The Kris Dancers and the Version Sold to Visitors

In the ritual form the confrontation ends with the entry of the kris dancers, men of the village carrying the wavy bladed dagger. Rangda's power turns them, and they attack her; she turns their own weapons back on them, and they fall into trance and press the daggers against their chests, straining with their full weight and not breaking the skin. The Barong's protection is understood to be what holds. Priests then move among them with holy water and, in many villages, with a sacrificed chicken, and bring them out of the state one by one. The dancers are frequently unable to recall it afterward, and a man who does not come out cleanly is attended to until he does.

There is also a shortened barong performance staged daily for visitors in the tourist areas of the island. The Balinese distinction between the two is straightforward and is not a matter of purism: the masks used in a temple ceremony are consecrated and the ones used for a paid performance are generally not, and a village will keep them separately. Jane Belo's fieldwork in the 1930s recorded the ritual form before mass tourism, which is why her account is still cited, though the Balinese practice of the same dance has continued to develop for ninety years since and is not frozen at that point.