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

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from ritual to theater and back
adding musical accompaniment. The craft skills of the villagers will
improve, or they will import goods to sell. Their percentage of the
take will rise. In short, the dance will approach western standards of
entertainment, represented by the tastes of the audience. Monetary
benefits will rise accordingly. Presently, the Makehukans perform a
traditional ritual emptied of its efficacy but not yet wholly regarded as
a theatrical entertainment.
One day in March, 1972, Joan MacIntosh and I arrived in Makehuku
before the tourists and stayed after they left. The villagers
looked at us curiously. We were taking pictures of the tourists as well
as of the dancers. After the other outsiders left, a man came up to us
and in pidgin asked us to come with him. We walked 4 miles along a
ridge until we got to Kenetisarobe. There we met Asuwe Yamuruhu,
the headman. He wanted us to go to Goroka and tell the tourists
about his dancers. He wanted tourists to come to his village and
watch a show which, he assured us, was much better than what the
mudmen did. It began to rain very hard as we squatted in the
entrance to a round hut. Around us in the rain a few villagers
watched. We agreed on a price – $4 a person – and a time, the next
afternoon. Not only would we see dances but we could tape-record
songs too.
The next afternoon we arrived with two friends, paid our $16, and
saw a dance consisting of very slow steps, as if the dancers were moving
through deep mud, their fingers splayed, and their faces masked or
tied into grotesque shapes. Peter Thoady, headmaster of the Goroka
Teachers’ College, told us that the distortion of the faces probably was
an imitation of yaws, a disfiguring disease common in the area. The
dancers moved in a half-crouch and occasionally shouted phrases and
expletives. The dancing of the grassmen of Kenetisarobe was very like
that of the mudmen of Makehuku. After the dancing we spent about an
hour recording music, talking, and smoking.
The Kenetisarobe dance was adapted from ceremonial farces of the
region. Asuwe Yamaruhu staged them for us. He knew that Makehuku
was making money from its dance, and the Kenetisarobe show was
modeled on the Makehuku formula: a slow dance, grotesque masks
(to western eyes), plenty of photo opportunities, and a follow-up after
the dance. What the people of Makehuku did with a minimum of