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The First Day of Classical Dance and Drama Performance

Published 7 months, 2 weeks ago in Dance, Drama & Music by Sidarta Wijaya | 343 Views

The first day of Classical Dance and Drama Performance (9/27/2007) was a kind of traveling back to the forgotten era of Balinese dance and drama performance. The performances which took place in Art Centre Denpasar, began at 7:30 PM, on an open stage, luckily no there was no rain pouring down.

The first performance that night was Leko dance from Jembrana regency. Leko is a type of social dance, may be a flirtation dance as a matter of fact, the ancestor of widely popular Joged Bumbung dance. In old days, Leko was a palace dance, designed for the entertainment of the king, nowadays it is a popular social dance that anybody can enjoy and participate. It is performed by a pairs of female dancers and usually involves the audience.

The Leko performance that night was surely an entertainment, a pair of beautiful dancers danced with the accompaniment of rindik (an ensemble in which the instruments are made of bamboo) orchestra.

The excitement began when the dancers invited some of the audiences to dance with them on the stage. Some of the invited audiences were good dancers, others were barely able to dance, but it was the latter that received much applause from the audiences for their courage and struggle.

The second performance was the Wayang Wong performance from Tabanan regency. It was an old and rare performance. Wayang Wong, which translates to shadow men, is a human dramatization of the Wayang Kulit (shadow puppet) show, wherein the dancers imitate the jerky movements of the puppets. Wayang Wong is one of several Balinese performance art forms which meld dance, drama and music.

Wayang Wong performance in this occasion enacted a piece which was taken from the great Ramayana epic. The performance told the story of Hanuman who came to Alengka, the Kingdom of the Giant as an ambassador of Rama (Hanuman Duta). It was great performance, the outfits especially the masks were stunning, the dance was excellent, but unfortunately, the sound system was awful, the audiences can barely hear the dialog of the characters and the story was shortened to fit the span of time which was allocated for this performance by the committee. The performance was excellent despite of all the inconvenience.