Editing Trance and Dance in Bali (section)

== History ==

The [[anthropologist]]s [[Margaret Mead]] and [[Gregory Bateson]] visited [[Bali]] for two years of research in the 1930s, shooting some 22,000 feet of 16-millimetre film and 25,000 photographs, and completing seven films, of which ''Trance and Dance in Bali'' is one. They were married in 1936. Their output of visual materials has been described as unrivalled in anthropology.<ref name="Haley 2015"/><ref name="LoC on Mead">{{cite web |title=Margaret Mead: Human Nature and the Power of Culture |date=30 November 2001 |url=https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/mead/field-bali.html |publisher=[[Library of Congress]] |access-date=7 January 2022}}</ref> This was driven by their method of [[participant observation]], which was intended to be recorded in copious systematic field notes so as to grasp the subject's point of view.<ref name="Seckinger 1991">{{cite journal |last1=Seckinger |first1=Beverly |title=Filming Culture: Interpretation and Representation in Thence and Dance in Bali (1951), A Balinese Trance Seance (1980), and I t o on Jew: A Balinese Trance SeanceObserved (198 |journal=CVA Review (Commission on Visual Anthropology) |date=1991 |issue=Spring 1991 |pages=27–33 |url=https://vestiges-journal.info/CVA_Newsletter/cva_91_spring.pdf}}</ref> They paid careful attention to photographic technique, using both still and motion-picture cameras. During their stay, Bateson sent home for additional bulk film, a larger developing tank, and a rapid winder to allow photographs to be taken "in very rapid succession".<ref name="Seckinger 1991"/>

The dance for ''Trance and Dance in Bali'' was specially arranged during daylight hours, as no lighting equipment was available; the dance was, according to Mead, "ordinarily performed only late at night".<ref name="Seckinger 1991"/> Mead later<!--1972--> noted that "The man who made the arrangements decided to substitute young beautiful women for the withered old women who performed at night, and we could record how women who had never before been in [[trance]] flawlessly replicated the customary behavior they had watched all their lives".<ref name="Seckinger 1991"/> In this way, Mead justified the changes as part of their anthropological inquiry.<ref name="Seckinger 1991"/>

The film, like Bateson and Mead's other works, initially received a puzzled welcome. The films became classics, launched the field of [[visual anthropology]], and have "landmark status" with little to compare them to. Most of the footage of ''Trance and Dance in Bali'' was shot on 16 December 1937 in a performance that they commissioned (on Mead's birthday). They referenced their payment for the performance to Balinese cultural patronage. The trance ritual that they filmed was, according to the anthropologist [[Ira Jacknis]], "not an ancient form, but had been created during the period of their fieldwork", as a Balinese group had in 1936 "combined the Rangda or Witch play (Tjalonarang) with the [[Barong dance|Barong]] and kris-dance play, which was then popularized with tourists through the efforts of [the painter] [[Walter Spies]] and his friends."<ref name="Jacknis 1988">{{cite journal |last=Jacknis |first=Ira |title=Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson in Bali: Their Use of Photography and Film |journal=Cultural Anthropology |date=May 1988 |volume=3 |issue=2 |pages=60–177 |doi=10.1525/can.1988.3.2.02a00030 |jstor=656349}}</ref>