PIRING

The Piring or plate dance is performed to show off the skill of the dancers in holding and balancing saucers in their hands while executing fast movements that include rolling, squatting, walking on plates placed on the floor while manipulating the hand-held plates. The dance is said to have originated from Minangkabau in Sumatra where it developed until the era of the Sri Vijayan Empire. The Piring Dance was introduced to the Malay states after the fall of the Sri Vijayan government to the Majapahit Empire. Often at the end of a piring dance performance, plates are smashed on the floor and dancers actually dance and jump on the broken pieces of porcelain without hurting themselves. There is definitely an element of a trance-like state that the dancers work themselves into in order to perform this last section.