dancing

Balinese Dance

May 14, 2012 By Jillian

Balinese dance is a sacred form of artful story telling. From depictions of religious stories to epic tales of the battle between good and evil, Balinese dancing is an intricate part of the country’s cultural heritage. Like other Southeast Asian dance forms, Balinese dance has brightly colored and intricately detailed costumes, make up and gestures. I find the whole experience mesmerizing!

There are a few famous dances: the Barong, Legong and Kecak. Each has it’s own characteristics of movement and characters. The Barong, for example, is named after Barong, a king of the spirits, who resembles a lion. This dance commonly depicts the struggle between Barong and Rangda – the evil queen.

The Legong, the dance of the girls, is performed by girls who have not yet hit puberty. Known for it’s expressive facial expressions, finger movements and very complicated footwork, the dance is somewhat of a pantomime of traditional stories.

Kecak depicts the battle between Prince Rama and King Ravana from the Ramayana. Performed almost exclusively by men, a large group of dancers perform the dance in a circle, chanting and dancing in coordination with each other. Interestingly, despite it’s religious origins – the dance is less than 100 years old!

The picture below is from a Barong and Legong performance in Ubud. I love the fantastical costume of the performer as well as the painstaking detail of the set.

IF YOU GO: Bali is an incredible place for cultural travel. It’s unlikely that you’ll come upon one of these dances in a village, so don’t gawk at booking the experience at a theater for tourists. Ubud is a major art and cultural center so it’s made a name for itself as a stop for a variety of cultural shows, including Balinese dance.

Photo Tuesday: Whirling Dervishes

September 7, 2010 By Jillian

We were shown around Khartoum by a wonderful group of couchsurfers who showed us incredible hospitality and amazing friendship. On Friday evening we went to the Sufi Dance (whirling dervishes) in nearby Omdurman. It was an incredibly intense experience, not only for the believers themselves, but also for us from a cultural point of view.

As the chanting grew louder and louder believers began to move almost as though they were possessed. Completely withdrawn in deep meditation and prayer from the continuous chanting and drumming, a few took to spinning in circles while others began to repeat physical motions, like bobbing their head or throwing up their hands. The man in the picture whirled around the inner circle for several minutes before the prayers and chanting came to an end.

Whirling Dervishes

May 20, 2010 By Jillian

As the taxi pulled up to the gates of the cemetery, we all looked at each other with one thought- this is it? Each Friday evening at the Hamad el-Nil, followers of Sufi Islam perform a chanting ritual, referred to in Western culture as the Sufi dance, or whirling dervishes. But we were in a cemetery. Walking through the desolate and dusty graveyard toward the mosque, we taught our couchsurfing friend Sarah a new English expression- the heebie jeebies. It was really the only way to describe the graveyard experience. A few minutes later we arrived at the mosque where men were already congregating for the ritual.

Forming a large circle in front of the mosque the men began chanting as incense wafted over the group. “Chant leaders” led the feverish men, working them into a frenzy by raising their voices and beating on drums. Soon some of the men began to break from the circle and spin. The holy man, dressed in green with several strands of beads wrapped around his torso jumped and spun around almost lethargically. Entranced in the words of the chant “Allah, Allah, Allah”, most of the men remained in the circle rocking back and forth in a near trance like state.

The ritual lasted about 45 minutes and honestly I can say I’ve seen nothing like it. Slowly spinning, we could see the whites of one man’s eyes as he let the chanting quite literally move him. One man began biting his hand over and over again, which our CS friends told us is not at all uncommon. The chanting and “dancing” of the men in trance was fascinating, they seemed completely controlled by the power of the chanting. It was nothing like the Turkish “whirling dervishes” I’ve seen on TV, very few men actually twirled around, and it seemed at least from outside the circle that the trance like state from the chanting was more significant than the physical movements.

