TAKSU MASK IDA BAGUS ANOM: 2008 BALI. Design by Per Brahe

Beyond Hearing and Seeing YEATS, MASK and TRANSFORMATION

14th of June to 30th of June 2026

This retreat is created for performers/artists/practitioners (actors, directors, dancers, researchers) with an established, grounded, artistic base within themselves and a drive to explore and experiment.

For artists who are seeking more knowledge of the Art of the Ensemble, Art of Mask performance. From the Primary mask, and a deep passage with our “Passage Masks” that represent the Antithetical aspects of your life.

Supported by material drawn from YEATS: A Vision (a power script/spiritual source document created in 1925).

All the masks we use are rooted in the Balinese mask culture and environment, which we have been a supporter of for the last 36 years.

They are all originally designed by Per Brahe and are not copies of others’ work. Stay to the Truth. Teach the Truth. Act on the Truth.

The wood we use for the masks is not endangered.

 A journey from the “Primary Mask” to

The Antithesis Mask.

Stalking the Jealousy colossus within and replacing it with

YOU SHALL/MUST LOVE

(the performer’s imperative)

'Be silent; listen;

I have not given you eyes and ears for nothing.' (1919)

 The Faculty:

Ni Wayan Sukanti

Born in Batubulan on April 4, 1979. At a very young age, she danced the famous Balinese Legong dance. She has also performed outside Bali.

She graduated from the Balinese art school ISI Denpasar in 2004.

Sukanti continues to perform and teach regularly.

She will teach the power behind the Legong Dance (ask for a longer detailed description why we use the female aspects of the Legong dancer. 

 I Kadek Budi Setiawan S.Sn, was born on the first of January 1974, in the family of puppet masters in Sukawati. Besides being a Dalang, the Puppet Master, musician, and also a dancer. He has been sent to perform abroad, such as Japan, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, Australia, Hong Kong, etc.

Besides all his activities as an artist, Setiawan also worked in the Balinese Cultural Department in Denpasar since 2021.

Clowning. The ground elements from the male Baris dances. The four expanding voices from the Wayan Kulit puppet show  (ask for details about the full content of the teatching) 

Declan Drohan is an Irish Theatre Artist/Practitioner with a special understanding of Michael Chekhov Material and its connection to the plays of WB Yeats, which he has been actively researching for the past ten years.

As a theatre director and teacher, he will guide you around Yeats’ universe and open the door to the antithesis universe and free you from habits, cliches, and burdens that aren’t useful anymore. 

Per Brahe is a Danish-trained theatre director with a specialty in Antonin Artaud and his Balinese impression of the Balinese dances. His search for Artaud began in Bali in 1988, where he collaborated with Bali's finest mask maker, Ida Bagus Anom. Together they created special masks as instruments to remove the shroud to what we today know, as TAKSU, the Balinese word for Charisma! But which in turn has proven to be a portal to something more gigantic and refined in the Balinese dancer. To open this portal, we have developed TAKSU MASKS and masks that guide the actor further into this rich world of theatre in collaboration with the villagers’ musicians and their rare spiritual TAKSU instruments.

He is the first to discover that Michael Chekhov's acting material lies hidden in the Balinese masks, either the original or the masks Per Brahe together with Ida Bagus Anom created over the years, until he died in 2020, so masks solo dedicated to the development of actors, today numbering around 600, thereby becoming one of the world's largest private collections of masks designed by Per.