Traditional dancers kick off Bali Arts Festival

I Wayan Juniartha, The Jakarta Post, Denpasar, Bali

It was an awesome performance. Those girls from Kaliakah village in Jembrana regency undoubtedly knew the best way to rock the stage.

At the same time, the girls won the hearts of hundreds of people gathered around the small elevated stage at Ayodya on the northeast corner of Bali's Werddhi Budaya Art Center compound Tuesday morning.

The girls performed the Joged Bumbung dance, a popular entertainment-oriented traditional dance, where a female dancer usually teases the audience with sensuous yet artistically- composed movements before asking a male member of the crowd to do a ngibing -- a dance with her on the stage.

A traditional bamboo percussion ensemble amplified the joyful tone of the dance.

Since the dance has a heavy erotic tone, it is no wonder that it involves a lot of inviting smiles, flirting and hip gyrating movements the crowds love so much. Needless to say that things usually get hotter when the man joins the dance.

"It doesn't mean that you can do whatever you want on stage. As in any other traditional dance, the Joged Bumbung is regulated by unwritten customs and unspoken conventions between the female dancers and the male participant. You can touch (the dancer), but you must not grab, you may hug, but don't try to squeeze, and you should not in any situations treat the dancer roughly and without respect," Joged Bumbung enthusiast Made Adnyana Ole said.

Tuesday morning's performance was a fine example of how sensuous a traditional dance could be and the gentleman-like attitude of the male participant.

The female dancers gave all they had, performing in high-gear intensity, dynamic rhythm and with powerful energy. Meanwhile, their male counterparts from the audience also presented their limited dancing skills in various and interesting ways.

To win the hearts of the dancers, one man acted elegantly and danced in a slow, polite way, while another deliberately made a fool of himself, mimicking an animal lusting for his mate. And there was also the one that pretended to be too exhausted to continue the dance, and decided to lie flat on his back on the stage.

The crowd number grew so large that by the end of the performance it fully-consumed all the space around the small stage. They were generous in its response. They clapped their hands, yelled, cheered, and laughed repeatedly in an apparent display of satisfaction with the dance.

"This performance proves that a large number of Balinese people still love their traditional art forms. Amid the endless stream of modern and western-oriented entertainment, this traditional art is able to survive, partly because the people and the community still find it interesting and entertaining," Ole said.

The performance definitely gave the first week of the 24th Bali Arts Festival a good start. The one-month long, Rp 2 billion festival was officially opened on Monday afternoon by President Megawati Soekarnoputri in a brief ceremony followed by a grand and glamorous parade of each of the participants' traditional costumes, musical ensembles, and dances before the towering Bajra Sandhi monument in Renon.

Some 6,000 artists from 152 troupes are scheduled to participate in this annual festival. Around four to five different acts are to be performed each day at various stages at the huge Art Center compound in eastern Denpasar.

Initially conceived by the late Ida Bagus Mantra, the then Bali Governor in 1979, as a way to revitalize Balinese traditional arts, this festival has grown into the biggest cultural event in Bali, which not only draws a large number of visitors, but also participants from outside Bali.

This year's festival is also to be graced with performances by musicians and dancers from Singapore, Japan and South Korea, and also from the neighboring provinces of Nangroe Aceh Darussalam, Jakarta, Central Java, and Papua.

Any visitors to Bali should not miss the ample chance to sample the rich variety of Balinese traditional art forms presented during the festival.

Hopefully, most of them will be as intoxicating as the Joged Bumbung performance.