Sufi Dancing or the Whirling Dervishes as we call them in the Western world are a mystical sect of Islam. In Sudan, Sufi Muslims perform the weekly ritual wearing colorful patchwork robes. Some consider the dance one of Islam’s earliest rituals. At the climax of the dance, Sufi’s say they communicate with Allah.

Apparently more relaxed than Sufi dancing in other countries, the Sudanese ritual had a strong effect on the crowd. A few women, not traditionally a part of the ritual, stood behind the circle of men following the chants themselves, while children wandered in and out of the circle spinning. The chanting was haunting; a few days later going through our pictures in the car Ally remarked that she still couldn’t get it out of her head. I think I’ll always remember the fascination of the event, I literally could not take my eyes off of what was going on, it seemed incredibly powerful even from outside the circle.

Hopefully we’ll get the chance to see the Sufi dance again in another country and compare it to what we saw in Khartoum. I’m sure the ritual will be the same, but it was the atmosphere that I can’t seem to get out of my head.

Here are some more pictures, but there are loads more on our flickr site & more video on our youtube channel.

It takes two to tango

October 16, 2009 By Jillian

Our whirlwind adventure in Uruguay ended at 21:31 as the boat pulled away from the dock, but honestly I don’t know when to “start” our Argentine adventure, it certainly didn’t begin on the bumpy boat ride at 21:31. If there is one country we’ve been looking forward to to the most in South America, it has been Argentina. Tango, yerba mate, chocolate and Patagonia, every time we opened the guidebook to Argentina we found another “must do”. Really our adventure started the first time we opened the guidebook and fell in love with our idea of the country.

We had very high expectations of Buenos Aires, but then again, who wouldn’t? Joined by Danny’s parents for a week of beef, tango and shopping, we were excited to finally be there. Called the “Paris of South America”, it truthfully neither feels like Paris or South America. Buenos Aires has it’s own distinct character. You can’t put a finger on it, but it doesn’t feel like Paris, Rome, Madrid or London and yet it feels very European. And then again, you can close your eyes and feel the rhythm and feel only the Latin America. If you go expecting Paris or South America you’ll be disappointed. Buenos Aires is Buenos Aires.

Modern and yet traditional, the city seems to function in a grey area. Grand European architecture sweeps through the older neighborhoods and yet a few blocks away a modern minimalist high rise towers over the old port. Delicious and enormous cuts of steak and yet no sidewalk cafes to be seen. One of the oldest subway systems in the world, still running wooden cars, and modern “art”-chitecture like the women’s bridge. Colorful indigenous patterns and well heeled socialites. At times it felt like being on the streets of Montmartre in Paris; artists, musicians, puppeteers and incredible markets enticing you to spend the day with them while the next moment you’re on a train car with a very vibrant salesman selling gym socks, gum, hooks for the bathroom and toilet paper. It was an incredible confusion of old and new, of European and American cultures clashing together to form this place called “Good Airs.”

So it wasn’t Europe and it wasn’t South America, which in the end was very good. Danny’s mom and I spent countless hours perusing the markets, buying way more than we had space for, but feeling like every purchase was a bargain and very “worth it”. We taste tested the ice cream shops and decided that Volta had better texture but Freddo’s had better flavors. We walked from end to end probably half a dozen times, even getting caught in a never ending thunderstorm before giving up on staying dry and hoofing it back to the apartment. It was a week of delicious food, incredible wine, great shopping, and oh yea some very interesting attempts at Spanish.

Watching the requisite Tango show, which truthfully I was very excited about, I couldn’t help but be intrigued by the dance. Sexy and passionate like meringue or samba and yet so crisp and precise, Argentine Tango is all about the tension. In the span of one song, the dancers fight, they play and they make love. Maybe the dance is more than just a symbol of the city. Maybe the city itself is a tango, a dance of passionate tension.

Balinese Dance

Photo Tuesday: Whirling Dervishes

Whirling Dervishes

It takes two to tango

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