Five young dancers from Çudamani, a music and dance company from the Balinese village of Pengosekan, near Ubud, take rejang, a dance usually kept for temple ceremonies, to a clifftop above Jimbaran on “Rerejangan”, in a session filmed for the Seattle radio station KEXP. In the temple, young women dance rejang in the inner courtyard, dressed in white and gold under tall headdresses of fresh flowers, as an offering to welcome the gods who come to visit.

The piece is by Dewa Ketut Alit, a composer of new music for gamelan whose work has been performed at festivals in Europe such as Borealis in Norway. He founded Çudamani in 1997 with his brother Dewa Putu Berata, now its artistic director, and wrote “Rerejangan” for the group, which first recorded it in 2007 on Odalan Bali, an album named after the odalan, the festival every Balinese temple holds on the anniversary of its founding.

Eight musicians accompany the dancers on a gamelan semaradana, a version of Bali’s orchestra of bronze metallophones, gongs and drums developed in the 1980s. It keeps the instruments of kebyar, the style of sudden switches between loud and soft, fast and slow, that spread across Bali from around 1915, but tunes them to seven notes rather than the usual five, giving the players the older scales of court and temple music. The five dancers are Pande Putu Silviari Dewi, Dewa Ayu Oktaviana Dewi, Kadek Tania Aryaswari, Desak Ketut Safitri Dewi and Ni Made Raisa Cening Kirana, with I Putu Swaryandana Ichi Oka among the musicians as on-site coordinator.

“Rerejangan” closes the set Çudamani recorded on 29 August at Puri Bhagawan, the venue on that clifftop, for Live on KEXP, the station’s filmed studio sessions. These were KEXP’s first sessions in Asia, made through a partnership with AXEAN Festival, Southeast Asia’s music conference and showcase, with twelve acts filmed across two Bali venues. Çudamani’s performance went online on 3 November.

Listen to “Rerejangan” HERE and find the studio original on Odalan Bali following THIS LINK