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Brilio.net/en - You may know a lot of Balinese dances, but never heard of Joged Bumbung. It is normal if you are a visitor or migrant in Bali, but you might have seen this dance in Balinese celebration events. The dance is unlike any other dance in Bali and is performed more in cultural or sacred events. A long time ago, Joged Bumbung was a dance performed to celebrate among the farmers in their break hours, villagers upon successful harvesting, or other peoples party. The name Joged means dance and Bumbung is taken from the calling of bamboo as music instrument they could found among the rice fields.
The dance is now performed by a woman dancer and accompanied by gamelan music group. The dancer dresses in Balinese traditional clothes with a special headdress that should be prayed upon before each performance. This is a sign that the dance is a tradition that is supposed to be followed with certain agem (rules) and ethics, which made Joged Bumbung as one of the nine Balinese dances proposed to be the world cultural heritage by UNESCO.
Image viabalipitutour.com
The dance, both the classic and modern, consists of three stages: the opening, middle part and closing. The middle part starts when the dancer opens her fan, and at this moment audiences are free to join her on stage. The audience here means a pengibing (single male company) to dance with proper dance moves. In the past, most Balinese people of both genders can dance, or at least know the basic moves. During one Joged Bumbung show, the dancer would ask up to 4-5 pengibing in turns before she closed the dance.
Image via infoartcentre.blogspot.com
Today, however, Joged Bumbung is sadly known more as a porn dance as there are some practices of erotic moves in the dances. Often, the erotic dance performed in public with underage children as audience. This is a sad fact that those children are now getting used to and sometimes dare to copy the moves on stage too. There are actually no certain rules in the dance moves, because the dancer will follow each of the pengibings moves to make the show go on. Still, the basic rule is to use Balinese dance moves, which involve a lot of body curvatures and swings.
But the ngegol (curvatures) are to the right and left, not back and forth. Im afraid the young people now consider this kind of moves to be porn, said I Wayan Juniarta, the head of dance studio Sekaa Joged Bumbung Suara Mekar from Banjar Antap, Panjer, in Denpasar. He insisted on continuing the conservative way of the dance, which is an artful entertaining dance for people.
If the dance turns erotic, I always leave the place immediately. I dont support those moves to ruin the art of dance. It is inappropriate, one of pengibing, I Made Widiarsa from Padang Sambian, disagrees. He likes to be a pengibing and has his own equipmentsunglasses, Draculas teeth, an eggplant and a bellhe always brings to the event if he knows there will be Joged Bumbung.
Image via youtube.com
The Head of Department of Culture of Denpasar, I Made Mudra, that the main fort to keep the dance clean is the people. In Bali, it is in the level of Banjar (village). The people of Banjar are the ones to create good or bad impressions on art. The ultimate way for those amoral dances is to give sanction to the sekaa (community) who invite the dancer. Being talked in Banjar is a shameful thing because social sanction is heavier, he suggests.
The topic of the deviated Joged Bumbung also caught the attention of the Film & Television students of Institut Seni Indonesia (ISI) Denpasar. The group Rhanada Film brings this topic into a documentary film Joged Bumbung that aired recently on the majors third anniversary celebration on April 22, 2016. With the film being socialized to the public, they hope people will give back Joged Bumbungs original meaning and stop ordering or performing the dance with erotic moves.
(brl/red)
