My Memorable in Bali and Cultural Beyond Journey Pt. 5

Today we continue to introduce some rare other Legong performing types such as Legong Kelandis, Sada, and Peliatan are the more traditional central. Even they are not well-known to the foreigner, they often perform in many other villages. This video is a sample of the Legong Kelandis performance recorded in Bali. The video credits belong to the owners.

After watching some different Legong repertoire storylines from the previous blog posts, we can see that over fifteen types of Legong Dance have different durations, movements, and narrations. It can be last for an hour. Overall the drama is sophisticated and styled enacts pantomime. The dancers will have a wide collar with crowns and leather. They decorate with fresh flowers and usually have fans in their hands. There are other materials for other role dancers like a bird dancer who wear coated wings. They also daub the dot on the center of their forehead following by their belief in an excellent fortune position. It is easy to do it with white toothpaste.

There is no speaking script for dancers. By the way, the drama expresses more details by singers of the gamelan orchestra band, which is a metallic-instrumental orchestra plays accompanying the Legong Dance. The characteristics of complicated footwork, rapid, tensed arm yet delicate head movements, the often use of expressive eyes, and massive tremble fingers when not holding the fans make the style of Legong Dance more mystic and very rare differs from anywhere else in Asia. It seems to be an almost feverish feeling. Some said it connects to the insect and wild animal movements such as local birds of paradise.

Here I attach the video of the gamelan orchestra performance I come across on YouTube. The video credits belong to the owners.

 

Next time, we will conclude with the influence of Legong dance drama in this modern-day and how to preserve this heritage culture for the next generations.