BALI DANCING
Dance and Drama in Bali. By Beryl de Zoete and Walter Spies. (Faber. 3os.)
IT seems certain that, with the possible exception of Tibet, no place in Asia or Africa looms so large in the imagination of contemporary Europeans and Ainericans as the small island of Bali ; it is referred to in numberless films, books and steamship folders ; it is a concept in most people's lives. Apart from the immediate surface beauty of the landscape and the inhabitants— and this beauty is not in fact really much superior to many neighbouring islands—the attraction of Bali would appear to be due to the fact that the Balinese seem to have found a solution to our most urgent problem—the problem of leisure. A fertile soil and clement weather has provided them with the leisure which machinofacture could give us, and they have filled their leisure with-the production and enjoyment of art in its various forms. Of their arts the most spectacular and the most easily accessible to the Occidental is the dance-drama ; and, since the principles which govern their dancing are also applicable in their broader lines to their other art-products, a detailed and scholarly description of their dancing, such as is given in Miss de Zoete and Herr Spies's book is valuable not only for its own sake, but for the indications it can give of the conditions under which art-production and art-appreciation can be native to a community and not, as with us, exotic.
In Bali dancing (and to a great extent the other arts) is immediately and intimately connected with religious cere- monial ; most dances start with, and some culminate with, religious offerings. With very minor exceptions Balinese dancing ii dramatic,- deriving from universally known and accepted mythologies and epics ; but this drama is mostly allusive and symbolical, not naturalistic, Many of the dances contain for the Balinese elements of great emotional value, for they are also rites of -magic and exorcism ; some indeed exorcize doubly, through their magical ritual, and through the laughter they evoke by mocking their deepest fears. Many Balinese dances are traditional, some with a written history of nearly a thousand years ; but they are kept from petrification by the licence allowed to the comic roles, by the continuous incorporation of novel elements, and by the constant invention of new dance-forms (two of the most popular contemporary dances, the Djanger and the Kebyar, only took their present form in the last few years). Balinese dancing is excessively local, no two villages doing the same dance in exactly the same way (the insistence on this point is one of the most valuable aspects of the present book), and this adds to the extraordinary richness of their total repertoire ; one village will have two or three dances or dramatic episodes as their local speciality and will leave other forms unattempted.
The erotic element which is so important in most Polynesian dancing holds practically no place in Bali ; some of the dance- forms have some lyrical passages, but even these are so stylised as to be almost completely unsensual. So unimportant is the sexual element that transvestism is common in many dance-forms and produces, ho feeling of embarrassment in either actor or audience. _Balhiese dancers are professionals, except for mediums and trance-dancers, expertly trained ; they are not, however, usually paid and most of them have an employment by which they earn their living ; but for the greater part of the population dancing is an entertainment ' or ritual to be watched and criticised, not a common exercise to be indulged in ; one of the chief paradoxes of Bali is that, despite their unparalleled development of dance-forms, there is not a single folk-dance, no opportunity for the bulk of the population to achieve those satisfactions which dancing gives to so many other communities, including our own.
• Nearly all the books on Bali which have so far appeared have been to a greater or lesser degree superficial and impressionist, and therefore this full, detailed and painstaking description of Balinese dances and the legends from which they derive is the more welcome. Herr Spies, who is responsible for the collection of much of the material and texts and for the hundred and twelve photographs which make this book a most desirable possession, knows probably, thanks to his long residence in
the island, and his !intimate knowledge of the Balinese and their language, more than any other living person about Bali ; Miss de Zoete, who actually wrote the book, has the authority of a life-time spent studying dancing inside and outside Europe to back her cormiiews -and deicriptions. Their book, is not primarily an ethnological work, though material of immense value to ethnologists can he found in -it, for Miss de Zoete, watches the dances through her own sophisticated and Occi- dental eyes ; we can only try to deduce the- importance of the different dances for the Balinese. What the book does,: provide in great detail are definitions and descriptions of the'i various dance-forms, with their costumes, their legends and their significance. As such, it is the first really thorough description of non-Occidental dancing ever produced and therefore of enormous value in the history of the dance ; and for those who have witnessed or will witness the dances of this Island-which-likes-to-be-visited it . will inevitably enormously enhance some of the strongest aesthetic experiences which the contemporary world is able to provide.
GEOFFREY GORES.
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