Chapter 4 - The Dance Photographs of Walter Spies and Claire Holt: A Biographical Study

Summary

In general, the film will depict a battle between white and black magic. Very uncanny things: trances and dreams, exorcism and divine position. But it all seems to resemble a vast and beautiful folk song, very simple and grand. ▶4.1

WALTER SPIES, FRAGMENT OF A LETTER DESCRIBING HIS FILM PROJECT BLACK MAGIC (INSEL DER DÄMONEN)

Jane Belo’s book Traditional Balinese Culture is a collection of essays by wellknown scholars and artists engaged with Bali and Indonesia during the first half of the 20th century. Jane Belo, herself an anthropologist, was connected to many of the first wave of scholars and expatriates that fled to Bali and Indonesia (at the time still called the Dutch East Indies) between the World Wars, including Walter Spies, Beryl de Zoete, Gregory Bateson, Margaret Mead, Claire Holt, and of course her husband Colin McPhee. These people represent an important cross-section of the early American and European modernists that sought alternative forms of culture and identity as refuge after the entropy and disillusionment resulting from industrialization and the World War I. Traditional Balinese Culture includes contributions by all these people and others. Amongst these is an essay by art historian Claire Holt, “‘Bandit Island:’ A short Exploration Trip to Nusa Penida,” which recounts an expedition she conducted with Walter Spies and Jane Belo as they traveled together across Nusa Penida, a small cluster of three islands southeast of Bali (including Nusa Lembongan, a popular tourist destination today). Nusa Penida falls under the jurisdiction of Bali, but has developed its own unique culture. The trip was intended as a comparative exploration, to discover the cultural similarities and differences between these small islands and their parent island of Bali:

Do they worship their gods in temples similar to those of the Balinese? Do they enjoy the same riot of colors in their clothing and do they apply their artistic gifts in sculpture, painting, music, and dance in the same was their neighbors in Bali do?

All these and similar questions, which could find no ready answer anywhere, prompted our small expedition. There were three of us and our interests divided: our “arts and crafts department” was mainly interested in the architecture and sculpture of the temple and also wanted to make special inquiries about the local weavings.