Balinesedance
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Ni Madé Pujawati started dancing ever since she can remember. Born in a remote Balinese village with only paraffin lamps at night, she crept away from home at night to learn dancing. The first her family knew was when they saw her on stage during a performance. As she was so talented, she was admitted to the Indonesian Conservatory of Music before going on graduate from the Indonesian Institute of Arts. Both academies stressed breadth of training. So she learned music and acting, as well as different Indonesian dance styles, both female and male. As a child, Ni Madé Pujawati had been fascinated by Arja, Balinese dance-opera, and studied with a range of famous teachers, including Ni Nyoman Candri, Jero Ranten and Wayan Dibia. So, apart from her noted performance of the virtuoso dance repertoire, she is recognized internationally for her singing and dancing of different Arja roles. Ni Madé Pujawati's strikingly feminine style is ideally suited to the refined female and male classical Central Javanese dances. So, since 1987 she has studied both Surakarta and Yogyakarta style dance with teachers who include Indah Nuraeni, Sunarno Purwolelono and Hutami Retno Asri. In 2000, Ni Madé Pujawati moved to live permanently in London, UK, where she set up her own dance company. She also brought over with her one of Bali's most beautiful old gamelans, the rare seven-tone Semar Pagulingan, Puja Semara Kanti, and senior dancers and musicians to teach and perform in the UK. Ni Madé Pujawati is dancer-in-residence with the London-based Gamelan Lila Cita and also regular dancer with the South Bank Javanese gamelan. Because of the range and unusual quality of her performance, Ni Madé Pujawati has been in increasing demand as a performer, now usually going on tour of Europe, the USA and Asia every year, performing a wide repertoire which includes not only classical Balinese and Javanese dance, but Balinese theatre, adaptations of Greek tragedy and, more recently, a range of contemporary choreographies and cross-cultural pieces which blend Balinese, Javanese and Bharatanatyam styles. She has also explored performing Balinese dance-opera in English to make it accessible to Western audiences.
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