Putu Evie Suyadnyani
Mekar Bhuana Centre for Classical Balinese Gamelan and Dance
Born in Sanur into a family of dancers, Evie has been dancing since she was three and even made her first choreography and performance when still at kindergarten. At age 10 she won the first prize for the island-wide Legong Condong competition and island-wide traditional Balinese vocal Macepat competition
In 2004, together with her husband from New Zealand, she established Mekar Bhuana, a family based centre that documents rare and extinct Balinese music and dance.
Evie has extensive teaching experience, and private students and groups from overseas regularly take lessons and workshops with her and her team. In 2010, she pioneered remote learning in Bali by creating a Balinese dance tutorial, and subsequently teaching via Skype.
Over the past seven years she has created and taught numerous custom-made cultural immersion programs for groups as well as school and university students from around the globe. She is also one of local instructors at Bali Spirit Festival and recently become Yoga Barn Balinese dance community classes instructor.
In September 2013, Evie was World Music Artist in Residence at the University of Toronto and also engaged to dance at a concert that featured prestigious classical orchestras from Canada.
Over the past decade, she has managed and performed with a number of performing art-troupes both in Bali and overseas, notably at the Esplanade in Singapore, the Asian Games in China, at the International Percussion Music Festival in South Korea and touring New Zealand in 2015 and Europe in 2016.
Evie is also the first female Balinese leader of Trash Hero in Bali, which she set up in 2017 in her village to educate about plastic waste. In 2020, she won a competition for crafting a Legong dance costume entirely out of used single-use coffee sachets as a statement about the connection between environmental destruction and Balinese culture. In the same year, Evie was also funded by a UNESCO programme for young Indonesian entrepreneurs who are active in traditional culture to produce a virtual performance using this costume.