On Friday, April 11th 2008, the royal cremation ceremony of the late Dr. Anak Agung Made Djelantik will be held at the royal palace of Karangasem, rescheduled from the initial plan in which the cremation ceremony will be held in August 2008. Dr Anak Agung Made Djelantik passed away on the eve of Sept. 5, 2007 and had been cremated with modest kingsan ring geni (bequeathal to fire) ceremony without the actual cremation ceremony.
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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 elegance of Balinese architecture and hospitality flourish at Hotel Tjampuhan, located just west of Ubud. Here, Prince Tjokorda Gde Agung Sukawati and Walter Spies began Pita Maha in 1934, an association that brought Ubud painting and artistic talent into the forefront of world art. Spies house, the original guest house of the Ubud royal family, hosted this historic meeting and is here still, on the hotel’s grounds, overlooking the banks of the sacred Oos Campuhan river. Hotel Tjampuhan and Spa remains a source of inspired artistic activity since its founding in the heyday of the 1928’s world traveling.

Unsurprisingly, this setting also inspired Bali visionary holy man Resi Markandya to build the mother temple complex Besakih, the center or worship and ceremony for all of Bali. You can be witness to the living spirit of Balinese devotion to Gods and ancestors, symbolized in the daily offerings made of rice, fruit, flowers and incense in the resident Tjampuhan temple.

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