A towering headdress and plug earrings adorn a 1930s Balinese djanger dancer, part of a coed performance that was “more of popular fun than of temple dance or disciplined art,” wrote Maynard Owen Williams in his March 1939 Geographic article, “Bali and Points East.” The dance’s male participants “at times resemble a troupe of cheer leaders made up like Groucho Marx,” noted Williams. “Syncopated movement, swaying forms, flashing fingers, and glittering crowns in high relief against deep shadows under the banyan tree—such is the djanger.”

— Margaret G. Zackowitz

Ph: Andre Roosevelt