Legong Dance: Bali's Court Dance, Its Story and Where It Lives On

In Brief

The legong dance is Bali's classical court dance, often performed by young girls. A condong, or attendant, dances a prelude. Then two identically dressed legong dancers perform a stylised story to a gamelan of twenty-five players or more.

The dancers use rapid eye movements, intricate finger gestures and sharply timed fan movements.

Legong developed as palace entertainment in Gianyar in the nineteenth century. Its best-known piece, Legong Keraton Lasem, tells of the king of Lasem, who abducts a princess and rides to his death.

Balinese tradition traces the dance to a king of Sukawati who saw heavenly dancers in a trance. Historians date its present form to the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Legong Keraton is one of the nine dances chosen to represent Balinese dance when UNESCO inscribed it as intangible heritage. Today legong lives on in village troupes, arts schools and temple festivals. In the north it lives on as Legong Tombol, revived in Banyuatis.

Legong at a Glance

• What it is: A refined dance for girls, performed by a condong and two legong to gamelan
• The best-known piece: Legong Keraton Lasem, the story of the king of Lasem and Princess Rangkesari
• Origin: The palaces of Gianyar in the nineteenth century. The condong's role was added between 1910 and the early 1930s
• Music: Gamelan pelegongan or semar pegulingan, today often gong kebyar
• Category: Balih-balihan, entertainment. At temple festivals it is danced outside the inner courtyards
• UNESCO: Legong Kraton is one of the nine dances in Three genres of traditional dance in Bali, inscribed 2015
• In the north: Legong Tombol of Banyuatis, and a kebyar style of legong that grew out of Jagaraga

Legong Is Danced by a Condong and Two Legong

The philosopher Stephen Davies has studied the history of legong in detail.

He describes the traditional line-up as three young girls: the condong, who dances a prelude, and the two legong. All three wear gilded cloth, ornate accessories and headdresses crowned with frangipani (Davies, BKI 2008).

The repertoire has about fifteen dances, some now lost. In full, a dance runs thirty minutes to an hour. Some tell stories, and others are pictures of birds, insects and plants.

Davies calls legong the treasury of movement for Balinese women's dance. He writes that a dancer's training is not complete without it.

UNESCO's inscription file names the elements of that vocabulary (nomination file):

• agem, the basic posture with knees turned out
• tandang, the travelling steps
• tangkis, the transitions
• tangkep, the facial expression, eyes included

Legong is an entertainment dance, and like other Balinese dances it is also an offering. At a temple festival it is danced just outside the temple, since it is not one of the dances allowed in the inner courtyards.

The relationship between sacred and staged dance is explored further in Balinese dance and music.

Balinese Tradition Traces Legong to a King's Vision

The story most often told comes from the chronicle of Sukawati.

Its king, I Dewa Agung Made Karna, lived from 1775 to 1825. He meditated for forty days at a temple site in Ketewel and saw in a trance two celestial dancers dressed in gold. He built a temple there, Pura Yogan Agung, and taught his court what he had seen.

The masked dances that came from that vision are called topeng sanghyang or sanghyang legong. They are still danced in the Ketewel temple on the Balinese 210-day calendar (Davies, BKI 2008).

Other accounts trace legong to Sanghyang Dedari, the trance dance of two young girls. UNESCO's file names both Sanghyang Dedari and the older court drama Gambuh as its sources.

Legong dancers at Gianyar, in an album of a journey through Bali dated 1927. Photo: Unknown author, KITLV / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0)

Historians Date Today's Legong to the Late Nineteenth Century

Davies, working through the lives of the teachers, argues for a later date than the king's vision.

In his reading, legong was made from andir, a dance for boys created in Blahbatuh in the mid-nineteenth century. The king of Gianyar asked for a version for girls. The dancer Anak Agung Rai Perit and the musician I Dewa Ketut Belacing made it, around 1889.

The condong's part was added village by village:

• Sukawati in 1910
• Peliatan by 1916
• Saba in 1930
• Badung in 1932

The historian Adrian Vickers replied that Balinese and Dutch written sources, closer to the time, modify that picture (Vickers, BKI 2009).

