World Dance Traditions

Catalog description

Collective Motion in Balinese Performing Arts. Bali, Indonesia is home to diverse traditional and contemporary art-forms that are connected to social life, nature, and collective motions of people. Its preservation of culture is predicated on a vast history of cultural sharing around the world and bodies working toward various cosmological goals. In this class, students will learn the fundamentals of Balinese dance (tari dasar) by moving together within traditional idioms and bringing them into the contemporary. This course explores dances, parades, and contexts of Balinese artistic ideology by engaging in cultural and social sensitivities of collective movement. Students will have a chance to learn how Balinese dance interacts with theater, popular media, and musical arts such as Gamelan. While Balinese dance maintains an ongoing praxis of tradition, it does so by developing creatively experimental processes. This course will collaborate with the Balinese Sound Ensemble to better understand the connection of movement, music, and frames of sacredness in Bali, with a focus on parades and social movements. The end of the semester will culminate in a public sharing of our work and a dialogue of inter/intra-cultural dance practices. Prerequisite: None.