THE ANCIENT SURVIVAL: THE BALI AGA

The clubs of virgins (seka daha) and of adolescent boys (seka Truna) who are still untouched by the magical impurity supposed come from sexual intercourse, are an interesting feature of Bali Aga villages not to be found among the Hindu-Balinese. In Tenganan a ceremonial meeting is held for them once a year. The virgins wear golden crowns covered with quivering flowers of beaten gold, and are dressed from the armpits to the ground silk scarfs which they hold between jewelled fingers, often tipped with four-inch artificial fingernails made of solid gold.

The appear dancing the redjang, arranged in line from the smallest baby, a year old, perhaps, to the grown girls who on pass occasions have failed to obtain a husband. They dance accompanied by the gamelan selunding, an ancient, rarely heard orchestra that has great iron sound-plates, struck energetically old men of the village with oversize wooden hammers.

This dance could not be more archaic and simple: standing in double line, they fling the scarfs slowly away, first to one side, then to the other, half turning the body each time. In the long intervals between movements they stand motionless with downcast eyes until a change of position is announced by the orchestra. This is the whole dance; a slow-motion version of the stilted feminine dances of Java, giving one an unearthly feeling of suspended movement, and bearing no relation to the exuberant vitality of the Balinese dances we were accustomed to see.

Soon boys in their best clothes and wearing krisses begin to appear and form a group at the other end of the dancing-space, watching the girls. When enough boys have gathered, the music stops and the audience, mostly women, shows a lively interest. The music begins again, playing the theme for the abuang, a dance in which the boys express their preferences. One by one the girls step to the front to show themselves in a short posed dance with their eyes on the ground and their arms tensely out stretched.

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