Balispirit Festival Celebrates Unity in Diversity - By Michele Cempaka
The Balispirit Festival will kick off its 2nd year at Bali Purnati Centre for the Arts in Batuan which is just 10 minutes south of Ubud. An opening ceremony will take place on April 28th, followed by daily yoga and dance workshops as well as nightly performances which will be held from April 29th – May 3rd. The final day of the festival will be a free family day (Hari Cinta Keluarga).
The Balispirit Festival was conceived through a creative collaboration between three co-founders, each one bringing a unique perspective to the formation of the festival which was set up in March 2008. Meghan Pappenheim and I. Kadek Gunartha, two of the co-founders and also husband and wife, had a strong desire to create a festival that promotes the creative teamwork of people from all over the world, who have the opportunity to come together with master artists on the island of Bali.
Robert Weber, the third co-founder of the festival brings his expertise and love of music to this year’s festival. He is creating a platform for performers to gather and share their unique forms of music with a new audience from Bali and South East Asia. A producer and musician, Robert has a deep understanding about how music can have a profound and lasting effect on many people’s lives.
All three co-founders strongly believe that creative collaborations have a big impact on outreach for youth. This is clearly evident through the formation of the Bhinneka Initiative. The dream of the founders has been to inspire positive change in our Indonesian youth through introducing yoga principles that enhance daily life and creative collaborations in dance and music. The Festival also seeks to create an environmentally conscious event – one which will inspire on-going responsibility to the environment through Festival activities especially on ‘Hari Cinta Keluarga’
Yoga Series is an essential part of the Balispirit festival. Diverse yoga masters from all over the world will be featured, such as internationally renowned Yogis like Eoin Finn – a yogi, surfer and ‘Blissologist’ who has been a disciple of Yoga, Eastern and Western philosophy, martial arts and meditation since 1987 and has been teaching yoga for over a decade to thousands of students. Fusing his passion for athletics and yoga as an essential cross-training element, Finn has worked with Olympic athletes in the US and Canada for whom he has created customized, performance-enhancing yoga programs. Katy Appleton (UK) – who was a professional dancer for the Royal Ballet turned yogi, has had an extensive clientele including high profile celebrities such as Paul McCartney, Heather Mills, British royalty, prima ballerinas, as well as TV and media personalities. Swami Shankardev Saraswati (Australia) – a medical doctor, yoga therapist and internationally acclaimed author and presenter is a direct disciple of Swami Satyananda Saraswati, he lived in the Bihar School of Yoga India for 10 years (1974-1985), where he was trained to teach the highest practices of yoga-tantra. During this time he wrote and edited many of the books on Yoga and Yoga Therapy published by the Bihar School of Yoga. Pujiastuti Sindhu (Indonesia) is a Kundalini yoga teacher from Bandung who is on the forefront of the yoga movement for the Moslem community. Her dream is to spread the practice of yoga throughout Indonesia by empowering the community through creating affordable, good quality yoga classes while promoting a good and healthy lifestyle. Her first book (2006) “Hidup Sehat dan Seimbang dengan Yoga - A Healthy Balanced Life with Yoga,” made Yoga accessible to all Indonesian people.
The Living Masters Series will be an exciting facet of this year’s festival. There will be a strong focus on masters from the Indonesian archipelago who are devoted to the enrichment and strengthening of people’s understanding of a variety of regional creative forms of expression. For example, barong and jaipong dances, Javanese shadow puppetry, Jamu healing, Islamic spiritual singing and more.
