Long, long time ago Balinese dance was not as rich as today, there was no beautiful Legong, nor dramatic topeng, Balinese could only boast of trance dance such as Sanghyang Memedi or Sanghyang Dedari, no conscious dance existed.

One day Kaki Semara observed some little girls who were dancing, completely in trance, without ever having had dancing instruction. A Sanghyang they sometimes had to serve as a repository for god in the temple, when he deigned to take his place within them. They were not yet approaching puberty, lived a chaste and pure life and were therefore holy, which made them suitable for this task.

Though Kaki Semara was impressed by the girls, he wondered how their dance could be made more conscious and artistic. And he decided to make it more concentrated in parts by having the girls dance a particular pattern twice instead of ten times in a row and adding new, enhancing dance accents unknown up to that time. He was so pleased with the results that he continued to look for elements that would make the dance even richer in movement.

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Development of tourism has penetrated into all aspect of Balinese life. And of course Balinese dance as an icon of Bali is among the first aspects of Balinese culture that are reshaped by the tourism. Balinese dance is reshaped from a performance for God sake to a show for amusement of tourists.

Sanghyang Dedari; source: Nadi; Trance in the Balinese Art;1999

The best example for profane-ization is the commercialization of Sanghyang Dance. Sanghyang Dance is a genre of sacred trance dance which is performed in the inner courtyard of a temple. There are nearly two dozens varieties of Sanghyang, most of them found only in remote northen and eastern mountain villages. All involve putting one or more dancers into trance by means of incense, chanting, and prayers, in order to receive possessing divinities. Inhabited by either by demonic or heavenly spirits, the entranced dancers then interact with the audience, and occasionally with each other, dancing like nymph or mimicking the animal movements and in some areas, speaking as oracles. The performance invariably involves improvisation by visiting spirits, which takes place along pre-established lines.

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The Sanghyang dance is included in trance dance genre. This dance is believed to have the power to invite the gods or sacred spirits to enter the body of the dancers and put them in a state of trance. It dates back to the ancient Pre-Hindu culture, a time when the Balinese people strongly believed that by the help of Holy Spirit through a medium of dancer sickness and disease could be eliminated. The is dance is usually performed in the fifth or sixth month of the Balinese traditional calendar as it is believe that during these particular months, the Balinese are vulnerable to all kinds of illnesses, or in the time of plague, failed crops or disaster.

There are 6 kinds of sanghyang dance widely known by the people: Sangyang Dedari, Sanghyang Deling, Sanghyang Jaran, Sanghyang Bojog, Sanghyang Celeng and Sanghyang Grobogan.

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Between 1926 and 1958, the island of Bali was featured in several movies shot by Dutch, German and American film-makers. From early images of the “Island of the Gods” through to images of the “Island of Demons”, these films document the changing nature of Bali’s image. The 1952 movie The Road to Bali starring Bob Hope and Bing Crosby, is the ultimate amalgam of images of Southeast Asia and the Pacific. Under the guise of humour the movie managed to include cannibals, wild animals and a giant squid, as well as Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn pulling The African Queen. The ‘Bali Hai’ of South Pacific (1958) had nothing directly to do with Bali, but everything to do with Bali’s image. The island shown as Bali Hai was not in the right ocean, but the name and the soothing sea-breeze-like notes of the hit song were thought to be sufficiently close to something resembling “Bali”. Hollywood made Bali the paradise of paradises by combining all the ideals of the South Seas into one.

In the last ten years this island has been written about, filmed, photographed, and gushed over to an extent which would justify nausea. I went there half-unwillingly, for I expected a complete “bali-hoo”, picturesque and faked to a Hollywood standard; I left there wholly unwillingly, convinced that I had seen the nearest approach to Utopia that I am ever to see. (Geoffrey Gorer, Bali and Angkor. Or Looking at Life and Death, 1936: 42-43)

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