Legong Dance. Documents from 1930's and a modern performance in Ubud, Bali.

"As the archetype of the delicate and feminine, the legong is the finest of Balinese dances. Connoisseurs discuss the comparative excellence of various legongs as intensely as we discuss our dancers, and I have heard solemn arguments among princes as to wether the group of Bedulu was finer than that of Saba, or the school of Sukawati superior to that of Badung"

Miguel Covarrubias.(1)

Learning Legong. Photo by Rose Covarrubias.(1930)

No doubt, legong is the most famous of all Balinese dances. Although not the most spectacular or dramatic, it is the most beautiful and most prominent for the fineness of its movements and has become the representative image of Bali and its performing arts: the image of the little beautiful graceful dancer wearing a dramatic headdress, her body twisting and seemingly about to fall, while her gaze is turned sideways and her hands' fingers making movements impossible to imitate.

Balinese historians already identify it as a recognizable style since 1811. According to some mythical Balinese stories legong dance was born as a prototype of dance and music, that is, it was with it that these arts were created. (2)

When Covarrubias visited Bali in the 1930's, legong had already quite established itself as the first Balinese dance, and our Mexican explorer never failed to express his wonder about what he saw in it; he explores, moreover, its origin, and also tells us that the structure and movements of legong may originate in shadow theater, the Wayang kulit, as an attempt by humans to imitate the way stories were told with puppets in shadows (3). If this theory were true then Balinese dance would have the same origin than Chinese traditional theater or Chinese opera (4).

Covarrubias does a descriptive study of the costume and headdress of legong dancers, plus a full plate of the basic positions of the choreography.

Illustraded notes about the costume and headdress of the legong dancer in M. Covarrubias's diary. (5)

Plate with illustrations of body postures in legong dance. M. Covarrubias. (6)

Some of the most beautiful paintings by Covarrubias were inspired on legong dance; the beauty of the figure of the dancer was more than fascinating and he translated it into ink and watercolor (I can not say whether into oil as well).

Video: "Dressing the dancer", a painting by Miguel Covarrubias at ARMA Museum, Ubud.

"Legong Performance under Bayan Tree" painting by Miguel Covarrubias.

"Legong Dancer" watercolour by Miguel Covarrubias.

"Kneeling Legong Dancer with Headdress" watercolour by Miguel Covarrubias.

And, of course, Miguel also left us a filmed document of the dance itself in performance. The extract published here is part of an edition of early 2000, narrated in English with texts extracted from Covarrubias's book Island of Bali:

Miguel Covarrubias. Film Document about a legong performance at the village of Saba, Bali, 1932.

Rose Covarrubias, wife of the Mexican artist and a dancer herself, in turn devoted herself to photographically document the different types of legong dance and, thanks to her, we have dozens of photographs on the subject during that period (1930-1932). Here I show some which were published in Island of Bali. These photographs (and of course the film footage) are fantastic examples of how tradition keeps movements and postures almost intact during the years.

(Please, notice that you can click on each photograph and see it in a larger size.)

Legong dance photos, by Rose Covarrubias.

Finally, I share what I saw at the performance at Ubud Royal Palace in July 2009, Legong Kraton (or Keraton). The photographs are very interesting, showing some of the physical postures and various stills of eye and hand movements; I think they portray the strength of the projection of the dancers on stage. The video, however, is very short, I had problems with the camera and recorded only a few moments, but it's worth watching.

Slideshow of Legong Kraton dance performance at Ubud Royal Palace (Bali 2009)

Video: Legong Kraton dance at Ubud's royal palace (Bali, 2009)

(1) Island of Bali. Miguel Covarrubias.

(2) Balinese Dance, Drama and Music. A Guide to the Performing Arts of Bali. I Wayan Dibia and Rucina Ballinger.

(3) Island of Bali. Miguel Covarrubias. Page 228.

(4) See my post on Chinese funerary puppets and the origin of traditional Chinese theatre:

http://gustavothomastheatre.blogspot.com/2010/02/approaching-to-origin-of-chinese.html

(5) Covarrubias in Bali. Adriana Williams and Yu-Chee Chong. EDM, Singapore. Pages 130, 131.

(6) Island of Bali. Miguel Covarrubias. Illustration.

Legong Dance Lessons at ARMA in UBUD, and some thoughts about Theatre Schools in China and Bali.

Nyoman Suastini Legong teacher teaching at the ARMA Museum in Ubud. Bali, 2009.

When I was a child, there was a lot of possibilities for fun in the field of art, but only two were taken as seriously as the beginning of a career in piano or ballet. Those were not entertaining games where doodling or playing with dough became art, there you were going to study something with discipline, you would use a technique, a particular technique, to advance, a technique which, if you didn't follow within certain parameters, you could be rejected . So, not wanting to be a pianist or a dancer I amused myself by painting and wanting to be an actor, pretending to direct orchestras, writing melodramatic dialogues and organising theatre plays among my friends say, at a very high level of improvisation and fun.