Even the name is younger than the dance. "Keraton" is the Javanese word for palace, and legong acquired it in the 1930s, when it was first performed in Java.

Bali's culture office dates Legong Keraton Lasem in Sukawati to the nineteenth century. It dates another piece, Legong Raja Cina, to the early twentieth century at Puri Taman in Saba (Bali Culture Office).

Legong Keraton Lasem Tells of a King, a Princess and a Bird of Ill Omen

The tale comes from the Panji stories, the Malat, set in the time of the East Javanese kingdom of Kediri (Mastra and others, Widyadari).

The king of Lasem wants to marry Princess Rangkesari of Daha. She refuses him, because she is promised to Raden Panji of Kahuripan, so he abducts her. Her brother, the king of Daha, declares war and sets out for Lasem.

Before the battle a bird that brings death attacks the king of Lasem. He escapes it, then falls fighting the king of Daha (Denpasar Culture Office).

Accounts differ on the bird. The Denpasar culture office names a garuda, and Kompas, reporting on a Legong Lasem competition in Denpasar in 2015, describes a crow facing the king (Kompas).

The condong opens the dance and hands the two legong their fans. The two legong, dressed identically, dance the king and the princess. In shortened versions the condong also takes over the part of the bird (Mastra and others, Widyadari).

Davies notes that in legong the drama comes second to the beauty of the dance.

The two legong and the condong on a stage in Ubud. Photo: Arian Zwegers / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

Five legong dances and their stories

Lasem is one legong among many. IDN Times Bali describes five you may come across (IDN Times Bali):

• Legong Keraton (Lasem), once often danced in the palaces, with the story told above.
• Legong Legod Bawa, a classical legong of Saba village in Blahbatuh, Gianyar. It tells how the gods Brahma and Wisnu competed to find the top and the base of Siwa's lingga, to show which of them was more powerful. It follows the usual legong form without a condong, and its costumes are mostly green, with garuda wings and arrows.
• Legong Kuntul, which recalls Petulu, a village near Ubud where herons, kokokan or kuntul, gather. It shows the herons at play in the rice fields, danced by two to six dancers with fans.
• Legong Jobog, the rivalry of the brothers Sugriwa (Kuntir) and Subali (Jobog) over their father's magic amulet. The amulet is thrown into an enchanted lake, the brothers go in after it and turn into monkeys, and their fight settles nothing.
• Legong Andir, or Nadir, an old dance of Tista village in Kerambitan, Tabanan. In the village's understanding it belongs to the deities of the local temple, Ratu Ayu Anom and Ratu Ayu Lingsing. It is a sacred dance, performed in the temple and only at set times, and its movement and story differ from other legong.

Legong Dancers Start Young and Learn by Following a Teacher

UNESCO's inscription file describes the lessons.

A teacher dances at the front. The pupils, some as young as four or five, follow from behind in time with the music. Girls usually start with Pendet.

The teacher corrects them as they go, and the sequence is repeated until it is memorised. The test is a performance with live gamelan.

Children learn in village arts clubs at the banjar hall and in private studios, sanggar. They also learn at school and at ISI Denpasar, the Indonesian Institute of the Arts (nomination file). The village side of that system is in the banjar.

Legong has long favoured young dancers. Writers of the 1930s and 1940s put the age of retirement at around twelve to fourteen.

Davies gives the reason: a body has to be shaped to legong's positions while it is still flexible. He quotes Balinese experts who still consider a dancer of about ten ideal. Dancers now often perform into their twenties and beyond, and teachers much longer.

Two young legong dancers, photographed around 1932. Photo: Unknown author, KITLV / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0)

UNESCO Named Legong Kraton Among Nine Balinese Dances

In 2015 UNESCO inscribed Three genres of traditional dance in Bali on its Representative List.

