SIDELINES / rio helmi

Cristina’s home is truly a reflection of her – outwardly simple, but with very precise detail and perfectly sited. Yesterday the 30th a bunch of friends came together to remember her. The following account by Rucina Ballinger sums it up: “At first it looked like it might rain. But then the mood lightened [...]

July and August are always the “silly season” – loads of parties and events. It’s hard to escape the social dragnet, but there are some fun occasions too. Peter Ditmar and Ronald Wigmans joint exhibition at Tony Raka’s gallery last Saturday was worth the visit. I must commend Gung “Tony” Raka for his gallery in [...]

Rucina Ballinger, an expat of such long term and such immersion into Bali life that the term expat hardly seems to fit anymore and Cristina’s fellow practitioner of Balinese performing arts, wrote the following words. (I am also posting a couple of photographs I took of Cristina in 1987, performing at a cremation as [...]

I am sure that many of you who know Cristina Formaggia have heard by now that she has been very, very ill with cancer, and is at the end of her time with us. I just received word from Pino, the Italian consulate, that Christina passed away this mmorning, Sunday the 20th July . She [...]

The night of the cremation I stay up all night captioning, fixing up the pics for my agent and Tempo magazine. I can only say I am not an all nighter anymore, exhausted I leave for Java with Jerome to continue our book project. We are off to see how they dig up the monster [...]

D-day for the cremation dawned clear enough, and by 9 a huge crowd had already gathered. somehow traffic was still trickling by, but by 10 it was total gridlock and all roads to ubud were stopped. In the palace various dignitaries and would be dignitaries sat, and the costumes were just as various and would [...]

It seems the all out Ubud offensive to get its own royal son (CBS), elected for governor of Bali didn’t meet with success. Mangku Pastika and his vice-governor candidate Puspayoga have come in with a landslide, 54% of the vote, the other two candidates were left to divide up the remaining 46% between them. Now [...]

Apparently the letter I sent off to the Financial Times did get through, and Mark Ellwood (the writer) took the time to respond to me personally. I feel it only correct to publish his reply here:——————– I’ve just been passed along the email which you sent regarding a recent profile I wrote of the fascinating [...]

My community in Ubud (Banjar Ubud Tengah) has been after me for a more than a month now to help them out with pictures and publicity for their all new Women’s Kecak performance. Last week they performed at the Denpasar Art Centre for the Bali Art Festival and are very excited. Unfortunately up till [...]