BALI'S KECAK DANCE

Kecak (pronounced: /'ke.tʃak/, roughly "KEH-chahk", alternate spellings: Ketjak and Ketjack), a form of Balinese music drama, originated in the 1930s and is performed primarily by men. Also known as the Ramayana Monkey Chant, the piece, performed by a circle of 100 or more performers wearing checked cloth around their waists, percussively chanting "cak" and throwing up their arms, depicts a battle from the Ramayana where the monkey-like Vanara helped Prince Rama fight the evil King Ravana. However, Kecak has roots in sanghyang, a trance-inducing exorcism dance.[1]Kecak was originally a trance ritual accompanied by male chorus. German painter and musician Walter Spies became deeply interested in the ritual while living in Bali in the 1930s and worked to recreate it into a drama, based on the Hindu Ramayana and including dance, intended to be presented to Western tourist audiences. This transformation is an example of what James Clifford describes as part of the "modern art-culture system"[2] in which, "the West or the central power adopts, transforms, and consumes non-Western or peripheral cultural elements, while making 'art' which was once embedded in the culture as a while, into a separate entity."[3] Spies worked with Wayan Limbak and Limbak popularized the dance by traveling throughout the world with Balinese performance groups. These travels have helped to make the Kecak famous throughout the world.

Task 3: Lesson Plan

Let’s Go Holiday!

Level : Form 1

Time : 30 Minutes

Aims : To practice extraction of information from the website

Technical requirements
Computers that fully equip with internet connection and internet browser for students’ usage


Website/s
http://travel.yahoo.com/


Preparation

1. Locate sites available for travelling/holiday
2. Using the information from the sites, prepare a worksheet


Procedure

1. Ask students about beaches and interesting places in Malaysia. Ask them whether they have been to abroad or other interesting places outside Malaysia (such as Mexico or US).
2. Give the worksheet prepared. Ask them to browse into the given website and ask them to complete the worksheet.
3. Students are given time to extract the information from the website and ask teacher if they experience any difficulty while completing the task.
4. When all the students have finished, discuss the answers by asking the students to present what they have collected from the website.
5. From the information, ask students to write about their dream holiday in a paragraph.