The committee's decision notes that nine dances from the three genres were entered in Bali's heritage inventory from 2010. The nomination file names them, each with an example from one regency:

• Sacred (wali): Rejang (Klungkung), Sanghyang Dedari (Karangasem), Baris Upacara (Bangli)
• Semi-sacred (bebali): Topeng Sidhakarya (Tabanan), Gambuh (Gianyar), Wayang Wong (Buleleng)
• Entertainment (balih-balihan): Legong Kraton (Denpasar), Joged Bumbung (Jembrana), Barong Ket "Kuntisraya" (Badung)

The file's Legong Kraton is "exquisitely beautiful" and danced by two or three girls. Its example is a studio in Peguyangan, Denpasar.

The committee also encouraged Indonesia to keep addressing the threats that come from promoting Balinese dance to tourists, especially for the religious dances.

For legong, Davies records what Balinese experts deplore in tourist shows: whole sections cut, a focus on Lasem alone, and lower standards.

North Bali's Kebyar Changed How Legong Sounds

North Bali changed legong from a distance.

Gong kebyar, the explosive gamelan style that grew up in Buleleng, brought a new dance with it. In 1915 I Wayan Paraupan of Jagaraga, known as Pan Wandres, created Kebyar Legong. It is a duet mixing Baris, Jauk and Legong (Buleleng Culture and Tourism Office).

Kebyar then worked back on legong itself. In 1932 the teacher Ida Bagus Boda of Badung re-choreographed legong's opening in the kebyar style, and the change spread quickly.

By the mid-1930s many of the soft-toned pelegongan and semar pegulingan orchestras had been melted down and recast as gong kebyar. Legong is now often played on kebyar instruments, which Balinese experts regard as far from ideal (Davies, BKI 2008).

Explore the wider history of gong kebyar and its development in north Bali in north Bali's dance and music and the Jagaraga war.

Legong danced before the gamelan under a banyan tree, around 1932. Photo: Unknown author, KITLV / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0)

Legong Tombol Was Lost for Forty Years, Then Revived in Banyuatis

The Legong Tombol tradition of Buleleng originated outside the regency.

The legong master I Wayan Rindi created it at the Karangasem palace in the 1950s. Around 1959 he brought it to Banyuatis, a hill village in Buleleng's Banjar district. There it was reworked in the Buleleng style with the family of Pan Manikan and their gamelan.

Around 1960 dancers from Banyuatis performed it at Tampaksiring Palace for President Sukarno. Then politics and a missing generation of dancers let it die out for some forty years (tatkala.co).

A surviving dancer and an old musician in Banyuatis still remembered it. With the villager Yudi Gautama, the ISI Denpasar lecturer Ida Ayu Wimba Ruspawati reconstructed it in 2015 for her doctorate (Buleleng Culture and Tourism Office).

The regency office describes it as southern movement and costume joined to Buleleng's kebyar character.

Dozens of dancers opened the fourth Buleleng Festival with it in August 2016. They danced in front of the Singa Ambara Raja monument in Singaraja.

In August 2019 the festival held a workshop on Legong Tombol and Legong Pangeleb. The second was reconstructed by the Jagaraga artist Made Keranca (Buleleng Regency).

The culture office has filmed Legong Tombol danced by Sanggar Tari Eka Gayatri of Kubutambahan.

Where to See Legong Today

• In the old legong villages of Gianyar. Davies's sources name Sukawati, Peliatan, Saba, Bedulu and Pejeng. For Peliatan's overseas tour of 1952 and 1953, a legong dancer who had retired after 1916 came back to train the girls.
• At the Bali Arts Festival, the province's arts festival at the Taman Budaya (Art Centre) in Denpasar. In June 2022 a Sukawati studio danced Legong Keraton Lasem and Legong Raja Cina there.
• At temple festivals, outside the inner courtyard, where a village's own troupe may dance.
• In the north, at the Buleleng Festival and at regency events, where Buleleng's studios perform. Palm Living's villas are mostly around Lovina. Ask the villa staff whether a performance is on nearby.

