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She
is conveyed away, and the troop of spear-dancers advance
in a sidelong movement towards the gamelan pointing
their lances, then kneel in front of the offerings.
The Boris head-dress and the Bird's are laid upon the
offerings. The pemangkoe prays over a chicken, which
he holds up by its open wings, and gives at last to
a man in the front of the kneeling group of dancers,
who bites its head o He is given water in a banana-leaf
and held over the fire, and falls back in a sort of
momentary trance.
They all rise and lean their lances against the bal4;
then kneel outside the temple gateway and remove the
flowers from their crowns, praying over each flower
as they throw it away.
One
almost feels, so perplexed is his air, that he was all
the time searching for this magic syllable to put an
end to the babel, and now at last has hit on the right
combination.
Song and tjak numbers alternate, each song being sung
first in its esoteric form, and again in its so called
interpretation. The multiplicities of concerted movements
performed by the boys are also many times repeated.
At first one is astounded by the ingenuity of the counterpoint,
even within one row. But one soon begins to feel that
their prodigious syncopations and vertiginous accelerandos
and rallentando would be still more effective if reduced
to half their actual length. Before half-time two of
the girls who are going to take part in the Ardja episode
to which the Djanger is a prelude, stand up and do a
dance in the style of Legong. They then go out and dress,
eat sirih, drink coconut, etc., and return as characters
of the play. A favorite episode is Arjuna Vivaha, in
which the two dancers will be the Vidyadharis or heavenly
nymphs who are sent by the gods to entice Arjuna out
of his meditation, the Daaa acting as his penasar or
vizir
Or
it may be a scene from the Bharata Yuddha or a Javanese
or Balinese romance. The Djanger continues during this
scene as a muted background of movement, often beautiful
in its effect; the almost imperceptible vibration of
the girls, the spell weaving of the boys, as they rock
slightly to and fro with hands in perpetual motion,
and an occasional low cry or accent, forming a vivid
frame for the action. it was no doubt to make Djanger
more interesting that it became thus connected with
Ardja; partly because Ardja can be modem as well as
classical, partly because the elementary gamelan of
Djanger, percussion, flute, and drums, resembles that
of Ardja. Neither, as we have seen, had originally any
instrumental accompaniment.
But Djanger, which has as respectable a religious origin
as any dance in Bali, has been caught up in the train
of the Malay opera, and made to serve as a frame for
a curious Oriento European bastard known as Stamboel,
which has introduced various very 'modeeran' features
to the Balinese stage, stockings, football shorts, and
jerseys, spectacles, the reach-me-down with all its
accessories ... mufflers, ties, shirt-studs, etc.
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