Viral: Netizens decry videos showing motocross group harassing, humping traditional Balinese dancers, right in front of onlooking children

A set of videos showing a group of men at what appears to be a motocross event outright humping some traditional Balinese dancers is sparking anger left and right on social media.

The videos—four in total—were posted by Facebook user Arta Wan on Nov. 20 and have been shared nearly 2,300 times as of Thursday evening, but they have since been removed or switched to private share settings. 

In some very uncomfortable to watch footage, the men can be seen grabbing on to women donning traditional Balinese dance-wear. As the women dance, the men take turns running up and latching on to the women and gyrating.

While this could technically pass as joget bumbung, a Balinese dance that’s often considered “erotic” and “pornographic,” what’s especially not cool in these videos is that some kids can be seen dancing in the background and the camera even pans out to the audience showing an even larger group of child onlookers.

Joget bumbung is characterized as a flirtatious dance where females dancers typically move seductively and invite audience members to join.

But unlike many traditional Balinese dances, joget bumbung is done for entertainment purposes, rather than religious ones—which has made Bali’s governor enthusiastic about trying to ban the risqué dance in the past as it seems to be surfacing more and more on social media.

In an attempt to sanitize the dance a festival for joget bumbung was even held in Denpasar this past August with the goal of getting participants to tone it down and move away from the emerging “pornographic” trend that’s “tarnishing” Balinese dance culture—as can be seen in these videos.

While a number of people used the Facebook reaction emoji of “haha” in response to the recently viral videos, the overwhelming response to the videos has, rightfully, been disgust and outrage.

The incident seems to have taken place in Bali’s Bangli regency, some Facebook users have even tagged local police in the post to try and get them involved.

Comments showing disgust with the videos have predominantly been made by other Indonesian Facebook users and have been translated to English below:

“Why is no one helping the girls?” several netizens commented.

“Poor women,” commented another. 

“Disgusting, no respect at all.”

“They are out of bounds! So embarrassing and disgusting!”

Editor’s Note: This article originally included a Facebook embed of the four videos showing the “dirty dancing” but the embed has been removed now that the videos are no longer publicly available.