Photo of the Week: Oleg dancers in sunlight – Diana Ishii

I visited Bali, Indonesia, in 2019 and had arranged to photograph one of the traditional dances in Indonesia – Oleg or Oleg Tamulilingan, the dance of the bumblebees. It is one of the numerous animal-themed dances in Bali. 

Oleg is performed by a male and a female dancer. The dance is intended to evoke strong images of a garden in which bees buzz about, collecting nectar from waiting flowers. The dancers represent a male and a female bee, with the obsessively flirtatious male bee chasing the female bee from flower to flower. 

My dancer friends and I were walking around to find a suitable garden for the traditional dance early in the morning. Suddenly, we witnessed a magical scene in a bamboo forest when the sun rose behind the bamboos, creating solid rays of sunlight that looked so unreal. My dancer friends immediately flocked to the sunlight and started posing and dancing. 

The female dancer is clad in a traditional fabric known as prada, which is covered in gold paint and has a long, sheer scarf to serve as her wings. The sunlight penetrated through her scarf and lit her wings up from behind. 

The sunlight and the bamboo forest became their stage in nature. It was a magical moment when nature and folklore intertwined. – The Vibes, January 23, 2022

Originally from Hong Kong, Diana Ishii is now based in Malaysia and has adopted Malaysia as her second home for more than a decade. She is a book author, publisher and amateur photographer.