Balinese Dance: Agun Anom "Baris" Putra
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When I went to Bali, the first and the most important task was to find the right teacher.
For that, I went around Ubud every day, watching different performances.
When I saw the dance of Agun Anom Putra, from the very first five steps as he appeared, I thought, this is it!! It was clear—his quality was completely different from any dancer I had seen.
Just those five steps—electricity ran through my body.
Simply by appearing on stage, the whole air of the space changed.
And in each movement, inner sparks of life were silently exploding.
Every movement—hands, legs, feet, eyes—was precise, yet filled with rich internal force.
A few days later, I visited him and asked him to teach me.
I told him I had only three months, and that I came to Bali for a serious purpose. I asked him to be strict with me.
From the next day, his very rigorous training began—and sometimes I regretted that I had asked for it!
He was thinking about dance 24 hours a day.
He kept talking and teaching about dance while we ate, when he came to my room, when we visited temples, when we walked through the rice fields.
He told me he often dreamed of dance.
Playing chess with his father was a small moment of relief for me.
He often spoke about his childhood—growing up in a poor family, his mother carrying stones from the river to sell in order to support them.
He made a strong determination to become a great dancer and change his life, and he practiced with incredible diligence.
He was a master of the warrior dance “Baris.”
Behind his Baris, his whole life was blazing.
In the first days, he gave me only a few basic practices.
One of them was called “Mepel” (I’m not sure of the official name—it sounded like that).
You open your legs into a wide diamond shape, as far as possible, lift each leg up and down, and then—Pa!—stand up in an asymmetrical position.
Another practice was simply to walk. Just walk, and keep walking.
He kept shouting: “Open the knees!! Shoulders and chest—up, up, up!”
He told me that traditionally, children would practice only this for six months.
He kept repeating: “Don’t try to dance. You were already dancing in your mother’s womb.
If you practice the basics, dance will come automatically. So practice the basics.”
And it actually happened like that.
Even now, I continue to deepen this idea.
I keep asking: what is “basic practice” for myself—and for many contemporary performers?
Balinese dance has a long tradition, developed within a specific historical, cultural, and environmental context. From that, certain forms have emerged.
But I am not trying to become a Balinese dancer.
I am searching for a form that does not belong to any tradition or style—something freer, arising from millions of years of history of this very body and mind, and from the environment in which I grew up.
If we simply try to “dance freely,” we only repeat our habitual patterns.
We definitely need principles.
So I continue to experiment, to search for such universal basic practices, and to share them.
His words—
“Practice the basics. Dance will come. You were already dancing in the mother’s womb”—
were embodied in him, and deeply resonated with the thoughts and dance of Kazuo Ohno.
In fact, he told me that when he visited Japan, he saw Noh, Kabuki, and the butoh of Kazuo Ohno.
Among them, it was Kazuo Ohno who touched him the most.
I asked him why.
He answered: “Spirit.”
Another point he repeated, which still resonates deeply in me, was this:
make the movement smaller and smaller, while increasing the internal intensity more and more.
On another occasion, I heard a very similar idea from an Aikido master.
I continue to push this idea to its edge—searching for rich sparks of life in every millimetre of movement.
In a certain sense, he was also a revolutionary in Bali.
Traditionally, Balinese music and dance groups are formed within each village.
But he gathered the best musicians from different villages to create his ideal gamelan orchestra, pursuing uncompromising quality. This was uncommon at that time in Bali. As a result, not only his dance, but also his gamelan orchestra had a distinct and powerful quality.
If you ever visit Bali, he and his group Semara Ratih perform regularly—don’t miss it.
Deep gratitude to this living maestro—
with childlike, charming, pure eyes,
behind a sharp gaze like a tiger.
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