Visitors to Ubud usually end up at a temple dance. By that I don’t mean dressing sexy and grinding on the dance floor, I mean watching Balinese people perform traditional Balinese dances. On the main street, Jl. Raya Ubud, touts are out all day long, catching flies. I’ve never gone for it before, as I’ve always managed to see Balinese dances for free in villages around the island. Last night my friends were thinking about going for it, so I went along. There are many dances, but the one we saw was at the Ubud Palace at 7.30pm.
It was billed as a ‘Legong Trance & Paradise Dance’. The location was about 50 meters from my friends hotel, so it wasn’t a hard decision. Entrance fee was 50,000rp and inside the courtyard, plastic chairs were arranged in rows, around a low stage, that led to the entrance to the middle courtyard. Temple dances are usually performed in the outer courtyard.
The dance schedule was a bit of a nasi campur kind of deal, starting off with a priest blessing 2 female dancers, who did a ‘trabce dance’ eventually falling into the arms of their male helpers. That was followed by a
selection of dances including a Barong dance, the scary lion-like Barong doing battle with the forces of evil, taken fro mthe Hindu epic, the Mahabharata.
One of the funny things was before the dances began, an old Balinese lady came round selling soft drinks and beer. I bought us all a Bintang for 8,000rp.
In one dance close to the end, 6 female dancers performed, att least 3 of them packing some pounds, one could not fit entirely in the sarong that was wrapped around her waist. Are Balinese getting chunky like ‘bules’?
The best dancer was actually a man, pretending to be a girl. This guy came out like Bruce Lee and moved with cat-like flexibility. His dance went on for 10 minutes and involved him playing along with the gamelan orchestra on kettle drums. I was totally impressed and he gave a little speech afterwards in English and Japanese. Years of training, all displayed 10 minutes.
The dance lasted maybe 90 minutes and was a nice length. I thought attending a dance in Ubud was worth it and would be interesting for most people.
