balinese is Bali’s well-organized cultivation system. The astounding fertility of the island-everyone is fed, sheltered, and clothed-has given the Balinese the leisure to develop their arts for centuries.

Though the impetus to create art has always endured, art objects have not. The Balinese have no eternally “great” art like Egypt’s pyramids, Cambodia’s Angkor Wat complex, or France’s Chartres Cathedral. Bali’s most readily available stone is soft volcanic sandstone, which crumbles easily and is eaten away by rainfall after only a few years. Earthquakes and volcanic eruptions ravage hundreds of shrines several times each decade, necessitating gigantic reconstruction projects engaging thousands of workers.

Balinese art is not made to last. Humidity wilts paper and rots cloth paintings; dogs or people eat the magnificent offerings; white ants perforate wooden sculptures, all of which must be refurbished constantly. All this rebuilding, renovating, and replacing assumes that the island’s unparalleled concentration of ephemeral folk art continually evolves and perpetuates itself.

Communal Art
Whereas in the West, an artist pours a great amount of energy into establishing a distinctive style and technique to achieve personal wealth and fame, Balinese artists subordinate their ego to the needs of the community and to the requirements of the belief system. Art is an expression of their collective thought. Many paintings, carvings, and sculptures are made communally in workshops, where a master craftsman supervises a group of apprentices.

A statue or a gamelan composition may also frequently be the work of more than one artist, and the instructor may very well execute a portion of a pupil’s painting. Though the colors and technique might be easily recognizable as the work of an individual, artists repeatedly use traditional standard themes and motifs executed in the local style. More decoration than art, the products of Bali’s non-academically trained artisans still show a mastery of craftsmanship.

Historical Perspective
Since the 15th century, the island has been visited by traders from all over the world, all of whom have unwittingly influenced Balinese art. From every foreign culture they’ve come in contact with, the Balinese have absorbed what they wanted-digesting it, improving upon it, and creating what is probably Asia’s most artistic civilization.

Their greatest inspiration was received from India via ancient Java. But starting in about 1596, extensive mercantile contacts with Europe, Japan, China, Indochina, Polynesia, and Arabia provided an international palette of influences. Decorative motifs, props, sculpture and painting techniques, and themes and characters for their theatrical performances were borrowed from the outside cultures. The Balinese are unabashed and uncanny copyists. Some of their paintings and stone carvings-a holdup, a plane crash, atomic bomb explosions-are copied right out of magazines or posters.

Ancient Balinese Art
As early as 300 BC, coastal inhabitants created metal bells, lances, spiral-shaped rings, bronze implements, bracelets, and magnificent woven textiles. Although physical remnants of this culture are few, much of the spirit of these first Balinese has been passed down and is visible today in textile patterns, sculptural and dancing styles, theater forms, and rituals. In particular, the native Bali Aga of the highlands still adheres to pre-Hindu practices.

An example of a motif of pure native origin is the lovely cili figure of a girl shaped like an hourglass, seen everywhere in palm-leaf ornaments for temples, on cakes, standing in rice fields, and even made out of Chinese coins sewn together. The mysterious cili is thought to derive from the island’s original rice deity, Dewi Sri.

Javanese Influence
As early as the 5th century, Bali was ruled by Javanese princes. Every political event and disturbance that occurred on Java had a ripple effect on the political life of Bali, and the art history of Bali reflects the development of art in the mother country.

Java’s golden age of monumental art-A.D. 600-800-finds its counterpart in the evolution of Balinese art. Besides edicts written on old bronze plates (prastasis), other physical remains of this classical period are found today in the vicinity of Pejeng and Bedulu – the area between the two rivers Petanu and Pakerisan – which has always been amazingly rich in antiquities.

The most impressive examples of Java’s classic influence on Bali are the nine magnificent cut-rock tombs of Gunung Kawi near Tampaksiring, completed around AD 1080, which are strikingly similar to East Javanese monumental architecture from that period.

Under the great Airlangga’s reign at the start of the 11th century, a vigorous renaissance of art occurred in East Java. The Balinese-born leader gave a new impetus to all the arts, particularly literature, reviving the old Javanese language of Kawi as Bali’s official language.

The rule of the nationalistic Majapahit Empire on Java in the 14th century saw a repudiation of the classic, austere, religious, Indic elements and a resurgence of the more primitive native Javanese art styles and motifs. The powerful, erotic architecture of Candi Sukuh in East Java typifies this period.

Less than 100 years later, as Islam crept deeper and deeper into Majapahit territory, priests, poets, artists, sculptors, and painters began to migrate to Bali, bringing with them the earthy spirit of Majapahit. This influx accounts today for the extent to which classical Javanese romantic legends (the Panji and Tantra fables) have penetrated Balinese literature.

