Music: Old Ladies from Bali

Young as nymphs are the temple dancers in Bali. At 12 they are too old for the temple, retire and usually marry. But when Temple-dancer Devi Dja (pronounced Davy Jah) was dancing the Legong in Klunklung,* the late, great Anna Pavlowa visited neighboring Java for a couple of concerts, and round-faced Dancer Devi Dja went to see her dance. Result: Devi Dja decided that 12 was over-young to quit. So she collected a group of other aging temple-dancers, started giving commercial performances for visiting tourists. Two years ago Devi Dja’s dancers toured Java and French Indo-China, with Devi Dja billed as the “Balinese Pavlowa.” Last spring she took her troupe all the way to Europe, planned to go home by way of the U. S.

Last week Devi Dja and her group of 20-odd mum, placid-faced little Balinese landed in Manhattan. With them was Prince Raden Waloejo, cousin of Java’s reigning sultan, himself a pretty good dancer of the Wajang-Wong (ancient Balinese national epic). Also in the troupe were nine gamelan musicians with queer gongs and xylophones, a special Balinese cook to home-cook rice and fish, Devi Dja’s younger (18) sister Devi Emah with her ten-months-old baby.

Their first performance in the Guild Theatre was a sellout, for few Manhattanites had ever seen a temple dance outside of tantalizing glimpses in the movies. For them Devi Dja and her accordion-bellied maidens imitated ancient frescoes, did solemn ritualistic wriggles, proved with deft, complicated gestures that Bali’s classic dance is not as simple as a sarong. Between these pantomimes and rituals, the wiry, Balinese youths ritualistically jabbed at each other with crooked knives.

Climax of the evening came when the temple-dancers forgot about the temple, and swung out in a lowbrow song & dance from modern Bali, accompanying themselves with corny, Hawaiian-style music on a steel guitar and a couple of mandolins. Though purists complained it was not according to the Sanskrit, the bronze-skinned Balinese broke down and grinned, swayed like jamming jitterbugs, wailed a torch song or two, and showed that East is meeting West as fast as the flicker of an exported Hollywood movie.

*A seacoast region famous for its arts and crafts. The Legong: a ceremonial dance in which two or three girls enact an incident from Hindu mythology.