THE BALI ARTS FESTIVAL

 

Balinese Dancer

 Barong Dance is Balinese pride


A Showpiece of Balinese culture

Beginnings

The four-week long, Bali Arts Festival, will celebrate its 28^th anniversary this year. The festival opens with arts and a performance parade in the front of Bajra Sandi in Renon, Denpasar, on Saturday, June 17^th, at 3 pm, and continues with a colossal dance drama on the Bali Art Centre’s open stage, Denpasar, at 8 pm. Throughout the weeks, art exhibitions, competitions, and cultural seminars will be held to make the festival come to life. Performances are held every day and night at the same place.

While exhibitions are open all day, the morning performances take place from 10 am, and the evening show starts at 8 pm. Performers and artist groups come from throughout Bali as well as group of artists from other provinces of Indonesia and overseas. Although the Bali Arts festival is designed for local consumption, as opposed to a tourist attraction, visitors are certainly welcome to watch. They will find themselves mixed up with local – style spectators. For the last two years, a popular gamelan orchestra competition has been held in several districts with the goal of spreading the happiness of the festival with locals, although the grand final has remained at the Arts Centre of Denpasar.

The annual Bali Arts festival has been the showcase of Balinese cultural performances amidst a vast and rapid global wave of influences brought about by telecommunication, television, and tourism. The festival has been the longest and biggest cultural event in the history of the twentieth century Balinese culture as well as the culture of the Indonesian archipelago. There is no single festival in Bali and Indonesia that has been held for more than a quarter of a century.

beautiful girl from Bali


Since it was first launched  in 1979, the Bali arts festival has been held every year for one month between mid June and July during the longest school holiday. The financial crisis of 1997 was followed by social, political crisis, as was experienced in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks in 2002 and in 2005, that thankfully has not hindered the presentation of the Bali arts festival.

The Bali arts festival could be said to be a cultural solution initiated by a mixture of government officials, artists, and intellectuals in response to the accelerated influence brought about by the wake of mass tourism to the island. Initially, the Balinese viewed tourists and tourism with a considerable feeling of ambivalence. On the one hand, the tourist industry was welcome for its job opportunities and economic benefits; on the other hand , they saw tourists as sources of a negative cultural influence.

Worrying that tourism could uproot the local’s true identity and that there could be a tendency of the over commercialization of arts and Balinese culture for tourists, a cultural solution was taken up to strengthen people’s commitment in keeping their cultural authenticity and their sense of ‘ balineseness’. The economic benefit of the tourists industry has therefore been used to nurture and develop Balinese arts and culture.