The populating of Bali by Javanese migrants also explains the extravagantly decorative motifs found in all media of Balinese art: floral patterns in the paintings, sensuous flaming motifs in the textiles, baroque temples, fast-paced music, and the bizarre realism of Balinese sculpture. The Balinization of Javanese Arts

The collapse and subsequent dispersion of the Majapahit’s cultural elite is considered the great watershed of Balinese history. The influence of its artisans and craftsmen brought to Bali a golden age of the visual arts, theater, and literature. From the 15th century onward, the descendants of the original Javanese colonial rulers founded a number of small independent regional states on Bali, free of Java’s administration.

The Balinese natives adopted those Hindu practices, arts, and deities that suited their taste and rejected the rest, giving rise to today’s distinctive folk art forms. Each noble house (called a puri or jero, depending upon rank) constituted a political and religious hub where the best orchestras practiced and where the finest painters, weavers, sculptors, architects, blacksmiths, dancers, and actors lived and worked as privileged wards of the ruling princes. These specialized artisans were paid in ritual gifts, relieved of certain social duties, or awarded tax exemptions and rice fields. Today, many of these privileged relationships remain in effect, the descendants living from the produce of the same fields, still carrying on their ancestors’ handicraft or fine art.

This flourishing artists’ utopia ended with the crack of Dutch rifles in 1906. From that point on, art began to radiate out from the divine cores of the puri and started to touch the villages. Bali, as a colony of the Netherlands East Indies Empire, was soon profaned with modern technology, tourists, films, books, and magazines. As a result of a drastic political reorganization, most of the princes could no longer afford to patronize the arts; palace gamelan were sold, royal theater groups broke up, and Balinese art became a true art of the people.

Art also became less decorative, representational, and formalized. Influenced by incoming European artists in the 1920s, Balinese artists for the first time dated and signed their paintings. They began to experiment with new styles, techniques, themes, and media. They set up sales organizations and the most outstanding among them received recognition overseas.

The 1930s are known as the “classical” period of modern Balinese art, when many of the finest and most innovative pieces of the 20th century were produced. Samples of these works may be viewed today in the Neka Museum, Neka Gallery, Agung Rai Gallery, and in the famed Puri Lukisan Museum – all in or around Ubud, Bali’s traditional arts center.

Modern Influences
Over the past 40 years, the once all-important sponsorship of art by the local aristocratic families has all but ceased. Bali’s past 20 years have wrought even greater changes. No longer does art occupy a traditional place and purpose within the community.

No longer is it produced simply out of service to the deities. Now it’s created for its own sake or just to make money.

Perhaps nowhere are artists more appreciated by their own people than on Bali, yet Balinese fine art isn’t taken seriously by foreign buyers. In order to earn a living, artists have had to sacrifice quality. The “tourist corridor” up to Ubud is lined with opulent-looking galleries filled with an overwhelming range of kitschy junk, some of it good, and signs that say “You drop it, it’s yours.”

Inside the galleries you’ll see row upon row of lookalike carvings and color-by-number images of villagers fishing, stereotypical market scenes, fantastical birds from the island’s Hindu lore, predictably posed nude figures, mass-produced half-life-sized copies of dramatic masks, and “custom-made” reproductions of antiques.

On a weekend afternoon, the galleries are packed with tourists. Yet it’s often deserted over at Ubud’s Puri Lukisan museum-where for 35 American cents you can marvel at the bygone genius of Balinese painting. The island’s two principal museums, in Ubud and Denpasar, lack the money to continue buying contemporary works. As a result, the really remarkable, high-quality pieces are bought up by discerning tourists or foreign art dealers, taken overseas, and lost to Bali forever.

Performing Arts

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 also 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 exorcise 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 Hindus 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.

Over a thousand
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.

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 Hindus 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 inaugurated 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 accentuation 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 sarong or pants down to the middle of the calves, with a long tongue handing down between the legs.

Female dancers wear a long sarong, 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 professional’s works 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.

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.

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 trench coat 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 common 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.

Studying Arts and Crafts

Since the Balinese are so dedicated to the arts and making beautiful things so ingrained in their society, Bali is an ideal place for Western artists to work and co-exist. Bali has long been considered the perfect working environment for an artist-a place preeminently conducive to creativity.

The following institutes accept paying Western students: SESRI (Sekolah Seni Rupa Indonesia), the School for the Visual Arts in Denpasar; Fakultas Teknik (Jurusan Seni Rupa) under the Technical Faculty at Udayana University in Denpasar; and Sekolah Teknik under the department of sculpture (Jurusan Ukir) at the Technical College in Guwang.

The charge per lesson, depending on the reputation of your teacher. It also helps to get a letter of recommendation from Wayan Paksa of Siti Homestay in Peliatan (Br. Kalah, tel. 62361-975.599). Wayan can also help you obtain a cultural/study visa.

