Why Balinese Dance?  What does this mystical and eerie dance form hold for me?  It is the key to the soul awakening.    

As an Asian American exposed mainly to classical ballet and modern dance, I grew up with the aesthetic of a particular kind of loveliness and physicality.  I was taught to spin to no end, lift my legs up to my ears and jump like a deer. In doing so, I needed  to communicate with the audience and needed their appreciation. All to the reward of a  "high" during and after performance. I would feel like I was floating on air; nothing in the world could have felt better.    

Balinese dance turned my world upside down.  The repetitive dance movements in the strange and contorted angular shapes accompanied by the anxious and ghostly sounds of the gamelan put me into a different space of mind. How strange yet how beautiful and yes, perfect.  The dancers and musicians perform under the moonlit sky in the outdoor temple, which serves as the stage. Nature provides the entire backdrop. Nothing is forced and each of the senses are saturated with satisfaction.  My body actually tingles! Watching the dance put me in a trance and I realized the first time seeing the dance, that  a whole new world of feeling and emotion was now being introduced to my being.    

In studying and researching the dance, I found some very interesting facts, which helped to explain my expansion of the soul.  In Beryl De Zoates, "Dance and Drama in Bali", it is explained that the theatres in the west have the curtains placed in the front of the stage so that upon opening, the audience is drawn into the world of the performers.  In Bali however, the curtains open from the back of the stage so that the performers, in personification of the gods and spirit world come to meet us humans in our physical form and world.    

All artists here are not seen as anything special but are simply regarded as normal people with gifts of talent from the heaven and they just do what they were put on earth to do in honour of the gods. Everyone has a talent. In fact, in the Balinese language, there is no word for "art" because the making of beauty belongs to the mundane world and there is nothing extraordinary about it.    

I now realize that the high I worked toward in achieving through performance is intended from the very beginning of the process in Balinese dance.  Each dance class and performance begins and ends with prayers and offerings. Thanks are given to mother earth and father sky.  There are even auspicious days throughout the year when even the costumes, and musical instruments are paid hommage to through offerings, prayers, ceremonies and cleansings by the high priest.  None of this attention is unnatural to the culture  because the whole way of life is based on prayers, ceremonies and offerings to all things animate and inanimate.  This respect to all of the wholeness and perfection of the universe is just astounding.    

In my respect to this new understanding of  awareness and being , I have dedicated this year to studying Balinese dance with hopes that I will be able to incorporate all that I learn into myself. I then want the raw physicality of western dance in all its beauty to meet with the unseen forces of Bali. When this is done, the soul will be balanced and all will be well with the world.    
    

Kim Tran    
Camphuan,  Penestanan   BALI