The Gamelean Çudamani performance was a small taste of Balinese culture’s dance and music. The performance began with the drummers on stage performing various metal instruments similar to xylophones, continuing into the dancers joining. As each dance set took the stage, the audience was informed about the story behind the dance making it easier for the audience to interpret the pieces properly. The first piece shown was about a boar escaping and ruining the goddess’s majestic garden. The goddess grows annoyed with the boar and decides to kill it, filling the garden with blood. In the end, everyone is upset and loses. Following the first dance, the ensemble comes and performs a piece by a young composer in the group. Following each performance, the ensemble plays a piece composed by a group member. Following this piece is an intermission. Anticipating more pieces, the audience was not disappointed. Beginning the second half of the performance strong, the group began with an ensemble performance. They continued with a piece about deer monkeys and lion monkeys where they were trying to build a bridge across the ocean to rescue their friend. However, they continued to build the bridge very weakly and the bridge kept collapsing. The goddess of the ocean comes and tells them they are building it poorly while making storms because she was upset with the monkey animals. In the end, they rescue their friend and continue with their lives. The ensemble piece following the dance was about workers in the rice field, where bad thoughts are prohibited, and they would help each other while also having fun. Finally, they closed with a piece performed by the ensemble where one dancer came onto the stage and the audience clapped and shouted to feed the energy on the stage for the performers. Throughout the performance, the ideas of identity, gender, and new media is revealed and is extremely evident by the way the dancers move and the stories that were selected to be performed.
It is apparent that the idea of identity, gender, and new media were scattered throughout the performance to enhance and engage the audience. The idea of identity was shown through all the choices of the music being played and the stories chosen to explain through dancing. These small pieces of Balinese dance and music sheds light into their culture. They continued to share this culture and identity by allowing the audience to shout and cheer for the performers during the final dance, bringing the audience from passive viewers into active participants of the performance, truly engulfing them into the Balinese culture. Another aspect of the identity ideology is that the performers chose specific clothing and outfits to enhance the cultural performance. These costumes were chosen for each dance for a reason from the meaning of the color to the meaning of the way they move their fan or their head, this all plays a role in the identity of the Gamelean Çudamani performance. The idea of gender is also very prevalent as the performers informed the audience that all the dances were choreographed by a female dancer in the group for herself, her cousins, and her sister. This gave the female dancers the choice to move their bodies in a way they want to, not in a way a male would want to see it performed. This brought a feminist approach to the dances, a softer and simpler approach with subtle head and feet movements while being able to convey the story and its meaning. In addition to the identity and gender ideology within the Gamelean Çudamani performance, the idea of new media is explained as they are using backgrounds for the first time. They were experimenting with painted backgrounds being projected onto a screen behind the dancers to enhance the performance. This digital content shows that new media is beneficial not only for communication, but to reveal the meanings behind dances, songs, and any nonverbal action.
The overall performance related to the class through the keywords discussed, taking a deeper look into the culture of the Gamelean Çudamani group through the lens of identity, gender, and new media.