Kecak Dance

  

Friday, January 2, 2015

Sue, a pretty 34 year old Balinese woman (with a 10 month old baby boy) brings us breakfast of banana pancakes and plates of fresh fruit and we enjoy a relaxing morning in our garden paradise.  At 10:30 A.M. we gather our dirty laundry and walk up the road towards Tabra’s compound.  We leave our laundry at the village Laundromat and buy a carton of milk and take it back to our bungalow’s refrigerator so tomorrows instant coffee will be somewhat better. 

Tabra is not at her workshop yet, so we walk further up the road and see her walking towards us down a narrow village lane. She is dressed in a beautiful sarong and floppy straw sun hat and she is carrying a pile of colorful folded fabrics.  John takes the fabric from her and we walk with her to her workshop.  We sit in the compound courtyard and talk with Dektie and Tabra about Etsy; keywords, naming products, paying for ads etc. John shuffles through more trays of beads and stones  and arranges them in lineal patterns.

We will spend the day on our own and we leave Tabra to her work. Art, John and I walk back through the village turning left at the banjan where the men rest on a raised platform and meander down the narrow rutted pathway, past our bungalow, across the bridge and down the worn mossy steps into Ubud. Turning right at the bottom of the stairs we walk over the bridge where we ate New Year’s dinner at “Bridges” restaurant.  Down to the left, in the gourge below,  is a renovated temple complex and we climb the stairway down to the temple.  Unfortunately the temple gate is padlocked but we look through the iron gates into the courtyard and return to the street above. We meander the main street slowly, poking into a few shops that interest us before veering off to the right to enjoy lunch at the Café de Artist’s. Art and John suggest an adjoining hole in the wall but I remember Tabra recommending this restaurant and we sit on the raised terrace of the elegant restaurant and drink lime juice and ice tea and enjoy delicious plates of nase goring and chicken sate. John is sticking to vegetarian diet and he orders fried noodles with tofu. It is raining when we leave the restaurant and Art buys a second umbrella and we continue our walk along the shop lined street. At the palace we turn left and go uphill away from the touristy  section of town. It is pleasant to simply wander and we eventually cut across along a narrow mossy alley and see signs pointing to a market. The “market” is dismal; two semi outdoor levels of tourist junk and aggressive vendors. The smell of putrid garbage hangs in the air and the cement is slick with slime.  Art and I cannot get out of there quickly enough. 

Art wants to have a drink at the Rice View Terrace Café, a café we passed yesterday  that backs up to a rice field and John is certain that he knows where it is. We eventually find it and sit on the shaded terrace and looking out onto verdant green rice paddies. Art and I sip ice coffees and John orders an Arak and lemon drink. Arak is a local liquor and we all take cautious sips and decide that I could probably use Arak to light my alcohol burner for wax carving.  

It is late afternoon when we take a taxi to the Sedona Spa, behind the Bintang Market, where we hope to have three massages.  We look over the spa menu and Art and I request 1.5 hour couples massage and John orders the hour massage followed with a green tea body exfoliation, yogurt lathering and a bath in a flower filled tub. My massage girl is remarkable. She irons out every knot along my spine and works the tendons in my shoulders and arms expertly. The 1.5 hours passes quickly and Art and I are soon showering, dressing and meeting John at the entrance to sip jasmine tea and nibble on sliced watermelon.  Our massages were $12000 ($10- $11) rupiah and John’s was $18000 ($16) Art pays the bill and we pass each women $3000 rupiah for a tip.

The Kecak dance will start at 7:30 and I want to take a taxi, but none are readily available and we walk the mile quickly in the dusk, dodging motorbikes and cars. My feet are tired and blisters threaten.  We reach the Kecak dance at 7:10, pay the $8000 for each ticket and climb the stairs to the stage. Along the stairway, there are beer and soda vendors competing for business and John asks one man the price of a large Bintang Beer for us to share. A women competitor pops open a beer and pushes it at John asking considerably more money for the same beer. There is a moment of confusion when John refuses her and turns back to the man but she quickly concedes to the first price and with beer in hand we hurry up the stairs to find seats. We get three of the last front row seats off to one side but we know that this is a circular show and are happy that the beer confusion didn’t cost us good seats.

When we visited seven years ago, we went to this same Kecak dance which was mesmerizing. The Kecak is a Balinese music dance and drama, first performed in the 1930’s depicting a battle from Ramayana. It is performed only by men, traditionally 150, all bare chested and wearing checkered sarongs. (Tonight, I count about 80 performers moving rhythmically in a circle.) Their syncopated clapping and chanting “CAK” is mysterious and pagan and we slip into the magic of the music. The dance culminates with a fire dance, the rooster outfitted performer walks barefoot on glowing coals, kicking the coals so they fan and blaze in the dark.  The clapping and chanting is intoxicating and the dance ends sooner than I would like.  After the performance, a Russian man sitting beside us, leaves his cell phone on his chair and John sprints through the crowd to find him. He returns for his phone but doesn’t seem very grateful but a few minutes later he seeks John out in the departing crowd and tries to give him $10000.  John refuses but we all feel a bit better about the “playing it forward.” We have an inexpensive noodle and rice dinner at a nearby restaurant and catch a taxi back to our bungalow in Penestanna.