LEWISTON – Featuring the college gamelan orchestra and a Cambodian music and dance troupe, this year’s World Music Weekend at Bates College takes place today and tomorrow.

Called “The Ramayana in Southeast Asia,” the weekend explores adaptations of the ancient epic from India, “Ramayana.”

Events will take place in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall, 75 Russell St.

The Cambodian Classics Ensemble, a Washington, D.C.-based performance group, will offer a dance demonstration and workshop at 1:30 p.m. today. At 8 p.m., the ensemble will perform scenes from the “Raemker,” the Cambodian adaptation of the Hindu epic. A preconcert lecture takes place at 7:30 p.m.

At 4 p.m. Saturday, the college gamelan orchestra, Bates dancers and guest artists will perform “The Abduction of Sita,” an episode from an Indonesian version of “Ramayana.”

The 2,000 year old “Ramayana” is a long, complex tale about the conflict between good and evil. Its plot twists include a dynastic struggle, a hero’s exile, the kidnapping of his wife and a battle between demons and gods.

“It’s a cultural icon for all of South and Southeast Asia,” said Gina Fatone, assistant professor of music and the program’s organizer. “It’s amazing how one epic poem can travel and have many different variants.”

“The characters’ names sometimes change and details of the performance sometimes change, but the core elements of the story remain the same,” she said.

The Cambodian Classics Ensemble consists of professional musicians and dancers, most of whom came from Cambodia since the mid-1970s in response to civil strife there. Its music director Chum Ngek is a National Endowment for the Arts Heritage Fellow who has mastered more than 20 instruments.

Performing with the ensemble is Sok Sokheun, a Cambodian dancer living in Portland.

Bates College’s Gamelan Mawar Makar plays music from West and Central Java in Indonesia. It’s directed by Fatone. “Gamelan” refers to a traditional Indonesian percussion orchestra composed mainly of tuned gongs, metal-keyed instruments and drums, and sometimes featuring voice and stringed instruments.

Joining the gamelan for Saturday’s performance are Undang Sumarna and dancer Ben Arcangel. Sumarna, a longtime mentor to Fatone and an Indonesian master drummer, has taught gamelan at the University of California, Santa Cruz, for nearly three decades. He is serving as guest director of the gamelan during a weeklong residency at Bates, sponsored by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Also a Mellon Learning Associate, Arcangel is a Filipino-American dancer who is expert in Indonesian dance. A performer and graduate student based in San Francisco, he will coach and perform with the Bates dancers.

Sagaree Sengupta, a member of the Asian studies faculty at Bates, will give an introductory talk for the Saturday program.

All events take place in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall, 75 Russell St., and are open to the public at no cost. The festival is sponsored by the Freeman Foundation. For more information, people can call 786-6135 or 753-6968.