By 1919 the style of Kebyar was well established. The King of Tabanan, who served also as the Dutch regent for his province, sent for a Kebyar orchestra (from North Bali) in that year to play at an important cremation. In the audience was a young and very talented dancer, I Nyoman Mario, who was much impressed by what he heard and who undertook to develop further the possibilities for dance in a new style. His great contribution was ready in 1925, when he presented Kebyar Duduk for the first time.
Mario took the idea of playing the terompong (an old instrument) in virtuoso manner during the performance and developed a flashy style of playing the instrument, with whirling sticks and flourishing gestures. He had to squat behind the instrument to be able to play it, and this suggested that the entire composition might performed in a sitting (duduk) position.
He took the costume from Kebyar Legong, but to move in a squatting position he had to hold up the train with one hand as he moved and this became the hallmark of the dance. The mood of Kebyar Duduk is determined by the music, and the dancer works in close co-ordination with the entire gamelan to interpret its shifting colors.
Many of the basic poses, gestures and longer phrases of movement have been adapted from Legong, but they have been made more intricate, more elaborate, and more artificial. In Kebyar Duduk there is no pantomime whatever, and the narrative element is absent. The dance is set to a single musical composition which lasts for perhaps twenty minutes. The dance progresses through a sequence of moods of an idealized Balinese youth who is just at the point of reaching full maturity. He expressed a gamut of emotions, ranging from sweet flirtatiousness to bashfulness, melancholy and angry bravado.