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At the Ganesha dance class, two 15year-old girls from the village demonstrated some of the techniques that make Balinese dancing so compelling — intense facial expressions, rhythmic head-bobbing and fluid hand movements. There are other traditional dances around the world — the Ukrainian hopak comes to mind — that may be more acrobatic, but few are as pleasingly graceful and exquisite.
That’s not to say, though, that being agile and dexterous isn’t an asset. In addition to mastering some pretty tricky head and foot movements, Balinese dancers can contort their fingers in ways that make Mr. Spock’s Vulcan salute seem pedestrian.
“It’s all about practice,” said Ni Luh Gede Suryatini, assistant manager of the Ganesha Cultural Center. “You need to start learning from a very young age.”
Some Balinese dances are like watching a play with a plot line. When the plot calls for it, facial expressions can involve eye-bulging and scary snarls. Other dances — based on humorous stories — can veer toward slapstick.
“We have dances about war, we have dances about love, we have dances about how to welcome our guests,” Suryatini said. “That determines the expressions of our dancers.”
That evening, I enjoyed a performance in the courtyard of the Four Seasons’ Hindu temple, which has its own resident pemangku, a Balinese priest who blesses visitors and demonstrates Hindu rituals.
Backed by an eight-piece, percussionheavy band playing traditional instruments, a group called Teba Banjar from Jimbaran village performed five classical dances in brightly colored costumes and intricate gold headdresses.
The Ganesha Cultural Center offers classes in other traditional art forms, including woodcarving, ceramic painting and weaving. There’s also a class on how to make a canang, a small palm-leaf basket Balinese people use to present daily offerings — such as candy, coins and flowers — to the gods. The Four Seasons returns all proceeds from the cultural center to the local artists.
Day trip, travel tips
I also took a day trip to Ubud, a town in central Bali that is considered the spiritual and cultural center of the island. Full of art galleries, spiritual healers and meditation centers, its vibe is somewhat evocative of Sedona. It even has a popular spa named Sedona. Part of the 2010 movie “Eat Pray Love,” which chronicled writer Elizabeth Gilbert’s quest for inner peace and starred Julia Roberts, was filmed in Ubud.
There are no direct flights to Bali from the United States, but there are easy connections to Denpasar, Bali’s largest city, from Asian hubs such as Hong Kong, Tokyo and Singapore. Balinese food is flavorful, spicy and reasonably priced. Unlike in India, which practices a different strain of Hinduism, beef is on the menu in many Bali restaurants.
When Bali first began attracting significant numbers of tourists in the 1930s, Indonesia was a Dutch colony. Many visitors came to experience a culture with a diverse mixture of Chinese, Polynesian, Indian and European roots that was unlike any other in the world.
Nearly a century later, more than 3 million tourists visit Bali each year. The hotels are far ritzier and the traffic is in a seemingly perpetual state of gridlock. But tourists still come for the same reasons. That’s why Suryatini said it’s vital that the culture is preserved through dance and art.
“We know the tourists are coming to Bali because of its culture” Suryatini said. “If we don’t save this culture from now on, who will do it?”
Dan Fellner is a freelance travel writer and faculty associate at Arizona State University. He currently is teaching at Bali’s Ngurah Rai University through the U.S. State Department’s Fulbright Specialist program. Visit his website, Global-Travel-Info.com.
Bali Tourism Board:
www.balitourismboard.org. www.fourseasons.com/jimbaranbay.