Ibu Ni Ketut Arini and Slamet Gundono are two of the masters who will be featured at the festival. Ibu Ni Ketut Arini is one of Bali’s most noted artists and scholars, and is a highly revered teacher and performer of classical and modern Balinese dance. Ibu Arini is an artist whose unquestioned mastery and love of dance, as well as her gentle spirit, have made her a guiding light to thousands of dancers and other artists throughout Bali. She appears frequently on Balinese television in demonstrations and explanations of various dance styles as an articulate spokesperson for one of the world’s richest dance traditions. In addition to her ambitious touring schedule (she has taught and performed in more than 20 countries), Ibu Arini has performed several times with the Bay Area Ensemble, Gamelan Sekar Jaya. Sekar Jaya is currently producing a documentary video of her work, focusing on many dances now in danger of being lost but which still live intensely in the mind and movement of Ibu Arini.
Slamet Gundonon is a multi-disciplinary artist who draws on the long traditions of Javanese and Indonesian culture to reinvent and innovate within the field of interactive shadow puppetry. Gundono collaborates with artists from other disciplines, incorporating story telling, dance, film and multi-media, and also runs workshops to encourage experimentation. Using humor and satire in a non-confrontational way, Gundono has developed a form of puppetry that involves clay, vegetables, sleep talking, water and condoms. He lends a voice to the socially marginalized and is popular with a wide audience. His work investigates social issues such as gender, exploitation, religious orthodoxy and damage to the environment, using local idioms and simple means to demonstrate that traditional cultural forms can be powerful vehicles for contemporary expression.
Dance & Music Series will feature a fantastic line-up of local and foreign entertainers from around the world including: Sibo Bangoura (Guinea). He was born into a Griot (musician) family in the Republic of Guinea, West Africa, and has played music since he was a young boy. Sibo has become a well renowned and respected African musician in Sydney and around Australia; Saharadja (Bali) was created in Bali, Indonesia in 2002 by Javanese Jazz trumpeter and vocalist Rio Sidik, and his wife, Australian-born classical violinist Sally Jo, as a way for them to play together and share their different approaches to music; There will be many other great performers featured like Rocky Dawuni (Ghana), Suzanne Teng (USA) and more.
The Tomorrow Series will showcase several talented performers on the rise with a focus on the South East Asian region. During ‘Festival Nights’, performances will feature different genres of music, ranging from indie and folk to traditional and jazz fusion. Some of the headliners will include: Jerome Kugan (Malaysia) - a singer songwriter poet who originally comes from Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, East Malaysia, and is now based in Kuala Lumpur. He has been actively writing and performing music and organizing music and poetry events since 1996, and has published his writings in a variety of publications; Daphne Tse (USA) is a soulful singer/songwriter currently traveling and making the world her home. Originally from Texas, she explored music through many venues and was drawn to the west in 1994 (relocating to Los Angeles, CA). Since her initial yoga class, she has explored merging her spiritual practice with her contemporary folk singer/songwriter style. She has played for numerous yoga retreats in India, Greece, Guatemala, Costa Rica and now Bali. She studied folk music at the Old Town School of Folk Music in Chicago and kirtan music with Jai Uttal and Daniel Paul in Guatemala; Mia Palencia (Malaysia), is a singer songwriter, jazz crooner, voice actor, public speaker and occasionally a theatre personality. She kicked off her career as the other half of well-known local jazz act Double Take at the age of 14. Mia then joined Groove Unction, a Malaysian jazz band led by legendary jazz guitarist, Jose Thomas.
The crowning event of the 2009 Festival will be Hari Cinta Keluarga – a day especially devoted to the family and the important role they play in our lives. This inspiring day is free and is open to all. There will be a wide array of unique family and child-oriented workshops, all designed to bring families together. In addition, master musicians will join youth enthusiasts through a variety of collaborative workshops, providing a wonderful opportunity for everyone to be inspired and learn from each other. The end of the Festival will be marked by a celebratory concert by all the artists. Tom Freund (USA) will be a headliner for this special family day. He will be performing from his acclaimed children’s album “Hug Trees”, inspired by his daughter Delilah. Freund is a New York City native who now hangs his hat in Venice, California. He is considered to be one of the great singer-songwriters of his time.
For more information about the Balispirit Festival,
please visit: www.balispiritfestival.com
