OLEG TAMBULILINGAN ,A DANCE OF LOVE (a Balinese Dance).

In 1952, I Ketut Maria, a dance maestro from Tabanan regency, Bali, created a dance that is full with the spirit of love. It was John Coast who proposed him to create a new dance since he wanted to take Indonesian artists to Europe and the United State of America for a cultural exchange mission. At the time I Ketut Maria, famously known as I Mario, was around 50 years old and he felt too old and unwell to create a new dance. But after some efforts by John Coast to persuade him, he finally took the challenge. He had already taken some new inspiration but he was stuck, and had almost given up when Coast gave him a collection of books about classic ballet complete with pictures. Those books were the source of the inspiration behind the lovely traditional Balinese dance that we can still see performed nowadays.
The dancers are male and female who perform smooth swaying dance routines. They carry our imagination to a garden where the flowers are blooming and the bees are enjoying their mealtime imbibing the flowers’ essence. The dancers are transformed into bees that are attracted to each other so the male bee is chasing female so on. Flirtation happens over a mealtime which ends up into a beautiful love story where they are finally caressing each other. The whole performance creates such an intense romantic atmosphere also shows that both sexes naturally need each other.
It’s only the routines that are beautiful but also the costumes. The female dancer is wrapped in Balinese traditional fabric called prada (material with gold printed pattern) and has a long transparent yet shiny scarf attached as her wings. The colors of the costume usually bright, a combination of green, rd and yellow and her head carries a massive mountain of golden flowers. The male dancer also wears same type of fabric but with a different way of wrapping. For the male, the end of specific length of fabric is left unwrapped, the Balinese call this kancut. On the head , he wears udeng, the Balinese traditional hat while he carries a prada fan and spins it effortlessly with his right hand.
It has been many years since the maestro created the dance, but Oleg Tambulilingan still has great popularity. The beauty of the dance has successfully charmed whoever has watched the performance over years. The simplicity of the routines, that blends nicely with some routines the Balinese classic dances. Janger and Legong Keraton, show the story the creator wanted to tell clearly. The routines and the colors of what the dancers wear are just simply impressive.

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