Balinese dance with a message: Save our forests

BALI: One man was painted in leopard spots, another as a tree. The women wore the elaborate headdresses seen in temples throughout Southeast Asia. They danced in the traditional Balinese style, but with a message: Save our forests.

As over 10,000 delegates from 187 countries took their lunch break at the Dec 3-14 UN conference on climate change here Wednesday, all eyes were at the main entrance of the Bali International Convention Centre where TV camerapersons were scrumming for a closer shot of the gorgeous dance.

Wearing dresses that looked much like dhotis, the dancers enacted a tableau. In the beginning, the animals and the trees lived in harmony with the local people. Then came the loggers, everything was destroyed and the earth heated up.

"We can and must stop this from continuing," the dancers concluded, appealing to the watching delegates to take urgent action to combat climate change.