THE LEGONG

As the archetype of the delicate and feminine, the Iegong is the finest of Balinese dances. Connoisseurs discuss the comparative excellence of various Iegongs as intensely as we discuss our dancers, and I have heard solemn arguments among princes as to whether the group of Bedulu was finer than that of Saba, or the school of Sukawati superior to that of Badung.

The Iegong is performed at feasts, generally in the late afternoon when the heat of the day has subsided. At the first rumour that there is going to be a Iegong in the central square or, if it is at a private feast, in the middle of the street, the crowd begins to gather. Women and children come first to secure the best places, crowding around a long, rectangular space left free for the dance.

The dancing-space is often decorated with a canopy of palm-leaf streamers or shaded by an awning of black, red, and white cloth, the tail of one of the giant kites. On one end of the " stage " the orchestra entertains the gradually growing crowd with preludes until it is time for the show to begin.

Three little dancers, with an air of infinite boredom, sit on mats in front of the orchestra. They are dressed from head to foot in silk overlaid with glittering goldleaf and on their heads they wear great helmets of gold ornamented with rows of fresh frangipani blossoms. Enormous ear-plugs of gold, an inch in diameter, pierce their prematurely distended ear-lobes. Their melancholy little faces are heavily powdered, and they wear a white dot (priasan) , the mark of beauty in dancers, painted between the eyebrows, which are shaved and reshaped with black paint.

The rich costume of the two principal dancers, the legongs, consists of a wrapped skirt, a tight-sleeved vest, from which hangs a long, narrow apron, and yards of strong cloth cut in a narrow strip that binds their torsos mercilessly from the breast to the hips. This is in turn covered by another sash of gilt cloth.

The tight, corset-like binding gives line to the dancers' bodies and supports their backs. the costume is completed by a stiff short vest of tooled and gilt leather worn over the shoulders, a collar set with coloured stones and little mirrors, a silver belt, and scarfs and ornaments of tooled leather hanging from each hip. The little girl who sits between the legongs, the tjondong, their attendant, is dressed in simpler clothes.

When a large enough crowd has assembled, the orchestra begins the dance music and the tjondong gets up lazily and stands in the middle of the dancing-space. Suddenly, at an accent from the orchestra, as if pierced by an electric current, she strikes an intense pose: with her bare feet fiat on the ground, her knees flexed, she begins a lively dance, moving briskly, winding in and out of a circle, with an arm rigidly outstretched, fingers tense and trembling, and her eves staring into space.