2. Dancing Strangers

The novel Tarian Bumi [Earth Dance] by Oka Rusmini tells the stories of four generations of Balinese women who confront issues of caste, sexuality, and motherhood. First published as a newspaper serial in in 1995, the novel has been translated into five languages and recently rereleased in Indonesia. The women in the novel remain on Bali, but by moving from one caste to another through marriage, these women trespass across entire worlds. Travel makes them strange. The mode of their travel is their feet because in Balinese dance the feet are alive with motion; every toe is engaged with the dance. This chapter draws from my own ethnographic research on gender and studying dance in Bali to explore how different ideas of strange and stranger resist hegemonic ideals.