Bali is a province of Indonesia and the westernmost of the Lesser Sunda Islands. East of Java and west of Lombok, the province includes the island of Bali and a few smaller offshore islands, notably Nusa Penida, Nusa Lembongan, and Nusa Ceningan to the southeast. The provincial capital, Denpasar, is the most populous city in the Lesser Sunda Islands and the second-largest, after Makassar, in Eastern Indonesia. Denpasar metropolitan area is the extended metropolitan area around Denpasar. The upland town of Ubud in Greater Denpasar is considered Bali's cultural centre. The province is Indonesia's main tourist destination, with a significant rise in tourism since the 1980s, and becoming an Indonesian area of overtourism. Tourism-related business makes up 80% of the Bali economy.
Gamelan is the traditional ensemble music of the Javanese, Sundanese, and Balinese peoples of Indonesia, made up predominantly of percussive instruments. The most common instruments used are metallophones and a set of hand-drums called kendang, which keep the beat. The kemanak, a banana-shaped idiophone, and the gangsa, another metallophone, are also commonly used gamelan instruments on Bali. Other notable instruments include xylophones, bamboo flutes, a bowed string instrument called a rebab, and a zither-like instrument called a siter, used in Javanese gamelan. Additionally, vocalists may be featured, being referred to as sindhen for females or gerong for males.
Kecak, alternate spellings: kechak and ketjak), known in Indonesian as tari kecak, is a form of Balinese Hindu dance and music drama that was developed in the 1930s. Since its creation, it has been performed primarily by men, with the first women's kecak group having started in 2006. The dance is based on the story of the Ramayana and is traditionally performed in temples and villages across Bali, Indonesia.
The culture of Indonesia has been shaped by the interplay of indigenous customs and diverse foreign influences. With over 1,300 distinct ethnic groups, including significant Austronesian and Melanesian cultures, contributing to its rich traditions, languages, and customs, Indonesia is a melting pot of diversity. Positioned along ancient trade routes between the Far East, South Asia, and the Middle East, the country has absorbed cultural practices influenced by Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Islam, and Christianity. These influences have created a complex cultural tapestry that often differs from the original indigenous cultures.
Henry de La Falaise, Marquis de La Coudraye, was a French nobleman, translator, film director, film producer, sometime actor, and war hero who was best known for his high-profile marriages to two leading Hollywood actresses.
I Made Bandem is a Balinese dancer, artist, author, and educator.
In film, nudity may be either graphic or suggestive, such as when a person appears to be naked but is covered by a sheet. Since the birth of film, depictions of any form of sexuality have been controversial, and in the case of most nude scenes, had to be justified as part of the story.
Gamelan Sekar Jaya is a Balinese gamelan ensemble located in the San Francisco Bay Area. It has been called "the finest Balinese gamelan ensemble outside of Indonesia" by Indonesia's Tempo Magazine. It performs the music and dance of Bali in many different genres of Balinese gamelan, mainly gamelan gong kebyar, gamelan angklung, gender wayang, and gamelan jegog. Past performances have also featured ensembles playing in other styles as well, including gamelan joged bumbung, gamelan semar pegulingan, kecak, gender batel, gamelan gambuh, genggong, and beleganjur. GSJ has also performed contemporary pieces featuring instruments from the Western tradition.
Dance in Indonesia reflects the country's diversity of ethnicities and cultures. There are more than 600 ethnic groups in Indonesia. Austronesian roots and Melanesian tribal forms are visible, and influences ranging from neighboring Asian and even western styles through colonization. Each ethnic group has its own dances: there are more than 3,000 original dance forms in Indonesia. The old traditions of dance and drama are being preserved in the numerous dance schools which flourish not only in the courts but also in the modern, government-run or supervised art academies.
Balinese art is an art of Hindu-Javanese origin that grew from the work of artisans of the Majapahit Kingdom, with their expansion to Bali in the late 14th century. From the sixteenth until the twentieth centuries, the village of Kamasan, Klungkung, was the centre of classical Balinese art. During the first part of the twentieth century, new varieties of Balinese art developed. Since the late twentieth century, Ubud and its neighboring villages established a reputation as the center of Balinese art.
Richard Marriott is an American composer and performer. He has composed for film, television, dance, theater, opera, installations and video games. He is the founder and artistic director of the Club Foot Orchestra, an important modern ensemble for live music performance with silent films. His teachers include Dominick Argento and Paul Fetler at the University of Minnesota, Pauline Oliveros at UCSD, North Indian sarod master Ali Akbar Khan, shakuhachi master Masayuki Koga, and Balinese composers Nyoman Windha and Made Subandi. Marriott was a member of Snakefinger's History of the Blues and has recorded with The Residents, Brazilian Girls, "Singer at Large" Johnny J. Blair, and many others. He performs on brass and woodwind instruments, Western and Asian.
The Club Foot Orchestra is a musical ensemble known for their silent film scores. Their influences include Eastern European folk music, impressionism, and jazz fusion; The New Yorker described their style as "music that bubbles up from the intersection of aesthetics and the id."
The Miracle of Bali is a BBC series of cultural documentaries narrated by David Attenborough and first shown in 1969. The series comprises three programs about the culture of Bali. The complete series is available as a special feature on the DVD release of David Attenborough's 1975 series The Tribal Eye.
Love Island is a 1952 American film directed by Bud Pollard starring Paul Valentine and Eva Gabor. Originally released in Cinecolor, the film uses extensive footage taken in Bali used from the film Legong: Dance of the Virgins (1935). It was the final directorial effort of Bud Pollard who had previously directed several race films and exploitation films.
Legong is a form of Balinese dance. It is a refined dance form characterized by intricate finger movements, complicated footwork, and expressive gestures and facial expressions.
"Goona-goona epic" refers to a particular type of native-culture exploitation film set in remote parts of the Far East, Southeast Asia, Africa, South America, and the South Pacific. These include documentaries and dramas, both of which rely heavily on travelogue and stock footage scenes of semi-nude native peoples performing exotic rituals and customs.
I Made Subandi was a gamelan composer and performer from Gianyar, Bali.
Kebyar Duduk is a traditional Balinese dance created by a Balinese man I Ketut Marya and first performed publicly in 1925. Inspired by the development of the quick-paced gamelan gong kebyar, kebyar duduk is named for the seated and half-seated positions taken by the dancers. It does not convey a story, but is interpretative.
It is quite difficult to define Indonesian art, since the country is immensely diverse. The sprawling archipelago nation consists of 17,000 islands. Around 922 of those permanently inhabited, by over 600 ethnic groups, which speak more than 700 living languages.
Indonesian theatre is a type of art in the form of drama performances that are staged on a stage, with a distinct Indonesian nuance or background. In general, theatre is an art that emphasizes the performing arts that are displayed in front of a large crowd. In other words, theater is a form of visualisation of a drama that is staged on the stage and watched by the audience. Indonesian theatre includes the performing arts of traditional theater and modern theatre located in the territory of Indonesia. Some examples of Indonesian theater are Arja, Wayang, Wayang wong, Lenong, Ludruk, Janger, Randai and others. Theatre in Indonesia can also be referred to as regional or ethnic theatre, because it originates and develops from 1,300 ethnic cultures in Indonesia.
