Watching Masked Dance at The Local Temple

Hello everyone, I would like to share with you a dance performance that I watched at a local temple in my village. The dance is called Sidhakarya Mask Dance. And, as its name suggests, this was the dance where all the dancers wore masks.

The most iconic character was the old man mask dance. The dancer can be a young person, like what you see in these pictures.

When I watched the dance, it was toward the end of a temple ceremony. Many people from my village attended the ceremony. They sat down on the floor of open buildings and some on plastic chairs in the middle of temple yard waiting for the dancers to appear.

People sat forming a circle. In one side of the circle was a curtain where the dancers appeared from.

All waited eagerly as the dancer came out. I saw many men, women and kids in the temple. They all wore traditional Balinese dress, a custom for going to the temple.

The curtain in the middle was slightly rocking as the sounds of traditional gamelan music got louder. The old man mask dancer appeared from behind the curtain. The spectators were silent as the dancer moved slowly into the middle of the circle. Some little toddlers cried because they were scared of the mask that their moms had to bring them out of the temple yard.

The dancer lifted his hand up to his forehead as if squinting to see his surrounding. Then he approached two little girls from the spectators and gave them some little money. The girls were so happy.

There were more dancers appearing Each portrayed a different character. One dancer was a king, another was a vice king. There were two funny characters, the servants of the kings, which made all the people roared in laughter. They were quite hilarious. They cracked jokes while talking about current events in the village and in the society in general.

All the people seemed to have enjoyed the dance and the comedy. They had a great time in the temple watching the performance.

Well, that's the masked dance performance in my local temple. This dance performed at the end of every temple festival as the mark that the festival is coming to its end.