DANCERS OF BALI

This autobiographical account of the man who engineered last year's very popular tour of the Balinese dancers in America, is also a charming study of his life in Java and Bali since the war's end. Freed from his years in a Japanese prison camp after the fall of Singapore, Mr. Coast married and settled down to work for Javanese independence. After its achievement, his first efforts to interest the new government in a program of cultural missions failed because of costliness. Their own interest merely fanned the more, he and his wife settled in Bali, in the small village of Kaliunga, to group around them, by hit or miss, the well known and experienced musicians and dancers of the region in an attempt to build a troup and plan for its extensive trip. Their life in Kaliunga was necessarily not all dancing and festivals. Warm and often vibrant characterizations show the Balinese in their cultural individuality, living in an indescribably beautiful country -- nevertheless shot through with upheavals and daily closer contacts with the west.