phew, it’s been a while since i’ve made it to a computer. now i’m in denpasar (the capital & closest thing to a city here) as of last night. tonight is our big performance at the bali arts festival & they sanely gave us the day off until 2:30 so we don’t wear ourselves out for once.
hmm highlights:
we performed the first act of our show for bedulu village (where we’d stayed until yesterday) a few nights ago & the largely-under-13 audience really loved it. they laughed constantly, including plenty of moments that none of us can see the humor in, but that’s just how people are here. perhaps we did something they’ve seen a million times in a different way, or perhaps we lifted our feet in an insulting way but they instantly forgave us, or perhaps we just mispronounced something or who knows. anyway it was wonderful, a feeling of being out of control & just playful, accepting that we don’t understand every facet of how an audience responds & just loving the fact that they’re enjoying themselves, even if we’re unwitting clowns. one of our friends from bedulu said in a week the teenagers in the village will be trying everything new we did, and we said amongst ourselves that within two weeks they’ll probably do it better. that’s exciting, the beginning of a conversation. i can’t wait to see what they do next.
we’ve also had good response to our dress rehearsals in denpasar (everything is open to the public in this country). i think our morale is actually generally high even though a few folks are eternally grumpy. we’ve mostly shifted our intention from refining a technically perfect presentation to creating something alive & exciting, and i think that’s so much more important & now we have fun performing it, rather than worrying about all the rough details (there are plenty).
friday night (tomorrow) is our gamelan’s performance in the new music series (which i just found out is actually a competition, ha ha i’m certain we’ll win;) & i have to say that, even given the newfound relative ease in the theatrical rehearsals, when the gamelan really gets to let it rip it’s so cathartic that within seconds we’re all ecstatic. the other night, after not having a substantive music rehearsal for weeks, we finally had our chance. after arguing for 15 minutes (still carrying our contentious energy & exhaustion from the day’s theater rehearsal), we finally just played & instantly were dancing inexorably and grinning whenever our mouths weren’t full of horns. i guess my point is gee i love playing music.
socially things have been so intense & difficult & rewarding. i’ve been so focused on the group that i haven’t made many Indonesian connections, which made me sad as we were leaving Bedulu, but then again that’s kinda just how i am sometimes. but within the group i’ve been having to consciously & completely let go of wanting & expecting connection with certain people, and have been surprised by who i’ve been getting close to. ack, these humans. i can’t imagine being one.
ok that’s it for this installment, sorry for the sporadicity. i have to run a few errands before our 2:30 call. hope everyone’s well & i send you my love.
p
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