SANG HYANG

Trance, which is said to be the arrival of a holy spirit into the body of the exorcist, is something quite natural for the Balinese. Entranced dancers are found in any performances. The players of kris dance in the Barong Sahadewa, or the Rangda of Barong Landung, or the Calonarang, or the Baris Tumbak, or the dancers of Abuang and Pendet during a certain ceremony in the temple, all are in trance shortly before the dance is ended. But amongst those ways of trance probably the dancers of Sang Hyang are the ones with their own specification.

There are many versions of Sang Hyang. All of their dancers are not really dancers, nor know how to dance. They are only able to dance while they are in trance, and know nothing at all after it.in Sang Hyang Dedari, for instance, there are two girls, very young virgins, considered to be holy. These girls dresses in Legong costumes, sit in front of smoking fragrant incense and offerings, while a number of women are chanting the Sang Hyang songs to invite the evil spirits to come down to the earth. Soon after the holy nymphs Dedaris (Vidiadari: the heavenly nymph) enter into the body of the girls both of them rock back and forth. At last they fall down fully in trance, and the chant stops. The girls are taken from the temple where that ceremony was held, to the place where the Sang Hyang dance will be performed (usually is not far from the temple). In this performance the girls dance and dance with closed eyes, unconscious sometimes dancing on the smallest branches of a tree, or even on the coconut leaf-stems (but not too high), and very often they dance by standing on the shoulders of two men walking around the area.

Another version of this trance dance is Sang Hyang Jaran, the horse Sang Hyang, where the male dancer dances on the burning coconut husks with his hobby-horse. It is called Sang Hyang Delling if the medium are puppets which are played by children.

Though Sang Hyang is a ritual dance, and believed to be sacred, in recent days the Sang Hyang Jaran is performed as a regular show, especially every full-moon and dark-moon night.