Story of Bali, Indonesia

"The evolutions of this dance can be of intense brilliance: the fierce darting glance, the neck movements so swift that they seem like a trill of sound; the leaps, the wheeling flight; the restless splendor of glittering crest and swinging stoles; ... the sudden smile, infinitely alluring; the narrowed eyelids lifted to reveal blazing balls of darkness set in a shining rim. Sometimes a lightning pirouette will lift in a whirl of color the short brilliant stoles which hang thick as feathers on his back. The Baris dance has an undeniable fighting bird quality.

In keeping with that quality, dancing will be vital and alive if it develops in harmony with the growth of the society supporting it, Conversely, if dancing cannot develop in harmony with the growth of the surrounding society it will not develop at all, or very little, and will become static and dead. Such negative symptoms are not to be found in dancing in Indonesia. Naturally, in its development Indonesian dancing is not free from problems, and these to be faced.

Baris is usually 10 to 12 minutes long. The music and the dance are in three parts, each of which are based on 8-beat colotomic structures. The first and last parts are quite similar to each other, while the central section is wholly unrelated. We shall concern ourselves with the first part only. The intent is to give as complete a picture as possible of what is happening in the music and how it is connected to the dance through words, diagrams, notations and photographs.

A theory useful in analising these problems is that of Professor Arnold Toynbee, the famous English historian, concerning the possibilities for the cultural progress of a nation. Toynbee's theory of ,challenge and response" postulates that a culture develops or makes progress if it can make the appropriate response to a challenge. In the terms of this theory, then, dancing can be said to be developing and alive if it can make a positive response to the challenges facing it.

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