A Baris Tunggal Dance Performance at Ubud Royal Palace, Bali.

For more information on Balinese baris dances, see my previous post on the subject:

http://gustavothomastheatre.blogspot.com/2010/03/baris-gede-dance-and-baris-bedil.html

We have no description by Covarrubias about this type of baris dance because it was not until the mid-twentieth century (Covarrubias visited Bali in the 1930s) that baris tunggal started being danced. The Baris tunggal dance is a deployment of skills and artistic brilliance, it uses all Balinese war dances' codified movements and develops them into a solo performance where the dancer exposes them in as an impressive as the codes of the dance allow. That is why this dance is one of the most beloved in the repertoire of the Balinese and is never lacking in performances for tourists and presentations abroad.

The performance of the tunggal baris dance was part of the dance event (with 8 different dances in total) I saw at the Ubud Royal Palace on July 2, 2009.

Seeing a very young dancer (sometimes the women dance, but this time it was a man) of relatively short stature grow before my eyes during the course of the choreography and project a strength and weight that would be considered proper of mature dancers made me remember (as always in any eastern theater performance) the principles of Theatre Anthropology and in particular the very interesting study by Patricia Carmona "La percepción del espectador": movements and postures based on anthropological principles of the scene, where the body acquires a measure beyond the ordinary and overcomes all its limitations when it begins its creative activity, doing something which for the viewer is "extra-ordinary" and remaining that way forever in spectator's memory.

Like all warrior dances, baris tunggal has some primitive structure that can be recognized in a kind of marking of territory and the exhibition of power through the enlargement of the body-warrior figure-dancer, enlargement that is achieved through the managing of clothing, arms and feet.

On the other hand, the baris tunggal has a unique characteristic, a degree of improvisation, an improvisation in a clear oriental style, where the movements are physical actions that the dancer links as a chain of actions ( an individual montage) depending on the situation or on his creative state. In this sense there is a close relationship between the musicians playing the drum, the ugal (the Balinese xylophone) and the dancer: the musicians watch the movements and changes in the choreography and which the dancer flags with precise signals. They are phrases that the music makes together with movements and, prompted by the change indicated by the dancer so do the phrases (music and choreography) change and are thus recognized by all participants.

Slideshow tunngal baris dance performance at Ubud Royal Palace. Bali, 2009.

A video is probably not the best way to experience it, but it is the closest to share it to those who couldn’t be there. In any case I should clarify that when I see the performance anew through the video, I felt a loss in power of what I would call energy bursts and which the spectator perceives through a movement of the eyes or through a surprise impulse in the movement of the dancer's body, a dramatic projection which, nevertheless, a keen eye recognizes because they are clearly marked in the choreography.

I do not know the name of the dancer and he's probably not one of the stars of Balinese theatre, but the technique of his movement and his mastery offer what I call "assured stage quality”, something that is intrinsic to most of the traditional codified eastern theatre and even to western codified techniques such as ballet (through the body) and opera (through voice): it is watching a performance with actors (dancers or singers) who have been trained for years to make these movements on stage exactly as they must be done; it's an assurance of technical quality.

It’s 9 minutes long, I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Video of tunggal baris performance at the Ubud Royal Palace

(Bali, July 2009)

Picasso is painting... One way to understand "acting creation" through a physical action chain.

Teatro Potlach

More than 15 years ago Teatro Potlach, from Italy, visited Mexico City to offer some master classes and courses about their technical work.

At that time I was working for “Escenología” and I was part of the small company that Edgar Ceballos, the director, was preparing and which never made it to its first performance (1).

Everything around us was about physical actions, from Grotowski’s point of view as well from Theatre Anthropology’s views researched at I.S.T.A. (International School of Theatre Antrophology) (2), so these series of courses and master classes were very important for our development.

Teatro Potlach, Pino di Buduo (their director) and their actresses exhibited a concrete example of what our work could be in the future but, even more important, they were a reference point for a total comprehension of that technique we were trying to assimilate.

Creating physical actions, editing the line of actions, understanding the dramatic chain inside the line of actions by the player (the creator), those were really difficult points to comprehend; in general, practicing and working with details is the solution, but examples were absolutely necessary. So, how did Teatro Potlach show those points within a 1 hour master class?

At one point, one of the actresses called our attention; after showing in many acting ways the creation process of physical actions and how they become a chain of actions and a final story on stage, she decided to use a final example which comprised all the points in synthesis, an example that didn’t come from Theater but from Art: a singular scene from the documentary “Le Mystère Picasso”.

"Le Mystère Picasso" (DVD, Chinese version)

That scene showed us Picasso painting live before the camera and creating a painting in a minimal lapse of time: 5 minutes. We observed the development of creating a piece of art, in actions (in this case painting actions) which exemplified that chain of actions we were trying to understand before. The painter had many levels of creation, every one apparently independent from each other but inevitably connected: Picasso first painted three sunflowers, after that and over it a fish, after that and over it a cock, finally adding colour over all the images depicted before arriving to the conclusive figure, a Picasso painting.

That final figure was a result of each one of the others, step by step, but in the end, who couldn’t watch the process could only see the end result, the final figure, the final story.

Those 5 minutes were decisive for my professional activity, Picasso, as a genious, taught me, by creating, how every action could be woven with others to finally create the story we were looking for. Since that moment I’ve just continued exploring my way of weaving actions, literary actions, physical actions, image-actions. Picasso and his process are still working in my memory.

Well, after more than 15 years of my seeing this documentary at the old “Escuela de Bellas Artes” in Mexico, I found this video on sale inside a Chinese shop. I couldn’t resist sharing it, so you can use those images as you wish.

If you are interested in the whole documentary, a simple “google search” will direct you to Amazon or any other dedicated site. (3)

niveles creativos, cadenas de acciones... from Gustavo Thomas on Vimeo.

"Le Mystère Picasso"
A film produced and directed by H.G. Clouzot
With: Pablo Picasso
Paris, France, 1956.

(1) Escenología... that company didn’t become a reality, but the experiences we lived there formed an epoch in my life. Escenología must be a pretext for many posts in this Blog.
(2) For information about I.S.T.A. visit: http://www.odinteatret.dk/ista/ista.htm
(3) About the documentary:
http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-mystery-of-picasso/