Traditional dancers kick off Bali Arts Festival

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.