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Ida Bagus Alit

By Margaret Coldiron

In 1991 I decided to spend Christmas with an old college friend who was living in Singapore. When I told her of my plan, my friend said, ‘Well, if you’re going to come all this way, you’ve really GOT to go to Bali’.

I knew nothing about Bali but, since I might never have the chance to visit Southeast Asia again, I thought I’d better take the opportunity to see this place. So I made arrangements to fly to Bali for five days in the midst of my Singapore visit. I never imagined that this decision would change my life.

Ida Bagus Alit performs Topeng Tua

On my first night in Bali, I went to see the dances at the Puri Saren in Ubud where I saw the most extraordinary performance I’d ever seen – ‘Topeng Tua’ – a masked dance, a character study of an old man. I asked my host if he could put me in touch with anyone who could tell me more about this masked dance-drama and that is how I first met Ida Bagus Alit.

The next day I was taken to his house in Lodtunduh and after some time spent sitting on the floor, drinking tea and trying to understand the Balinese conversations around me, Alit (who did not speak much English in those days) asked if I would like to see him dance. Of course I said ‘yes’ and he then performed an array of masks, one after the other, there in his sitting room. I was hooked.

Since then I’ve spent a great deal of time travelling around Bali with Alit and filming his performances, learning dances, watching him carve masks and talking with him about both the physical (sekala) and spiritual (niskala) dimensions of topeng performance. He is an accomplished artist, both as a dancer and a maskmaker and he is a wonderful teacher.

Ida Bagus Alit Widiyana (Ida Bagus is the caste title for the priestly Brahmana caste, Alit is a kind of a birth-order name, indicating that he is a younger sibling, Widiyana is a personal name that, while very meaningful, is not generally used as a form of address) lives in the village of Lodtunduh, about five kilometres south of Ubud. He began learning to carve masks with his father and grandfather from about the age of ten and later worked with the well known maskmaker Ida Bagus Anom, from the neighbouring village of Mas.

Mask Rangda carved by Ida Bagus Alit

He has developed a distinctive style and makes topeng masks of startling vitality as well as imaginative original designs for performers and companies in the United States and Europe. In recent years he has begun specialising in making the sacred masks of Rangda, Barong and Jero Gedé and masks for wayang wong, the Balinese masked Ramayana dance drama.

He did not begin dancing until he was in his 20s, but has since become very much in demand as a performer, especially because of his skills as a storyteller, and his vast knowledge of the ‘Babad’ (chronicles of Balinese history) on which the topeng stories are based. He is also a popular and much respected teacher who still uses the traditional, village approach of direct kinaesthetic learning.

Because of his profound understanding of the sacred texts and ‘making the story’, he is sought out by Balinese dancers who wish to perform the virtuoso topeng pajegan in which a single dancer performs as many as 20 masks of various characters.

Many maskmakers and performers from Europe and the US have travelled to Bali to study with Alit, some on courses organised by the Dell’Arte Company (based in California) and many have sought him out independently. He worked with Nigel Jamison’s company when they came to Bali in the late 80s and helped them create their controversial Balinese Macbeth. He has also worked with British maskmaker/performers like Mike Chase and John Wright.

Although he has performed in Japan, Alit rarely travels outside of Bali but will be making his first visit to Europe in May 2008 giving workshops and performances in Dartington and Cardiff.

Published in Seleh Notes Vol 15 No 2

Ida Bagus Alit

By Margaret Coldiron

More about topeng