Ideological Struggle behind the Marginalization of Contemporary Dance in the Bali Arts Festival

Abstract

Bali Arts Festival (BAF) is an important outlet for presentation of Balinese artswith important functions and meanings regarding the exploration, preservation and development of Balinese art and culture. This annual festival has served as a venue for artistic performances that are creative, competitive, appreciative and educative. As contemporary danceis created based on a multitude of different culture ideas, this event has the potential to create momentum for contemporary dance’s in Balinese performing arts. However, strong ideology within Balinese society makes contemporary dance performance a serious challenge,because inperforming arts spheresit is considered a break from traditional values. This assumption is held dear for Balinese people, because BAF is a medium of activity and artistic creativity that upholds local cultural values.This study aims to find out and understand the ideological struggle behind the marginalization of contemporary dance in BAF by using qualitative methods in the data collection system conducted through: interviews, observations, and documents analyzed accurately with critical cultural study theories. The results of this study, implicitly and explicitly show that there is a sharp gap in the quantity of contemporary dance performances each year when compared to traditional dance. The gap is a resultof the popularity of traditional dance artsas being closely related to the domain of spirit and socio-cultural ideology; thus, the marginalization of contemporary dance in BAF. Until now, it has always been a struggle in various discourses both in theinformal and more serious levels, namely formal or scientific.