Information
For more information on Balinese crafts, write Impact Publications (9104-N. Manassas Drive, Manassas Park, VA 22111, tel. 703-361-7300) for a copy of their Shopping and Traveling in Exotic Indonesia which outlines the best of the island’s shopping. Also on the very handy Pathfinder Map (Silvio Santosa, 1985), for sale in Ubud bookshops, you can find the locations of craft villages around Ubud. Lonely Planet’s 4th edition Bali & Lombok: TSK (1992) has a comprehensive photo essay of Balinese arts and crafts.

Bali Art Festival

When tourism took off after 1965, the Balinese insisted that it followed cultural guidelines: if tourism was to be accepted, it was to be a cultural tourism, or “pariwisata budaya”.

As the Balinese put it: “Tourism should be for Bali instead of Bali for tourism.” In time, this idea became national policy, as part of a larger revamping of regional cultures for national purposes. The policy owes much to the former Director General of Culture (1968-1978) and Governor of Bali (1978-1988), Ida Bagus Mantra, an Indian-educated Balinese. It led, on the one side, to the creation of enclave resorts such as Nusa Dua to limit the direct impact of tourism, and on the other, to a long haul cultural policy aimed at nurturing and preserving the traditional agrarian culture while adapting it to the demands of modernity, and in particular of “cultural tourism”.

At the village level, local music groups, dances and other cultural events were inventoried, then supported by a series of contests at the district and regency level. The ensuing competition energized the cultural life of villages, whose “young blood” was already being drained to the city by the process of economic change and urbanization.

Schools of dance and art were created, in particular the Kokar conservatory and the STSI School of Dance and Music. Beside research, these schools replaced the traditional master/disciple relationship by modern methods of teaching; standardized the dance movements, produced new types of Balinese dances for tourism and modern village entertainment. Most important, it enabled former students to return to the villages as teachers, where they diffused, beside the creed of cultural resilience and renewal, new dances and standardized versions of old ones.

This ambitious cultural platform, too successful, needed a venue: The Taman Budaya or Arts Center, a huge cultural complex built in the heart of Denpasar in best fashion of traditional Balinese architecture. The lay-out of its grand theaters, smaller “bale” performance halls and annex buildings symbolizes the story of the churning of the sea of milk, Mandara Giri, from which sprouts the “amerta” or “elixir of eternal life” – culture.

Its largest amphitheater can contain up to 6,000 spectators, in a temple-like stage designed for the performing of large cultural dances. It is a full month of daily performances; handicraft exhibitions and other related cultural and commercial activities.

Festival Day
It is month during which literally the whole of Bali comes to the city to present its offerings of dance, music and beauty. On display are trances from remote mountain slopes, forgotten or recently revived village dances, food and offering contests, classical palace dances, stars of Balinese stage, odd musical performances, “kreasi baru” (new creations) from the dance schools of Denpasar, as well as contemporary choreography and dance companies from other islands and from abroad.

It is a month long revelry that perhaps no other place in the world can put up on such a low budget as the Balinese. Not only are their traditional culture alive and well, but they having a tremendous pride in it.

It begins in the villages, where the seka or cultural groups are selected and organized at the regency level, vie with each other to perform at the Arts Festival and thus display in front of a large audience the uniqueness of their village of birth and resting place of their ancestors.

The spectators are mostly Balinese. The Bali Arts Festival is the Denpasar cultural event of the year; perhaps it would no be too far fetched to suggest that it is the cultural event of Indonesia. Tourists are welcome, but the event belongs to the Balinese. The festival is thus a unique opportunity to see local village culture both “live” and at first hand.

Each year, the Bali Arts Festival, beside the famed classical dances of the island, such as the ‘legong’, ‘gambuh’, ‘kecak’, ‘barong’, ‘baris’, mask dances and the like, is based on the theme around which new “dance choreography” is produced and old village dances and activities revived. Over the years, the whole range of classical Balinese stories – Ramayana, Mahabharata, Sutasoma, Panji – have thus been turned into “colossal” Sendratari Ballets.

The main challenge to the Arts Festival is obviously economic in nature. As village life is increasingly feeling the strains of monetary considerations, dancers, musicians and others cannot be expected to continue participating simply for the sake and the pleasure of it. As costs soar, new sources of financing have to be found. The obvious answer is the private sector and in particular the tourism industry. The greater task then is to convince the hotels, travel agencies and tourist guides to be more participatory in the Arts Festival rather than to their own sponsored events.

Considering the pride the Balinese have in their culture, and the adaptability and dynamism they have always demonstrated this little hurdle can be overcome. Trust the Balinese. They will eventually succeed to transform their tradition into a modern, Balinese culture of their own.