CLICK HERE FOR BLOGGER TEMPLATES AND MYSPACE LAYOUTS »

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

BALI'S KECAK DANCE


Kecak(pronounced: /'ke.tʃak/, roughly "KEH-chahk", alternate spellings: Ketjak and Ketjack), a form of Balinese music drama, originated in the 1930s and is performed primarily by men. Also known as the Ramayana Monkey Chant, the piece, performed by a circle of 100 or more performers wearing checked cloth around their waists, percussively chanting "cak" and throwing up their arms, depicts a battle from the Ramayana where the monkey-like Vanara helped Prince Rama fight the evil King Ravana. However, Kecak has roots in sanghyang, a trance-inducing exorcism dance.[1]

Kecak was originally a trance ritual accompanied by male chorus. German painter and musician Walter Spies became deeply interested in the ritual while living in Bali in the 1930s and worked to recreate it into a drama, based on the Hindu Ramayana and including dance, intended to be presented to Western tourist audiences. This transformation is an example of what James Clifford describes as part of the "modern art-culture system"[2] in which, "the West or the central power adopts, transforms, and consumes non-Western or peripheral cultural elements, while making 'art' which was once embedded in the culture as a while, into a separate entity."[3] Spies worked with Wayan Limbak and Limbak popularized the dance by traveling throughout the world with Balinese performance groups. These travels have helped to make the Kecak famous throughout the world.

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

WWW LeSSon Plan

READY, CAMERA…ACTION!


LEVEL : Form 4 (Intermediate-Advance)


TIME : 30-40 minutes


AIMS :

  1. To encourage students to speak through expressing their opinions
  2. To elicit students’ critical thinking
  3. To practice students sending email


TECHNICAL REQUIREMENTS:

  1. One computer per group of 2-3 students with an Internet connection and a web browser;
  2. Each student or group need to have an email address.

WEBSITES:

http://movies.yahoo.com http://www.screenit.com/search_videos.html


PREPARATION:

  1. Locate sites dedicated to movies
  2. Using information from the sites, prepare a worksheet for set induction (word search game)
  3. Prepare questions to be asked for speaking and follow-up activity

PROCEDURE:

  1. Ask the students for the movie titles that they know or watched
  2. Give the worksheet prepared. Ask them to search for the movies titles according to the clues given (names of actor/actress and year of released) from the movies. Tell students that the answers are available online
  3. Send students to the sites chosen, and ask them to complete the worksheet.
  4. When all the students have completed the task, check the answers with them.
  5. Ask each group to choose their favourite movie from the available websites and ask them to tell their friends for about 3 minutes:
    • Why do they like the movie? and
    • If you can be one of the characters in the movie, who do you want to be? Why?

FOLLOW-UP

  1. If time permits, demonstrate how to send email to the students and give the email address to the students
  2. Ask them this question:
    • Imagine that you are the famous movie critics, choose one movie from the website and write a review on the movie in a paragraph. Send your reviews to wanieytm@yahoo.com
  3. Students can complete the task in the class if time permits or tell them to complete it later if they have access to computer outside the class.