Balinese Dancers

Like the Japanese, the Balinese absolutely live their culture from day to day. The resort that we are staying at is also part of the Arma museum complex and, as such, offers a broad range of cultural activities. These include painting, batik and learning to play the gamelan, an amazingly-noisy sort of heavy-duty xylophone. These instruments, when assembled into an orchestra that includes 15 of these gamelan instruments, produces the haunting music that you can hear played in almost every small village and hamlet across the country. What's interesting is that, even though last night we attended a Legong dance specifically held for tourists, this is still very much a part of the Balinese culture and as such is taught to kids at a very early age

Yesterday we hired two of these dancers to use as models for a portrait workshop. Here are some examples. Our first image critique session will include two of the best 'dancer' portraits from each student. We have organised another model workshop so I'll post the results on Wednesday. Stay tuned.