How to Watch a Legong Performance

• Sit close if you can. The eyes, fingers and the flick of the fan carry most of the dance.
• Watch the condong. Her prelude sets the mood, and in shorter versions of Lasem she comes back as the bird.
• Temple dress at a ceremony. A sarong and sash. See Bali temple etiquette.
• Turn off the flash, at a temple or in a theatre.

FAQ

What is the legong dance? Legong is a classical Balinese dance, often performed by young girls: two legong dancers and an attendant called the condong, dancing to gamelan. It is known for intricate finger movements, complicated footwork, expressive eyes and gilded costumes. It developed as entertainment in the courts of Gianyar.

What is the story of the legong dance? The best-known piece, Legong Keraton Lasem, tells how the king of Lasem captures Princess Rangkesari and rides to war against her family. Before the battle a bird that brings death attacks him, and he then falls fighting the king of Daha. Other legong pieces tell different stories, and some depict birds or animals.

Who performs legong? Traditionally young girls, trained from early childhood. The dancers used to retire in their early teens. Today dancers often perform into their twenties and beyond, and men have also danced it.

Where did legong come from? Balinese tradition credits a king of Sukawati, I Dewa Agung Made Karna, who dreamed of two heavenly dancers. Historians date the dance as it is performed now to the late nineteenth century in the palaces of Gianyar. The condong's role was added between 1910 and the early 1930s.

Is legong on the UNESCO list? Yes. Legong Kraton is one of the nine dances named in Three genres of traditional dance in Bali, inscribed by UNESCO in 2015. It represents the entertainment genre.

What is Legong Tombol? A north Bali legong created by I Wayan Rindi in the 1950s and brought to Banyuatis in Buleleng around 1959. It died out and was reconstructed in 2015 by the ISI Denpasar lecturer Ida Ayu Wimba Ruspawati. It now appears at the Buleleng Festival.

Where can I see legong in Bali? In the Gianyar villages with long legong traditions, such as Peliatan and Sukawati, at the Bali Arts Festival in Denpasar, and at temple festivals. In the north, Legong Tombol appears at the Buleleng Festival and regency events.

Sources

• Stephen Davies, The origins of Balinese legong, Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 164 (2008), for the line-up, repertoire, the Sukawati story, andir, the condong's dates, training and the kebyar influence, read September 2026 (in English)
• Adrian Vickers, When did legong start? A reply to Stephen Davies, BKI 165 (2009), abstract, read September 2026 (in English)
• UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage, Three genres of traditional dance in Bali, the committee decision and the nomination file, for the nine dances, their regencies and how dance is taught, read September 2026 (in English)
• Bali Provincial Culture Office, Legong Keraton and kebyar at the Bali Arts Festival, June 2022, read September 2026 (in Indonesian)
• Buleleng Culture and Tourism Office, Legong Tombol and Tari Truna Jaya, for Pan Wandres and Kebyar Legong, read September 2026 (in Indonesian)
• Buleleng Regency, Workshop on Legong Pangeleb and Legong Tombol, August 2019, read September 2026 (in Indonesian)
• tatkala.co, The soul of the Buleleng Festival is called Legong Tombol, August 2016, read September 2026 (in Indonesian)
• Dinas Kebudayaan Kota Denpasar, Puri Agung Denpasar gelar lomba tari Legong Lasem, February 2015, for the Lasem story, read October 2026 (in Indonesian)
• Kompas, Legong Keraton Lasem hidupkan semangat yang pudar, 2 March 2015, copy in the ISI Yogyakarta digital library, for the crow and the three dancers, read October 2026 (in Indonesian)
• I Wayan Mastra, Luh Putu Pancawati and Kadek Agung Sariwigna, Universitas PGRI Mahadewa Indonesia, Eksetensi Legong Keraton, Widyadari, for the Malat source of Lasem, the roles of the three dancers and the shortened versions, read October 2026 (in Indonesian)
• IDN Times Bali, Five kinds of legong, the Balinese dance of graceful movement, September 2022, for Legong Legod Bawa, Kuntul, Jobog and Andir, read October 2026 (in Indonesian)

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