My Memorable in Bali and Cultural Beyond Journey Pt. 2

In my long-time previous post on this blog, I mentioned Bali's travel experience with traditional music and dance performance. But because it was a long time I had not write on this blog, so I want to re-arrange my journey diaries into the documentary article style that they will not fade away in the mood no matter how many times go. To that point, I must research the origin of Legong dance, and then we can move on to other parts I have told you about before in the previous time.

Indonesia, the archipelago country of many ten thousand islands, has known for its diverse cultures and ethnicities. Bali is one of its very distinctive destinations. Due to the root of the religion, here is Hinduism. That's in contrast to the Muslims on the other islands. Balinese has developed their traditional art and believing in every part of life. Since the culture of Bali begins to introduce worldwide. The most recognized icon of the island is the picture of the young girls dancing in the traditional pattern with the sweet gamelan sound. The well-known Balinese conventional dance the visitors must encounter here. It calls the "Legong Dance."

"Legong" is the best-known contemporary Balinese dance drama. The word itself comes from two separate words, "leg," which means the dancer's legs, and "gong," which means gamelan sound. So the name is the dance of the legs movements that incorporate with the sounds of gong gamelan that hit in the interval rhythms. Consists of three girls by classical Balinese female dance. While the origin is unclear, they said that it originated in the 19th century for royal dancing. When a prince of Sukawati fell ill and had a dream of two maidens danced with gamelan music, after recovered, so he arranged to make a portrayed dance to that dream in reality.

The latter assumption, said Legong, originated from the older Balinese traditional trance dance, which imitates animal movements. The older original version is the holy ceremony use only version involving spirit possession to the two dancers with the longer part. Then they cut out to the later version for public performance as Legong Dance.

Legong had performed by young boys, but they moved to re-choreography for young girls instead, by the royal command. The dancers must consist of girls who still purely virgins. They would serve as Legong dancers until puberty. But today, the Legong mainly perform by virgin adult women in front of the tourist groups.

I mentioned in the previous first part that here that there are many tales for Legong Dance drama. At this time, they could record to have more than fifteen different stories in this repertoire. The dancers perform to the tourists refer to dance for entertaining purposes. In comparison, some storytelling keeps performing in the holy ceremony at the temple only. Some intend to use it for the ceremony festival of the island as a semi-scared dance. The most famous story arc generates from East Java and Ramayana's Indian epic with the Balinese Hindu culture.

The one from Ramayana calls Legong "JOBOG" or monkey kings. It is the story about the two kings who turn into monkeys by the cause of powerful magic. The story continues when the monkeys forget their old identities and fight together, bringing a later sad end.

Another storyline calls Lasem, also from Ramayana, is about a Majapahit King. However, it only focuses on the little part of the whole tale: King Lasem kidnapped Princess Rangka Sari, who fell in love with Prince Panji. They come to take the battle to win her heart. But the king encountered the gigantic bird that tried to rescue the princess and killed it, which led to the following events for the kings to lose the battle to Prince Panji.

Today we are introduced to the two first famous Legong storylines. So many Legong drama storylines are used to perform in Bali nowadays, including the famous one of Caronarang story edited version for travelers, which I mentioned before. I will re-write about them in each episode next time soon. So don't miss rechecking my blog.

P.S. Some pictures and YouTube videos I used in this post have all been credited, and all copyright belongs completely to their holders!