Bali Arts Festival (Pesta Kesenian Bali) takes place every year starting on the second Saturday from June until the end of July.
For 40 years, the festival brought culture to the spotlight for a month. This year’s theme is fire.
We were lucky to be here just before it started.
A month with all kind of exhibitions, music, dance and other artistic activities.
On the first day of the festival, an opening ceremony takes place, on the streets around Renon Park in Denpasar an army of singers, musicians, dancers dressed in traditional costumes is unleashed.
I honestly did not know how to capture everything that was happening there, I was trying to see as much as possible and not to leave any details, each with a different feature. Makeup is very fine, to the lowest point, line, strand. Costumes with many impeccable details.
After a while, I was able to clear my mind and admire from another perspective, summarize what I see, enjoy and interact with a few of them, at least out of sight.
Imagine an open-air museum that stretches over several miles where people from the past have come back to life with traditions, costumes, dances, objects. Everything just for you, one day to get an idea about the vast culture of the tribes that have lived thousands of years in Indonesia.
Participants start preparing even 6 months before, the costumes are very complex and it takes a long time for them to be maufactured. In addition, they also had cars or just some kind of trailers, carried or pulled by people, transformed into a museum where the participants danced, played on various instruments, or simply displayed objects from the area they were representing.
Many foreigners do not know about this event, locals represent the majority.
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