Exploring parallels in dance and rituals: Balinese artiste I Wayan Dibia brings Bali to Bengaluru

Through the Bali in Bengaluru festival, Bengaluru audiences will see a variety of Balinese performing arts. For this festival, Geoks Art Space, Gianyar, Bali, is bringing a good mix of Balinese music and dances, shadow puppets and kecak. These forms will be presented by a group of selected, professionally trained dancers and musicians, as well as the puppet master. Along with these, local audiences will have a chance to see the making process of the arts through workshops.

For this festival, I have prepared not only some special dances and choreographies but also some musical compositions using a larger gamelan ensemble, as well as a shadow puppet play. We are bringing senior and experienced performers (dancers, musicians and puppeteers) and I myself will also dance in the program.

In my opinion, Balinese and Indian classical dances have some similarities as well as differences. In terms of techniques, both dances have an open-knee position, use very elaborate hand movements and lively facial expressions. The concept of three folded parts of the body (tri bangga or tri angga) is also applied in both dances. The main difference between the two, in my opinion, is the use of mudra. While in Indian classical dances mudras are strictly used, in Balinese dances we use no mudra. In fact, in Balinese dance, hand movements are individual; they are based on the tastes of the dancers. Both classical dances have a strong religious background and they use the Ramayana and Mahabharata epics as their main dramatic resources.

Since 1971, through the International Ramayana Festival in Bali, Indonesia, I have been intrigued by kathakali. Later on, during my studies at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), I had the chance to study some basic movements of bharatanatiyam. In addition, I was also exposed to odishi and kathak. Since 2016, I have collaborated with famous Indian dancers and choreographers — Lata Pada in Toronto, Canada to produce Pralaya Dance Theatre in 2016, with an odishi dancer, Pompi Poul, to produce The Cry of Sita in 2022 and with Aravinth Kumarasamy of Apsara Dance Company, Singapore to produce a dance theatre, Arisi Rice in 2022. While Balinese dance forms are known in some circles in India, their popularity is limited — how would you like to change that? I strongly believe in the power of workshops and lecture demos on Balinese performing arts or establishing art and cultural exchanges between Bali and India or making Bali-India collaborations, to open the local audience’s eyes to the beauty of Balinese performing arts as well as to increase the local audience‘s understanding of Balinese art and culture.