Kecak Dance

A serpentine stream of bodies coils itself, circle within circle, around a large, branching torch. The half-seen multitude waits in silence. A priest enters with offerings and blessings of holy water. One piercing voice cracks the suspense; the circle electrifies. No other dance is so unnerving as the amazing Kecak: dozens to hundreds of men who, by a regimented counterplay of sounds, simulate the orchestration of the gamelan. The now-famous Kecak dance was created in the early 20th century by the famous German painter, Walter Spies, who was resident in Bali at the time. It represents Spies' reincarnation of the male chorus of the ritual Sanghyang trance ceremony. Choreography transforms the ingeniously simple chorus into ecstasy. The cries, the erratic pulses of sound, and the sublimated violence of the kecak are perfectly contained in the precise use of a few basic motions of heads, arms, and torsos.

Various parts of the dance merge in a startling continuum of grouped motion and voice. Many words and gestures have no meaning except as incantations to drive out evil, as was the original purpose of the Sanghyang chorus. Kecak includes a play amidst a periphery of men -- a virtual living theatre. Accompanied by the bizarre music of human instruments, the storyteller relates the episode enacted within the performance. When demon-king Rawana leaps to the center, for example, the chorus simulates his flight with a long hissing sound. When monkey-man Hanuman enters the mystic circle, the men become an army of chattering monkeys.