Story of Bali, Indonesia

It is significant of the orientation of interest in Gamboeh that this is the entry most frequently omitted; it depends also, of course, on the supply of girl-dancers in the neighborhood; if they are forthcoming it can be one of the most decorative features. I remember an occasion on which the Gamboeh opened with a procession of the attendants of the princess, all in file, in a brilliant stream up the floor. They wore Legong crowns and were extremely elegant in every detail of their dress.

The tjondong was danced by a boy with the most wonderful flexibility and lightness, flying like a feather over the ground, and alternating amazingly rapid steps and rushing movements like a little wind, with very slow, deep bendings. The four small girls wove enchanting patterns, sometimes in a close circle round the tjondong; always with much dipping and rising, so smooth that they seemed to float above the ground rather than to be dancing on it. They used their hands with mysterious delicacy. The perfume of their flowery crowns, continually fluttering in sideways movements of the neck, was heavy on the air. The lifting of the four small voices together to greet their mistress was most strange and lovely.

The princess was danced by a slightly older, very beautiful girl, whose fingers moved with such extraordinary subtlety that a hand became quite a dazzling vehicle of expression., She renewed the pattern with her attendants in excited alternations of quick and slow, as if a stream suddenly gushed out, or a spirit entered into them. They formed their figures so rapidly that they were like the flying shadows of clouds or flowers. They all went out singing in procession.

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