subject: The Kecak Dance Of Bali Island [print this page] Kecak Dance is one of Balis traditional dances which Bali luxury villas guests and tourists seen perform on Galungan, the biggest Hindus holiday, at Pura (temple) Luhur Ulu Watu, up on a cliff at the most southern part of the island.
A form of Balinese dance and music drama, Kecak is originated in the 1930s Bali and is performed primarily by men; although, there were a few women's kecak groups that exist as of 2006.
Also known as the Ramayana Monkey Chant, Kecak Dance can be seen by Bali villas resort guests being also performed by a circle of 50 to150 or more performers wearing checked cloth around their waists, percussively chanting the sound "cak, cak, cak ..." This depicts a battle from the Ramayana where the monkey-like Vanara helped Prince Rama fight the evil King Ravana. Therefore, the spoken chorus dancers are considered similar to a monkey sound, then the foreign tourists often refer to this dance as "Mongkey Dance".
With roots in sanghyang, a trance-inducing exorcism ritual dance accompanied by male chorus, Kecak Dance is said to be the creation of a famous Balinese dancer, I Wayan Limbak, and a German painter, Walter Spies, the 1930's.
Becoming deeply interested in the ritual while living in Bali in the 1930s, German painter and musician Walter Spies had worked to recreate it into a drama, based on the Hindu Ramayana and including dance, intended to be presented to Western tourist audiences like the many guests of the many private villas in Bali.
As Spies worked with Wayan Limbak, Limbak then popularized the dance by traveling throughout the world with Balinese performance groups. With Limbaks travels, these helped to make the Kecak famous throughout the world.
The Kecak Dance tells the Indian story of Ramayana. During a Kecak Dance, tourists and guest in the many luxury bali villas can see a man in green dancing in the center of the circle, the golden deer is in yellow in the back. This man in green is Rama, who is a warrior and rightful heir to the throne of Ayodya and was exiled with his wife Sita to a faraway desert.
Also, in the Kecak Dance, you can see fifty or so men in their checkered pants, which had made the Kecak such a fascinating dance to watch. And these men are both the choir and the props that provide the music for the story in a series of constant vocal chants that change with the mood of the actors. These men don't sit still, they just either wave their arms to simulate fire, and reposition themselves around the stage to represent wind and fire, prison cells, and unseen hand of protection from the gods.
The Kecak Dance is played in five acts and lasts roughly 45 to 60 minutes. You can see weekly, or in some places daily, performances of the Kecak abounding around the island. But the town of Batubulan just north of the Balinese capital of Denpasar is the most well-known Kecak theatre.
