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Indonesia - Bali is all about ?
The
point of the dance for which every one waits is to mark
the recurring accentuated pause in some particular way,
generally by dropping on both knees. When the dancer
replaces his palm-leaf fan on the corresponding opposite
offering-bowl the person sitting behind it must rise
and do a similar dance. There is a great deal of laughter
at each fresh invention. Some are nervous and hurry
over it as fast as possible. One only walks across brandishing
his fin, to place it on the next bowl. Some dance with
leaps and springs and frantic dashes. A small boy dances
with great grace and skill; an old woman with tripping
steps and wriggling hips and sweet smiles. She gives
the true character of the dance-a Mendet (offering-dance)
parodied. A fat man and a small frisky comic make further
armusing variations. Some anticipate the accent and
are ridiculed.
.
If any cheat by replacing the fan too soon they are
headed off and obliged to begin again. When every offering
has been treated in manner, the ceremony is over. the
medium comes out of trance and is undressed, the women
are sitting again in prayer before the shrine of Surya,
the sun god, under the full moon.
Walter
Spies writes, without describing them, of a number of
unfamiliar Sanghyang ceremonies recently seen in east
Bali. The following notes are taken from his summary
in Dutch of Balinese dances, in the autumn number of
Djawa,
Sanghyang
Panjalin, different from the one mentioned on It is
found In the village of Banjoening in north Bali. A
young girl is brought into trance in the usual way by
song and incense smoke. A choir of male and female singers
sit in rows facing other, and the Sanghyang dances between
them upon rattan rods. The mariner of her dancing is
not described.
Sanghyany Tpleng, in the villages of Pasarom and Doeda
in east Bali. A man, decorated with black sugar-palin
fibre, dances through the village on all fours to represent
a pig (TIdeno), accompanying himself by grunts.
Sanghyang
Memedi. This form is mentioned by earlier writers, for
instance van der Tuuk. The dancers were brought into
trance by the smoke of horse-dung and when in trance
carried some of the spectators to the graveyard and
laid them down there, apparently to the accompaniment
of filthy language. But another Sanghyang Memea still
survives in north Bali, in a ward of Singaradja, in
which a boy, sitting in the middle of a male choir,
is brought into trance by the smoke of rice-chaff. Memedi
is the name of an invisible spook which steals children
(cf. the orang boeman of Sumatra).
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