Traditional Dance and Gamelan in Bali
Part of the Bali travel guide — see every topic in All Bali Guides.
Balinese performing arts are a living competitive tradition rather than a preserved one. Every village has a banjar with its own gamelan orchestra and dance group, they compete against each other at the annual Bali Arts Festival, and the standard is genuinely high. Three UNESCO-listed genres of Balinese dance are recognised, and the music — fast, interlocking, metallic, tuned to a scale that sounds startlingly unfamiliar on first hearing — is among the most sophisticated ensemble music anywhere.
Kecak
The one to see if you see one. Sixty or more men sit in concentric circles in near-darkness and chant interlocking rhythmic syllables — chak-chak-chak — with no instruments at all, while dancers act out an episode from the Ramayana in the centre. It was developed in the 1930s from a trance ritual, partly with the involvement of the German artist Walter Spies, so it is a twentieth-century creation built on much older material. The Uluwatu clifftop performance at sunset is the famous one; the versions in Ubud and at Batubulan are cheaper and often better performed.
Legong, barong and the rest
Legong is the refined court dance: young women in gold brocade, articulating fingers, eyes and neck with extraordinary precision to a fast gamelan. Barong is the mythological drama between the lion-like Barong and the witch Rangda, with the famous kris-dance sequence in which performers turn their daggers on themselves in trance. Topeng is masked solo dance-drama. Baris is the warrior dance. Ubud's palace and Pura Taman Saraswati stage a rotating programme most evenings; tickets are 100,000–150,000 rupiah.
The gamelan
The dominant Balinese ensemble is gamelan gong kebyar, developed in north Bali around 1915 and characterised by sudden explosive shifts in tempo and dynamics. Its central technique is kotekan: two players interlock fast alternating patterns to produce a single line neither could play alone. Instruments are tuned in pairs slightly apart in pitch, which produces the shimmering beat that gives gamelan its sound. The tuning is not equal temperament and no two orchestras are tuned identically — each set is a single unrepeatable object.
Seeing and learning
The nightly performances in Ubud are the easy entry point and are properly performed. Better, if you can time it: the Bali Arts Festival in Denpasar from mid-June for a month, where village groups compete and the audience is Balinese. Temple ceremonies feature dance in its actual context and visitors are welcome at the back in respectful dress. Several places in Ubud offer gamelan and dance lessons for visitors at 150,000–400,000 rupiah a session — an hour on a gangsa will teach you more about kotekan than any amount of listening.
Traditional Dance and Gamelan at a glance
| See first | Kecak — 60+ chanting men, no instruments |
|---|---|
| Ticket | IDR 100,000–150,000 for an Ubud evening performance |
| Court dance | Legong; also barong, topeng, baris |
| The orchestra | Gamelan gong kebyar, developed ~1915 |
| Key technique | Kotekan — two players interlocking one line |
| Best time | Bali Arts Festival, Denpasar, mid-June for a month |