On Tuesday, I went to Ubud Palace to see one of the traditional dances. Each night there's a different one, so I was curious to see what it was all about.

It started off with instrumental music, followed by the Legong Dance, then the Ramayana Dance. Each dance has a story, which I tried really hard to understand and failed miserably. According to the brochure, the Legong Dance is based on two brothers, Kings Subali and Sugriwa, who are turned into monkeys and fight with each other until they recognise each other and realise they're both monkeys and become very sad (!).

The Ramayana is a very long tale and the dance we saw covers only a part of it, when Rama, Sita and her brother Laksamana enter the jungle of Dandaka. The demonic minister, Maricha of Alengka, finds out about their trip and discusses the possibility of kidnapping Sita with King Rahwana. Marcha transforms into a deer to get Sita's attention...like I said, it's a long story.

Here are some pics (sorry for the blurry ones). I absolutely loved the costumes- they're so bright and colorful. The movements are very precise and you need to be totally fit to do this (videos are coming up soon check out the videos below)!

The whole performance was about 90 minutes, which went by really fast given how slow time goes by in Bali!