It was not until my teens that, when beginning professional acting studies, I discovered I could have started my acting career in my childhood, with the same seriousness as that in ballet or music, but not in my country but in the Far East. The stories of the wonderful Chinese and Japanese players came to my ears: great actors who began their studies at 6 or 7 years old and spent 10 or 15 years working with their masters to attain their first important role in a production; actors who learned a physical and vocal technique not through exercises as such, but through the "imitation" of their master (1). And so I also discovered how this educational process in the performing arts was a common situation in India, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam and, of course, Bali, the theatre island or, rather, the island of the performing arts.

China showed me the first live examples of these "serious" schools for children where there is no way to achieve perfection but through discipline and following for years a rigorous technique of imitation and repetition from the beginning. I could observe and see not only how these children were being educated, but also their results on stage after 8 to 10 years of study (before they began their professional life), and then I could understand why the technical grandeur of these actors in their youth (in their twenties and thirties). In the same way and through the direct testimony of young artists who had just entered the professional world I could hear their questioning of such a rigorous and cruel education which, in today's China, would give them a profession would that barely cover for their minimum financial needs when, in the past, it would have given them wealth and fame (2).

Video 1: presentation of a training at a Peking Opera school

Video 2: presentation of acrobatic skills of the Peking Opera school.

(click to go to the video)

Reuters' photographs of children being educated in the Peking Opera school.

(click on the link above to go to the main page of Reuters)

Video 3: Annual Function of the Peking Opera school. Beijing, 2007

Unlike their Japanese and Chinese counterparts, Balinese artistic education is much more relaxed; the same principles of imitation, repetition and practice are followed, as well as the beginning of education from early childhood, but not so the tremendous discipline demands (like boarding-schools, between 10 and 12 hours of practical study, etc.) nor the violence by which several great masters of the north are known. In Bali itself children are still taught to dance and act for the Balinese, for their religious festivals and temples, for their entertainment and for the tourists who support the economy of the island, all in the same way as Miguel Covarrubias observed and filmed in the 30s of the last century.

Learning in the Balinese performing arts is a learning based on physical contact. Most of the dancers-actors begin their learning between 6 and 7 years old. At first, the student stands behind the teacher and imitates his movements. The teacher sings the melody of the dance, or uses a boom box, and follows the beat of the gongs marking a pace and giving directions based on that rhythm. Once the choreography is learned in its basic, the teacher changes and moves on par with the student, behind him, and manages the student body like a puppet. This allows the student to feel exactly the inclinations and movements of the wrists and elbows, plus the position of the back and hip. No mirrors are used, so the student follows by imitating the teacher or the teacher moves the student's body to show through physical contact the total energy and rhythm to be danced. With his voice, if that's the case, the student imitates the singing or recitation of the teacher.

In 1930 Covarrubias filmed a couple of girls learning and dancing together with their teachers. In the tiny scene (20 seconds) we can see direct imitation where the teacher handles the trainee like a puppet, and repetition is a component of teaching (the narrator's voice was added in 2004 and is not part of the original).

Video: Covarrubias film about Legong classes. Bali, 1930.

In the following two pictures we see I Ketut Mario, one of the greatest Balinese dancers and choreographers from the twenties and thirties of the twentieth century, and I Nyoman Kakul, in 1974, teaching their respective students. It is very clear how physical contact between teacher and pupil happens.

Master I Ketut Mario (1927)

Master I Nyoman Kakul (1974)

In my last visit to Bali in July 2009 I photographed and video-recorded a class at the ARMA Museum in Ubud, where the teacher, Nyoman Suastini, was working on a Legong Kratong piece with a group of girls; once again we note here the continuous practice, repetition and imitation of the movements of the teacher.

Video Legong dance classes in Arma Museum Ubud. Bali, 2009.

I do not pretend to explain the education in oriental performing arts, but to stress, by exposing them in a document, some of their essential characteristics and thus bring the reader of this blog closer to them. The differences with my personal educational experience in the field of acting are extreme, and I'm sure they are so when it comes to the educational experience of actors in most of the Western world, hence the importance of their presenting as a document. Once exposed we can pose questions, with knowledge, to our educational systems for theater, and propose possible changes to them, new avenues of exploration, or simply an enjoyment of what seems part of the weird and unknown.

Following with my experience in Bali, I can now turn to the surprising dances that I witnessed at the Royal Palace of Ubud.

(1) The film "Farewell My Concubine" has a very long and accurate sequence on the demanding education in Peking Opera in the late nineteenth century. In the following link you can see some images of drawings that show a school of Peking opera in the early twentieth century:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQ-rRPH2R5c

(2) This is one of the greatest cultural challenges in today's China, the glorification of western entertainment culture at the expense of their traditional culture. (Until the late forties of the twentieth century Peking opera was as commercial as any other current entertainment, but at present it is only a theatrical vestige of the past).