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…with anger. All fled (including little children in the audience who suddenly ran for the cover of their mother’s sarongs).

We were electrified. Now what? How is Panji going to deal with that? Surely, only a powerful Brahmin can beat off this raging beast!

But there was no need to worry, for Rangda kicked over the metaphorical chess-board, the dancer impersonating her suddenly becoming possessed by her spirit, yelling something incoherently, jumping up and down, then arching his back and trembling. Men from the orchestra rushed to restrain him, the priest moved in to administer exorcism. But then things got out of hand altogether, for soon the chief attendant (the one who dances like a mechanical egg-beater) was possessed, too, writhing and screaming. There was a huge ado and a huge crowd of Indonesians descended with their cameras rolling.

As a guest in their country I did not feel I could importune my lens on what seemed like a very private matter. No photo. Use your imagination.

4

Spirit possession plays a big role in Balinese cult and sacred dances often lead to one, but this is not supposed to happen at the festival. Here, I have often seen Rangda plays in which elaborate precautions were taken to prevent untoward developments (including one live sacrifice just prior to the donning of the Rangda costume), but I have also seen others in which the choreographers have decided that no such nonsense can take place in the enlightened circumstance of the cultural venue.

Well, they were proven wrong.

For many tourists the spirit possession is the thing they want to see most (and many books with titles like “Bali, the Island of Demons” have been written to capitalize on that prurient interest).

To me it is not so interesting. I have seen white people go into trance, prophesy, and speak in tongues. To me, it’s an ordinary religious function as much Christian as Hindu, and one on which we best do not intrude. To me, it’s the dance, not the religion, which brings me here, though, most Balinese will tell you otherwise, meaning, no doubt, though no Balinese would ever say it, “it’s not the dance, stupid”.

But I have learned something at the performance: now I know why the clunky, mechanical-egg-beater chief attendant was included in the performance.

It was not on the account of her dancing ability.

5

Then, on day 6 there were new choreographies by a woman choreographer, Ni Made Kinten, from Karangasem, and her group Sanggar Seni Tari Minarthi.

It was the sort of dancing for which I come here every year. It was electric. It was amazing. It was stupefying. It was heart stopping. It was so exciting that my hands began to sweat (and — don’t tell my AA group — shake a little bit). Not only was the orchestra absolutely wild, but the dancers were both well trained, incredibly gifted, and just brim-full of that special grace without which no one can ever be a great dancer. And the whole thing just became a whirl for me, I watched with my mouth open, wimpering and trembling (and forgot to take photos).

The second dance of the performance, called Trio Tari Pring Angonanf Hati, had 3 girls of perhaps 13, dressed as boys, giving a dance based loosely on a whole family of boys’ dances, more masculine than feminine, a picture of vibrant fun-loving youth but with more than a suggestion of the violence of manhood. It was fast and furious, full of very close passes and some very flashy footwork — and very exciting. While enjoying it, I allowed myself to think some silly thoughts about it being a modern creation – women dancing men’s dance and all that jazz. This new-age world-music herbal-healing sort of feel-good fuzziness continued when the girls turned around, took off their hats, unfolded their loin cloths and turned into what they really were: pretty girls on the cusp of womanhood, cute, graceful and charming, yet with more than a suggestion of imminent knowledge of the art of seduction.

Yeah, yeah, I thought to myself, work like men during the day, seduce irresistibly like women by night. Come on, baby, dance on.

So much Balinese dance is archetypal in its design, it’s hard not to imagine Made Kinten was exploiting it to lead us — me – deliberately — down this garden path. For then, suddenly, one of the girls turned around, hitched her sarong like a man, put on her hat, and turned on the two girls with violent accusations, gestures of anger and hate, the two girls turning away in surprise, shock, and shame, as if from blows. And then, the boy-girl seized one of the girl-girls (symbolically, as in all Balinese dance, there was no touching, there were no landed blows), and began to throw her about, knock her with punches, pull her hair, and then he-she threw her-her on the ground and stomped on her with fury and triumph, leaving the other girl frozen in speechless horror.

This was simply too much for yours truly. Amazing dancing, fantastic choreography heightened suddenly by the dramatic development and its horrible implication of violence against women (it’s hard to imagine a more shocking cocktail for a soft-spoken alus gentleman of my sort). After the dances I went backstage and fell on my knees before Ni Made Kinten and performed the highest wai I have ever given in my life.

*

And there, backstage, I saw these girls, changing out of their costumes. Suddenly, these apsaras, these kinarees, these divine, heavenly beings with such potent power to dazzle, amaze and terrify turned out to be little thirteen-year old girls, giggling, chewing bubble gum and fielding messages from their boyfriends on mobile phones and complaining that the headgears makes them look like Micky Mouse. (They do not).

It was one of those moments of utter conceptual confusion afforded so often by really great dance-drama: now this is reality, now that; now these are gods and kings, worthy of worship and speechless admiration, now they are ordinary men with tooth-aches and pet-peeves and irritating personal habits.

Dance and possession, indeed.

It all left me pretty shaken up.

6

On the seventh day, the morning program was dull and I resolved to head back early, especially since my flu was getting worse and scratched my throat something awful. On my way to the exit, I heard the sound of great gongs from the Andhra Chandra stage, where large scale performances are given at night, and decided to investigate. And I chanced upon a rehearsal: a great gong orchestra in t-shirts and jeans beating the metal with furious abandon, and two girls in ordinary clothes dancing on stage. Here is one photo of one of them (I took about 100!):

I stood watching with my mouth agape.

In her ordinary clothes, there was no escaping the fact that she was an ordinary girl, a little pudgy, a little short of leg. Yet, she was very, very good. It was the dressing room experience all over again, except here there was no temporal delay: this girl was a divine dancer and an ordinary teenager all at the same time.

I have had the experience before – several years ago, in Kerala, when the great Ettoomanur Kannan performed “Watch the Peacocks” in undress – in nothing but his loincloth, without the dress, the skirt, the headgear and face paint in which the Kathakali dancer usually performs. Watching an Asian dancer like that, in practice, undressed, is like peering into the hidden structure of the universe, like discovering the laws of gravity, like feeling the strings of the string theory with one’s fingertips.

It reminds me of the scene in Magic Mountain in which Hans Castorp, putting his hand into the x-ray diascope, sees it on the screen shorn of its skin, tendons and flesh: he has peered into his own death.

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