4 from ritual to theater and back: the efficacy ... - AAAARG.ORG

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from ritual to theater and back
relations of the two groups: their mutual assistance in fighting, their
exchange of women and wealth, their hospitality to each other in times
of defeat. . . . When the speech of presentation is finished they gather
their portions and distribute them to those men who came to help
them dance, and to their women.
(Rappaport 1968: 188)
After supper the dancing resumes and goes on all night. By dawn
almost everyone has danced with everyone else: and this communality
is a sign of a strong alliance.
With dawn the dancing ground is converted into a market. Ornaments,
pigs, furs, axes, knives, shells, pigments, tobacco are all traded
or sold (money has come into Tsembaga economy).
The transactions that take place on the dance ground are completed
on the spot: a man both gives and receives at the same time. . . . At the
men’s house, however, a different kind of exchange takes place. Here
men from other places give to their kinsmen or trading partners in the
local group valuables for which they do not receive immediate return.
(Rappaport 1968: 189)
This orchestrated indebtedness is at the heart of the kaiko. At the start
of the celebration the hosts owed meat to the guests and the guests
owed items of trade to the hosts. In the first part of the kaiko the hosts
paid meat to their guests; in the second part of the kaiko the guests paid
trade items to their hosts. But neither payment results in a balance.
When the kaiko is over the guests owed their hosts meat, and the hosts
owed their guests trade items. They had exchanged roles while perpetuating
a necessary imbalance of payments. This symmetrical imbalance
guaranteed further kaikos – continued exchanges between
groups. Guaranteed for as long as the whole socio-economic-aestheticritual
system of which the kaiko is a part is not ripped to shreds.
Following the public trading and the more private gift giving was some
more dancing. Then everyone went home.
The kaiko entertainments are a ritual display – not simply a doing
but a showing of a doing. Furthermore, this showing is both actual (=
the trading and giving of goods resulting in new imbalances) and