Drama and Dance In Bali, 2nd Edition [ Ritual , Mythology ]

Description

Rich photographic survey of the mythology, dance, and ritual drama of Bali reprinted from the 1938 first edition.

 

Spies, Walter, and de Zoete, Beryl. Drama and Dance In Bali. Faber and Faber Ltd. : London. 1952. Second edition.

 

A good copy of the 1952 rerelease of Drama and Dance in Bali, a spectacular photo tour of ritual dance and drama in Bali , Indonesia. Originally published in 1938, this work was a unique collaboration between the British Ballet dancer and dance researcher Beryl de Zoete and the Russo-German painter and musicologist Walter Spies.

According to his friend the writer Miguel Covarrubias, Spies had left Europe for Indonesia after the First World War, creating and leading a Western orchestra for the Sultan there before abandoning his post for Bali. An apparently charming but complicated man, Spies attracted other curious Westerners to Bali with his stories and hospitality, bringing other artists, dancers, and writers to the Pita Maha artist’s collective he helped co-found, and establishing a persistent fantastical image of Bali in the Anglosphere that has continued to this day.

Beryl de Zoete, as well as her lifelong companion, Arthur Waley, who provided the book’s forward, were the most famous of his visitors in Bali as their mutual interests in ethnology, music, and ritual dance produced this work, one of the earliest to capture and explain the uniquely Balinese dance styles. de Zoete provided the majority of the text while Spies provided the photographs and translations.

Spies was arrested in 1938, the same year as the first edition’s release, on charges of homosexuality but was released in 1939 thanks to outside pressure organized by the anthropologist Margaret Mead. Spies remained in Bali until 1942 when he was arrested by Dutch authorities as a German citizen. While a prisoner aboard a Dutch transport vessel, the ship was sunk by a Japanese torpedo and Spies was left to drown with the other German prisoners.

In the years since, revised opinions have emerged suggesting Spies’ was actually a pedophile preying on Balinese boys, raising uncomfortable questions about how many other westerners knew and who looked the other way.

 

 

Large 8vo, 327pp + index. Green cloth boards with tan cloth spine with pictorial red title label. Spine sunned, sunning to front board edges and top 2 inches of back board face. Corners rubbed. Bookblock, pastedowns, and endpapers spotted. Folding map of Bali at back in very good condition apart from an excess fold. 112 Black and White illustrations and photographs. Lacks dust jacket. Good condition.

 

If you liked this book, you might also like this copy of the biography “Sir Aurel Stein Archaeological Explorer“.