Recently we learned to do this Banlinese chant/dance in my World Music Cultures class. It was pretty sweet. It seems a little creepy when you don't know what's going on, but the story behind it and the purpose for the chant is actually quite cool. This chant takes elements from the Sanghyang ceremony, which is where a couple young girls fall into a trance (which makes them open to influence from the Gods), and then they dance in unrehearsed perfect synchronicity. This being a sacred ritual, it's couldn't very well be filmed. In the 1930's when tourism in Bali started picking up it's pace, a film called Insel der Dämonen (nice name, right?) was made about Bali. Because you don't want to film sacred rituals, they created this chant/dance called Kecak, which took elements from the Sanghyang and other Balinese dances. Although it didn't originate as part of Balinese culture, this dance caught on and is now very common . It became associated with a story from the Ramayana.
If you've seen A Little Princess, then you know that Ravana (sp?) kidnapped Rama's (one of the head Hindu god figures) wife, Sita. She refused to be his wife because 1) she's already married and 2) " no, you're gross, you have ten heads", which he did. Ravanah was angry, and was going to take her to wife anyway, but Rama was on his way to rescue her. Rama enlists the help of Hannuman, a monkey with lots of super powers. Hannuman finds Sita, but he cannot rescue her because it is ultimately Rama's destiny to rescue Sita, and Hannuman can't get in the way of destiny! So Rama also enlists the help of an army of monkeys (these one's don't have super powers). These monkeys begin to chant the Kecak in order to make all evil spirits depart. It's a chant for protection. Then Rama goes off and destroys Ravana with a flaming arrow.
Now this dance is interesting, because although it might seem like haphazard syllables, it's actually a very precise pattern. It's a circular pattern which is important because in Balinese culture, it is believed that evil spirits travel in straight lines, like bullets. This is why the doorways in Bali, have a wall directly in front of them, so that you have to walk around the wall to get in. Evil spirits are not smart enough to do this. So this circular pattern is what confuses the evil spirits and makes them go away. The power is in your fingers, and that's why you see a whole lot of spirit fingers going on, and when you put spirit fingers on your knees, where do you think the power goes? You get to bounce arond on the floor in cross-legged fashion. The movement of the fingers is very important in Balinese dance. In fact, their dance doesn't stress the movement of limbs, the way it does here, but is so detailed as to have 22 specific choreographed eye-movements, but that's a topic for another time (like tomorrow, when I take a test on this stuff). Anyway, this dance is so much fun to do, particularly when you do it in a glass classroom and get to see the priceless faces of the confused passersby.
1 comment:
haha oh wow. i don't even know what else to say. crazy stuff.
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