Might have had slipped visiting the Bali… “Ritual Trance Dance” Exhibition, yet still have a couple of days to make up for a visit to the Ferenc Hopp Museum – Budapest. The exhibition is to close on January, 30. 2022.
Bali, an Indonesian island, began to be promoted as a tourist paradise in the Netherlands in the mid-1910s and has been a popular destination for travelers and vacationers ever since. By the early 1930s, the beautiful tropical island had become a world-famous tourist destination that contemporary world stars wanted to see. Charlie Chaplin, for example, “fled” to Bali from the achievements of Western civilization in 1932 to find a renewal in traditional arts.
In the 1930s, were no longer a rarity in Hungary and at that time, thanks to the travelers, could already read in Hungarian about the exciting culture of Bali’s “earthly garden of paradise”, its enchanting and mysterious, often strange, transdances.
The photo exhibition at the Ferenc Hopp Museum of Asiatic Arts presents to the public a little-known side of the island of Bali from the perspective of two travelers – by both women. One of them arrived at Bali in the mid-1930s, the other in the turning of the 20th and 21st centuries. They did not know each other, but, with nearly a hundred years difference, both were receptive to the same phenomena in Bali.
Gill MARAIS arrived to Bali as a photojournalist in 1988, and spent much of her life there. She created captivating photo series of the island. A selection is presented at the exhibition. These dances are important means of communication with the world beyond our visible world, and include elements that sometimes might seem uncanny to the uninvolved viewer. The Hungarian public already had the opportunity in the 1930s to learn about traditional dances that represent the eternal struggle of good and evil. These dances are also important means of fighting against malefic powers and keeping them away.
Ilona ZBORAY came to the archipelago in the mid-1930s to visit her elder brother, who was working and living there for a decade and a half. She also aimed at exploring the mysterious tropics. In the present exhibition visitors can read her contemporary accounts on, among others, the very same trance dances that Gill Marais captured in her photographs in the early 21st century.
Exhibited texts and photos presenting trance dances come to life in an abridged version of the documentary titled “Sacred & Secret”, directed by contemporary Basil GELPKE.
Update by Aggie Reiter
Rolling in Budapest 