Bali Arts Festival 2010

Starting on the 12th June and going through until the 10th July, the Bali Arts Festival will prove to be bigger and better than previous years. The festival is a full month of daily performances, handicraft exhibitions and other related cultural activities. If you have yet to see this on your visits to Bali then do so; it is a cultural experience not to be missed and considering all the events during the festival are located in Denpasar, then getting there will be no problem.

It seems as though the whole of Bali arrives in the city to present its offerings of dance, music and culture. The Bali Arts Festival is the Denpasar cultural event of the year and in my opinion probably the cultural event in the whole of the archipelago of Indonesia.

Besides the usual traditional dances tourists get to see on tours like the legong, gambuh, kecak, barong, baris, mask dances that are performed at villages like Bona and in some of the five star hotels, you will also have the opportunity to see dances that are only performed on special ceremonial occasions and rarely seen by westerners.

Dance choreography is another section of the festival. Ones that I particularly enjoy are the Sendratari Ballets and I have seen some of these performed in Java. These are the classical Balinese stories such as the Mahabharata, Ramayana, Panji and Suasoma.

The Bali Arts Festival is an event not to be missed by lovers of Balinese culture and for families, it makes a great few days out for the kids as well as being a learning experience for them.

Here is a full programme of the entire festival courtesy of Bali Discovery.