A few pictures from Gadung Kasturi's performance at the Ethnic Dance Festival June 28

I was not supposed to take these pictures (check them out on my Flickr site), but took just a couple of snaps without flash to give a sense of the Balinese dance performance at the San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival Saturday evening, June 28, 2008. It is late, so I wont write much now, save to say, I was mesmerized by the performance as a whole. Having studied a tiny little bit of dance myself, I have total respect for the six dancers who wore masks (likely meaning that they could not see anything), and had to dance as a unified group, mirroring each other when the choreography had them facing each other, weaving between each other, walking in typical Balinese dance fashion with knees lifting, shoulders up, fingers flexed and twitching, heads tilting left and right with the beat. Just stand up from your computer and try it yourself, and you will know that this is difficult stuff to do in unison, much less as a solo. The live gamelan was wonderful. All in all, this was an impressive performance.