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What Indonesia - Bali is all about ?

They tear in and march rapidly rounds, dividing into two files, and go through a lightning series of drill-formations with jerking necks and shoulders, so that their great leather bibs swing to and fro, their loose hair flops, and their fringed epaulettes beat wildly up and down like the fully, ineffectual wings bf chickens. They massage their stomachs, they rock to and fro, they create an atmosphere of frantic agitation: o beh! beh-o! Dinga dinga ding djanger-er! They build groups on shoulders in various shapes, one perhaps resembling a Tjandi bentar. Certain of the Djanger boys' movements such as the beating of one fist in the palm of the other hand, the shooting up sideways of fluttering hands as if snatching accents out of the air, a circular swaying from the hips and ecstatic vibration of arms and bodies, remind one of certain South Sea group-dances; there are some movements borrowed from the stylized fight known as Pentjak, while the acrobatic towers and the quick march round with swinging arms are copied no doubt from Malay comedy or the circus. It is not very important to define their origin more closely.

Djanger has, no doubt, borrowed from right and left, without discrimination, and has imposed the unity of a patchwork quilt on the heterogeneous fragments. Sometimes one is reminded of action-games or the mechanically metrical precision of chorus girls, though with an intensity which the latter entirely lack; for the complicated evolutions of the rocking, swaying, gesticulating rows of boys who in spectral undertones or fiercely syncopated syllables accompany the melody of the swaying girls are performed in an atmosphere of frantic agitation.
The girls now enter in two files, the solo male dancer, the Daag, between them. They move round slowly and gracefully, then sink smoothly to the ground between their folded knees, and remain in this position during the whole performance, rising and falling and leaning to either side in smooth unbroken motion, their eyes darting quick glances, their hands weaving a pattern perpetually punctuated with swift, discreet accent

And all the time their song, whose parent was the Sanghyang song, rises and falls with them. The Daag takes his place in the centre of the square between the rows of girls and the hectic rows of boys, who now sit cross-legged facing each other, and never cease their syncopated accompaniment of syllables and ejaculating limbs. He does a kind of miming
dance, crouching on the ground or rising to full kneeling height, and gradually shifting round so that he faces each side of the square in turn. In spite of his splendid dress and commanding appearance he has a bewildered air as if he were registering astonishment at the organized tumult around him. Occasionally a particularly frantic movement will drive him to his feet; from time to time he will -emit a prolonged cry, 'DA-A-AG!' which breaks discordantly against the song of the choir and is the signal for a general pause


 

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