KEBYAR! Fest 2022

We’ve always loved working on collaborative projects, so we couldn’t pass up the opportunity to work alongside Gamelan DanAnda (GDA) when they asked us to collaborate with them and 2 other local Indonesian traditional arts groups in Victoria (Mahindra Bali Gamelan & Widya Luvtari) late last year. After many years of restrictions, this project was to be the first traditional Indonesian festival to be shown in public without restriction for a long time, which in itself was something incredibly exciting.

As a team, we put together a traditional Balinese Festival for the city of Geelong at the Botanic Gardens, which GDA named ‘KEBYAR! Fest’. Authenticity was key to bringing a taste of Bali to the outback, and we didn’t hold back on any details. Live traditional gamelan, with the smell of incense burning in the background. A backdrop of a traditional balinese gate, ‘Gapura’, for the balinese dancers to enter through wearing beautiful bright balinese costumes.

Deena rehearsing Tari Cendrawasih at Gamelan DanAnda’s Studio. Photo by: Photius Drakos

Rehearsals began earlier in the year with the official date set for early April. We began by learning a classic traditional Balinese dance called Tari Puspanjali. If you’ve been following us for a while, you would know that pre-covid we actually performed this dance with live gamelan music by Gamelan DanAnda, so we were excited to perform this again in a new setting. The second dance we chose to perform was Tari Cendrawasih, a dance about the courting of two birds - more specifically ‘Birds of Paradise’.

Covid seemed to get in the way of multiple rehearsals, hitting each performer one-by-one in the lead up to the big day. Thankfully, we all managed to get through covid without much or any pain and suffering. On the other hand it put a strain on rehearsals both at our Footscray studio and at Gamelan DanAnda’s studio. Unfortunately by the end of it, we only had 3 available dancers to perform. Yana, who was also ready to MC had to isolate last minute. Nevertheless, the show must go on! We called in our long time Lestari family member, Lucy to fill in as MC for the day, and the 3 dancers prepared to make their way over to Geelong.

Mama Ning had organised for the Lestari performers to stay in Geelong the night before the performance to make travelling easier. We ordered dinner from Pondok Nasi Bakar, a local Indonesian restaurant in the centre of Geelong, we ate together and went to bed nice and early (midnight is early for the Lestari house haha). The next day we prayed for the weather to hold up as we got ready for the festival. From then on the day ran very smoothly, and although it was cold, not a drop of rain fell from the clouds during the festival. Thank you Balinese Gods!

Watch the recap video here

Costume: Sanggar Lestari Melbourne
Puspanjali Performers: Deena Verawati, Asti Aryadini, Rani Heraputeri
Cendrawasih Performers: Deena Verawati, Ellisya Winarto (Mahindra Bali)
MC: Luciani Tusan
Gamelan: Gamelan DanAnda, Mahindra Bali
Photography: Photius Drakos
Videography: Photius Drakos & Paul Huynh
Location: Geelong Botanic Garden

Special mention to our Lestari girls who couldn’t perform due to isolation: Yana Millane, Tika Widosari, Sally Gething