Template:POTD/2019-03-28

Picture of the day
Oleg
Oleg, also known as "the dance of the bumblebees", is a form of love dance in the Indonesian province of Bali. It is performed by a male and female dancer and is intended to be evocative of a garden, in which bees fly around and collect nectar from flowers. The dancers represent a male and female bee, with the obsessively flirtatious male chasing the female from one flower to another. Although the female bee at first appears coquettish, she eventually accepts the male's advances. The two dancers wear different costumes with the female clad in a traditional fabric known as a prada, which is covered in gold paint and has a long sheer scarf to serve as wings, while the male wears a similar fabric but arranged differently on his body so that it trails behind him. Oleg was first choreographed by I Ketut Marya of Tabanan in 1952, at the request of the music presenter John Coast. It was initially controversial among traditionalists, but has now been absorbed into the canon of Balinese dance.Photograph: Chris Woodrich