Thread: Keris bargain
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Old 5th October 2020, 09:46 PM   #11
A. G. Maisey
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Join Date: May 2006
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No David, in fact I cannot recall seeing dancers in Bali wearing keris with any style of dress.

I guess there are probably a lot of photos of dancers with a keris in hand, such as with your example, but what usually happens with the scabbard is that once the keris is drawn the scabbard gets dropped.

Unlike Jawa where there is plenty of opportunity to see people in traditional dress, and wearing keris, in Bali since the 1960's, there is virtually no public display of keris, and about the only times I've seen keris worn in Bali is at weddings, and by the cultural police during enforcement of rules & order at Hari Nyepi.

The Barong Dance is the one that people mostly associate with the keris, I've seen a few performances of this dance and usually the keris that are used by the dancers are handed out by a priest.

There is something else to remember too, and that is that although you might see a dancer wearing a keris before a performance, unless there is the need for a keris in the actual performance, and this is rare, he will not wear the keris while performing.

In the days of film ordinary people counted the photos they took, because each shot cost real money. Now, in the age of the digicam the tourists flock into Bali --- or they did, pre-Covid --- and many of these tourists go on a clickfest from the moment the plane starts its descent into Ngurah Rai airport.

They don't stop until they get back on the plane to go home. They literally see Bali through the viewfinder and go home with 20,000 images. A lot of these images get processed & put up on the internet.

How many pictures can you find on the net that show dancers in Bali wearing keris?
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