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If a dance takes place somewhere, the gamelan is there too. Nearly always, because dance and gamelan are correlated. We have to know that these two forms of expression are a whole. In one occurrence it is visual, in the other it is aural. But it is matter of the same rhythm, of the same energy. The gamelan's rhythm becomes visible in the dancer's body. And GAMELAN IS A DANCE in itself, a dance of sounds.
The orchestra is in close interaction with the dancer, each movement, each gesture is reflected in the music and vice versa. We can even imagine the dancer as an instrument of the gamelan but visual rather than aural. His movements seem to delight in taking part to the music's complexity. His angular postures seem as replies to the instruments' strokes. His eyes have the same brightness as the metal's sounds. Understanding between dancer and orchestra is no less than a revival of energy in the music's rhythm. Connivance is great between the dancer and the drum.
There are occasions where the dancer comes to play an instrument while continuing to move in a danced manner. And let's observe the players also, with their synchronized strokes. Their arms, their heads, is it not already a dance ?
As arts, dance and gamelan are two aspects of a same tradition that comprises shadow play and masked dance too. Like instruments of the gamelans, puppets, masks and statues shelter spirits and can host gods. When it is the dancer who hosts a god, his body becomes a life size puppet, his eyes become those of the god. The players of the gamelan are possessed by the same energy as the dancer's.
We are in presence of a tradition where movement and rhythm take over inertia and rigidity. Arts like sculpture and painting are of second rank. But the Indian, Khmer, Javanese and today Balinese sculptors and painters have that magic to give a dancing aspect to their pieces of work. On wood, stone or bronze, they produce scenes that seem to move beyond the piece's intrinsic stillness. They don't consider any art as of second rank, everything is dance to them.
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