General Works on Balinese Drama and Dance

Dibia, I Wayan and Ballinger, R. 2004. Balinese dance, drama and music: a guide to the performing arts of Bali. Periplus: Singapore. (The best introduction to the topic, with excellent photographs and text which explains drama and dance as Balinese themselves understand them.)

Bandem, I Madé and deBoer, F.E. 1995. Balinese dance in transition. Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press. (An important historical and general overview of dance and drama.)

de Zoete, B. and Spies, W. 1938. Dance and drama in Bali. London : Faber and Faber. (This is the classic work on the topic, which remains an invaluable source, even if a romanticized account.)

 

More Advanced Sources

Coast, J. 2004. Dancing out of Bali . Singapore: Periplus. (An account of the famous Balinese tour of the UK and USA in the early 1950s by the impresario, which gives a wonderful insight into the history and complexities of Balinese dance in the mid-twentieth century.)

Coldiron, M. 2004. Trance and transformation of the actor in Japanese Noh and Balinese masked dance-drama . Lampeter: Edwin Mellen Press. (An advanced account of masked dance in Bali.)

deBoer, F. 1996. Two modern Balinese theatre genres: Sendratari and Drama Gong . In Being modern in Bali : image and change . ed. A. Vickers, New Haven: Yale University South East Asia series, No 43. 158-178. (A review of two modern theatre forms in Bali.)

Fischer, J. & Cooper, T. 1998. The folk art of Bali : the narrative tradition . New York : Oxford Univ. Press. (A good introduction to Balinese art.)

Geertz, H. 2004. The life of a Balinese temple: artistry, imagination, and the history of a peasant village . Honolulu: Univ. of Hawai'i Press. (A wonderful account of how Balinese religion is intricately woven into arts and daily life.)

Geertz, H.1994. Images of power: Balinese paintings made for Gregory Bateson and Margaret Mead . Honolulu: Univ. of Hawai'i Press. (A fascinating account of Bali as imagined by Balinese painters.)

Gold, L. 2004. Music in Bali: experiencing music, expressing culture . Oxford : Univ. Press. (A sympathetic account of Balinese music and its links to Balinese culture, with CD.)

Herbst, E. 1997. Voices in Bali : energies and perceptions in vocal music and dance theater . Hanover, NH.: Univ. Press of New England. (An advanced work on the important but neglected topic of Balinese singing.)

Hitchcock, M. and Norris, L. 1995. Bali, the imaginary museum: the photographs of Walter Spies and Beryl de Zoete. Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press. (An introduction to the work and imagination of the authors of Dance and drama in Bali.)

Hobart , A. 1987. Dancing shadows of Bali: theatre and myth . London & New York: KPI. (A good introduction to the different aspects of Balinese shadow theatre.)

Hobart , M. 2002. Live or dead? Televising theatre in Bali. Media worlds: anthropology on new terrain . eds. F. Ginsburg, L. Abu-Lughod & B. Larkin. Berkeley & Los Angeles : Univ. of California Press. (An analysis of what happens when Balinese extemporized theatre is performed on television.) a much longer version is available online at http://www.criticalia.org/Articles.

Hobart, M. n.d. Changing audiences: representing development and religion in Balinese theatre and television. Unpublished article. Available online at http://www.criticalia.org/Articles

Hobart , M. 2006. Damp dreams: some problems with dance in Bali . In Music, Ritual, and Performance. Special issue of Musiké, Music & Ritual, I,1 2006 . click here for PDF version.

Hobart, M. 2007. Rethinking Balinese dance. in M. Cohen, A. Lopez y Royo and L. Nozlopy, Indonesian performing arts in a transnational context, special issue of Indonesia and the Malay World , 35: 107-28. (A critical analysis of how Westerners have imagined drama and dance in Bali.)

Picard, M. 1996. Bali: cultural tourism and touristic culture . Singapore : Archipelago Press. (A good account of how tourism has affected the arts, including dance and drama, in Bali.)

Picard, M. 1996a. Dance and drama in Bali : the making of an Indonesian art form. In Being modern in Bali: image and change . edited by A. Vickers, New Haven: Yale University Southeast Asia Studies No 43, 115-157. (A critical review of the history of Balinese theatre and dance.)

Savarese, N. 2001. Antonin Artaud sees Balinese theatre at the Paris Colonial Exposition. The drama review 45, 3: 51-77. (An analysis of Artaud's encounter with Balinese dance.)

Slattum, J. & Schraub, P. 2003. Balinese masks: spirits of an ancient drama . Hong Kong: Periplus. (A lavishly illustrated account of masked dance in Bali.)

Tenzer, M. 1991. Balinese music. Berkeley, Ca.: Periplus. (A good introduction to Balinese music.)

Vickers, A. 1989. Bali: a paradise created. Ringwood , Victoria: Penguin. (An excellent historical analysis of how Europeans set about imagining Bali.)