Birds are animals which inspired many choreographers to produced beautiful Balinese contemporary dances. Their energetic and sometimes elegant movements combined with their beautiful feathers are never-ending source of inspiration and imagination for Balinese choreographers to depict in a dance or two. Here are some well known dances which draw their inspiration from birds.

Manuk Rawa dance, from flickr.com/photos/ceklek/

Manuk Rawa
Manuk Rawa dance was the first contemporary dance which based on the movements of the bird to make a great impression on Balinese. Manuk Rawa was created by I wayan Dibia in 1981 as a part of Mahabharata Sendratari (Balinese dance-drama) entitled Bale Gala-gala (house of wax). The dance depicts the life of a flock of waterbirds (manuk rawa) who play freely and peacefully in a pond deep inside the forest. In this dance the traditional movements of Balinese dance is combined with a dance from West Java which depicts the movement of a peacock.

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Animals, their behaviors and movements are the source of inspiration for many Balinese choreographers to create new Balinese contemporary dances and one of the most successful contemporary dances that depict the behavior and movement of animal is the Godogan (frog) dance. This contemporary dance is the brainchild of dance maestro I Made Jimat, which was established in 1967. This dance depicts the movements and behavior of a frog, and reenacts a Balinese version of the familiar fairy tale about the princess who marries a frog.

The Story of the Godogan dance can be summed up as follow, a prince of Jenggala who was fond of catching dragonflies disappeared in a dense forest near an erupting volcano. A few years later a frog emerged which was believed to be the reincarnation of the lost prince. One day the prince-frog encountered a beautiful princess of Daha; he fell in love with her and wanted to marry her. Unable to fulfill this dream the frog committed itself to ascetic life, but by the blessing of the great God Wisnu, he was turned back into a handsome young man, the lost prince of Jenggala.

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“Balinese art is an indispensable part of Balinese religion, culture and life.”

“Art is identical with religion, art creativity is a performance of the religious teaching” this quotation indicates the unity of art and religion in Bali. It is hard to differentiate between art and religion without deep understanding on art and religion of Bali. Since every ceremony contains art performance in it and every art performance is loaded with the values and teachings of religion. The unity of art and religion ensures that the art be constantly practiced and become part of Balinese life.

Balinese life is surrounded by art from earliest childhood, ever-present everywhere and every time. 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 a young food stall seller from a humble family is skilled practitioner of Bali classical dance.

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In 1915, a new genre of Balinese Gamelan was introduced in North Bali. This new composition is called Kebyar, involving a mixture of old and new melodies with new variations syncopation, so that it forms an entirely new genre of Balinese gamelan music. And by chance in the same year a young dancer from Tabanan, I Mario, saw that the dance which was accompanied by this new composition was performed rather badly and could not keep up with intricate variations, paraphrases, cadenzas and complicated rhythmic of the new composition. And saw the possibilities of a solo dance that can be matched with the new composition.

flickr.com/photos/lilacita/

Back in his home town in Tabanan, Mario worked out his ideas even without the help of the gamelan. The result of his arduous work was the highly demanding Kebyar dance. This is the only dance that is able to interpret the new gamelan composition in its spontaneous movements.

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Cak or Kecak is a contemporary Balinese dance, a secular dance that its origin can be traced to the sacred Sanghyang dance. This dance was first created by dancers in Bedulu village, Gianyar regency, at the request of Walter Spies. The group was commissioned to devise a new kind of dramatic performance which is based on Ramayana epic, accompanied solely by a chorus like that found in sacred Sanghyang Dedari performance. In that old sacred rite, the choral group consist of perhaps a dozen men, each making distinctive ‘chek, chek, chek’ sound that blend into a complex interlocking rhythmic pattern to assist the dancers in sustaining their trance condition.

This sacred dance, much developed, is the basis for Cak, a purely secular performance given almost exclusively for tourist. It is unthinkable for a Balinese to stage a Cak dance in his ceremony or for local consumption. The first simple version created in Bedulu achieved instant success and rapidly became very popular with tourist and other visitors to Bali. At heyday of Balinese tourism, several dozen professional groups perform regularly at the larger hotels and on special stages built for that purpose in their ward meeting halls.

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The third day of Classical Dance and Drama Performance (9/29/2007) presented three classic performances – another Leko performance from Badung regency, Gandrung from Denpasar municipality, and Cakepung from Karangasem regency. These three performances were staged indoor with better sitting place for the audience but lack of fresh air and dreary stage background and surrounding (performances in the first and second day were staged outdoor).

The first performance was Leko dance. Another Leko dance (the very same dance with the first performance in the first day of this show) but presented in different way, of course by another troupe. This time, the Leko dance was preceded by three preliminary dances. All these three preliminary dances were danced by very young dancers, their nervousness could clearly be seen in their face but they danced elegantly and manage to overcome their nervousness at the end.

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