:: Bali for Kids.com Magazine - Kecak Fire and Trance Dance in Taman Kaja Ubud::

I got friends from home here. We met in Ubud and decided to go after dinner to the Kecak Fire and Trance Dance in Taman Kaja – Ubud. I saw it about 6 times now since they started 2 years ago and I still like to see it, as they always making little changes and improvements. The village of Taman Kaja set up the most funniest, wonderful and also breath taking Kecak in Bali. The Banjar in Taman was quite clever when they decided to collect money for the rebuilding of their temple via a whole village performance. The village has about 140 families and almost all adult members of the village are involved in the presentation. All the money is used for the rebuild of the temple – and you can feel that they all doing it for the spirits, for their believes – for the dewis. They put down a performance which is so alive and so rice that you just stunned when you get out. Not just that they have fantastic dancers in Taman, they got the Trance Dancer. We got a 13 year old boy with us who was blown away from it. He told me nobody in school at home will believe him what he saw tonight. And his mom was just saying: “Unbelievable” all the time during the dance. The performance also shows the great humor Balinese have. They are wonderful in making jokes about their self’s. And this is what makes the performance in Taman so special. It is not a stiff kid of performance. It is alive every single minute. One of my favorite is the old Nenek (Grandmother) who is sitting on the side of the temple and singing a part of the story. She is so much Bali. My daughter (3 years) was sitting on her chair for the whole 1 ½ hours of the performance – she normally never can sit for 5 minutes. Today she asked me to find her a teacher who teaches her to dance like the kijang (deer). I know some of the dancers, as I lived in Taman for a while and they came over to greet us. My friends were blown away to met THEM on top of all and have some pictures with them! Thanks Desa Taman for this great evening and we hope you set up another dance soon, so we can enjoy more of you! It is a great innovative – an example of self help as the only real help. Whish there would be more!