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Finding Balance: Reflections on My Fellowship in Bali By VIVIAN FUNG
I sit in my New York apartment and cannot believe that I have just came back from a trip to Bali, where I spent six weeks working with artists from the United States, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines, and India. I was very fortunate to have been one of 17 professional artists accepted to the Asia Pacific Performance Exchange (APPEX) program, organized by the U.C.L.A. Center for Intercultural Performance (C.I.P). Under the leadership of Judy Mitoma, the director of C.I.P. and founding chair of the department of world arts and cultures at U.C.L.A., all 17 of us gathered together in a small village called Pengosekan in the heart of Bali's mainland, where we shared, laughed, cried, and created art in one of the most beautiful places I have encountered. By beautiful, I mean not only physically beautiful, but spiritually and socially as well.
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| APPEX fellows unlease their collective creative spirit beside the tiered rice paddies. The author is pictured in the middle row, far left. (Photo by Marcia Argolo) |
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The physical memories of that place are plentiful: tiered green rice fields tended by patient rice farmers pushing their oxen; sounds and sights of animals all around—roosters, birds, flies, giant bees, gigantic spiders, egrets, butterflies; gamelan playing coming from a nearby village; temple ceremonies; burning incense; people on their knees praying. But even more significant to me are my memories of the people and their culture. In Balinese, there is no special word for artist, because everyone in Bali makes some sort of art as part of their everyday life, whether it be painting, weaving, woodcarving, playing in a gamelan, or dancing. A farmer could be tending to his rice paddies by day, but performing in the local gamelan group in the evening. As Judy aptly explained in our daily working sessions together, the source of Balinese culture and art is in the ceremony and ritual. Playing in a gamelan, dancing the complex legong dance—all comes as an offering to the gods. For Bali's most dedicated artists, success is defined by the ability to access the divine, not as something rooted in commercial or monetary gains. I think this could be true of an artist working in the West or East, but it is something especially nurtured by the profundity of making art in Bali. It is a dream come true for us artists!In this setting, the 17 APPEX fellows gathered every day from Monday to Friday (and occasionally on weekends), to work together with the intent of sharing our cultures and connecting across national boundaries, without being inhibited by our cultural differences or language barriers. At times, these limitations would be a temporary setback, but those moments were transient since everyone was committed to our projects. Our group consisted of seven musicians, six dancers, three puppeteers, and one actress, all working in different traditions. I quickly discovered that I had much to learn from the group. Here are some highlights:Week One: Each of us had to give an introduction of ourselves, our lives, and our work. I came prepared with my bio to hand to each member, thinking—as a career-hungry New Yorker—that a bio would be the best way to describe your work and who you are. Far from it! Some started sharing their personal stories, how they grew up, how they became artists. The stories were very touching, filled with private moments. Some became so emotional that the only way to express what they felt was through tears. I remember Yin Mei, a dancer born in China, describing her experiences as a child during the Cultural Revolution. I remember Alden, a dancer from the Philippines, describing how he witnessed his father dying from multiple gunshots when he was young and how he grew up without a father. I remember Anurupa, a puppeteer from India, describing how she would go into some small villages in India and work with battered women through making and playing with puppets.Week Two: Each fellow had to give a master class/workshop on some aspect of their work. I got a tiny dose of the essence of tai chi; of a folk Malay dance called Zapin; of improvisation through body movement; of modern dance steps; of different ragas and talas in Indian classical music; of modern and traditional Javanese puppetry; and of traditional Philippine music and dance. Our bathrooms were partially exposed to the open air, so every time we took a shower, we could see the sweeping sky. I was taking a shower one evening when a frog decided to visit me on the shower rod. He was ugly, but also adorable in his bumpy-skin, greenish-tint sort of way. Just as quickly as he came, he leapt out of sight as I was finishing my shower.Weeks Three and Four: I had the chance to work more closely with some of the musicians in our group. To my amazement, I was the only one who wrote anything down on paper. Everyone else worked aurally, playing by ear. I had to rewire my brain and think of music in an entirely different way, one that focused on improvisation and the repetition and development of rhythmic and melodic patterns. In hindsight, I would recommend working this way to any concert musician, even if one decides not to pursue that tradition in the long run. Working this way makes one think of music—even the written Western repertoire—from a whole new perspective.
Every Tuesday and Thursday morning, our group would have gamelan sessions with Dewa Berata, the director of the gamelan group Çudamani (who, incidentally, will be performing at the new Rose Theater at the Time Warner Center at Columbus Circle on May 1, 2005, as part of the World Music Institute series; I would highly recommend going). It was so fascinating how Dewa taught gamelan. I would compare the experience to going to an aerobics class: First you learn a basic move, repeat it a few times, and then add on the next move. As more moves are added on gradually, they are repeated and then embellished upon. In this fashion, one learns an entire piece, section by section. Every professional gamelan player has to know all the parts of the gamelan in order to play in the group; there are probably more than 10 different patterns to learn at any given time. While we were playing as a group, Dewa and his brother, Dewa Rai, also a member of Çudamani, were "fixing" each of the parts that needed to be corrected by playing that part in front of the player, so that the player could fix his part on the spot by learning it aurally. This was going on while we were playing the piece together.Weeks Five and Six: We were given the chance to work together more closely on a single project during the last two weeks of our time in Bali. I proposed a project to explore sound and shadows. We had evening rehearsals because we needed darkness for our shadow play, and we all had rehearsal space that was partially open to the outdoors. One evening, our puppeteer, Gretchen, was lying on her back trying to get a good shadow of her feet on the paper screen. All of a sudden, a gigantic insect leapt on top of her; it turned out to be a praying mantis, a good four inches long. Throughout our rehearsals, night creatures would come visit us, attracted by our lamps we used to project shadows. Oftentimes moths would come, an occasional abnormally large beetle, some bats, another preying mantis, and lots of geckos.
During the second-to-last evening in Bali, we presented our projects in a showcase at a nearby village called Singapadu in a space that was newly developed by I. Wayan Dibia, a senior faculty member of the Institute Seni Indonesia in Denpasar, Bali, and a very active member in the local arts community. It seemed as if the entire village came to support us, since the house was packed with people, children and adults alike. I could feel the warmth and support of the people, even though they did not know us and we did not speak the same language. Members of the Çudamani group came to help us with tech and with setting up the stage for each number. The concert was very special because it reflected our magical time here, and also because the entire community seemed to be involved and invested in our production. Since each of the fellows had gotten to know each other, work with each other, and spend much time together, it was as if we were one family performing together that night. One of the pieces on the program was even titled Brothers, and featured our tabla player, Abhijit; our Malay percussionist, Shamsul; our gamelan player, Rai; our sitar player, Paul; and our Philippine dancer/musician, Mario.
While living in a big city such as New York, I sometimes lose sight of why I became an artist, becoming concerned with paying the bills and getting a career on the right track. My trip to Bali helped me put the bigger picture into a clearer perspective. That time for me has been tremendously healing, since it brought me back to the essence of what an artist is, and gave me a broader view of what an artist is capable of contributing to her community. Now, when I get the doldrums, I can close my eyes and dream of that heavenly time in Bali.Vivian Fung, a faculty member in the L&M department since 2002, is also an alumna of the School.
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