ABSTRACT
This article explores the experiences and observations of an Italian performer/academic teaching Balinese mask dance-drama (topeng) in Brazil. Expatriate status, living between Australia, Indonesia and Italy yet teaching in Brazil, provided a means to critically reflect upon the process of representing “otherness” (Balinese topeng) by being the “other” (a foreigner) in another country (Brazil). A Brazilian trip (October‒November 2013) resulted in a feeling of self-doubt and underlying guilt for not being the “original other” (Balinese). This sensation would not completely disappear even when it became clear that the invitation was for “a mission” to change the discourse on Balinese dance-drama in theatre training in Brazil. This discourse of the “exotic other” was not new to the author, as it was the same one that had stimulated an interest in Balinese dance, drama and music. The imagined Bali of the Brazilian interlocutors had once been the author’s imagined Bali, until it had changed through the experience of living and learning on the island. In the same way, some of them had already had a similar experience, albeit of much shorter duration, which had enabled them to also see beyond the exotic, decontexualized, imagined Bali. In teaching and performing practice the author aims to re-contextualize and ground the imagined other into a familiar reality. This article details the process and insights gained during the Brazilian journey and to reflect upon the multiple voices encountered along the way, which mediated the sense of “otherness”.
