Gamelan outside Indonesia gave a new impetus to the performance of gamelan and Javanese dance in the Netherlands. Together with Mr and Mrs Ronosuripto, the Amsterdam Gamelan group played many concerts and performances with Javanese dance and shadow puppetry (wayang kulit). Rien Baartmans, who as a child had been taking lessons from Bernard IJzerdraat, studied wayang and kendhang with Pak Ripto, which very much stimulated his own group Ngesthi Raras in Haarlem. In 1978 the new gamelan society Naga, founded by Rob van Albada, acquired a gamelan from Solo. This gamelan was used by several groups, performing traditional and modern music for gamelan.
Gamelan outside Indonesia was the Boston Village Gamelan, now known as Gamelan Laras Tentrem in Massachusetts, and the first Balinese community group was Gamelan Sekar Jaya in California. Other community Balinese gamelan ensembles are Gamelan Mitra Kusuma in Washington, D.C., Gamelan Dharma Swara at the Indonesian Consulate in New York City, Space City Gamelan in Houston, the Lehigh Valley Gamelan in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and Gamelan Tunas Mekar in Denver. Gamelan Sari Raras is an active Javanese ensemble in Berkeley, California; the name was given to the group by Widiyanto (aka Midiyanto), and the instruments, brought to the U.S. from Java in 1971, are