A Village Dance Ritual

For those reading this later: please note the original date of this post!

Dance history inevitably skews toward the dances of the upper classes, since only their dancing masters had the leisure, literacy, and financial incentive to record what they were teaching.  Dances of the lower classes are often lost to us.  But in the age of video, we are fortunate that anthropological expeditions have been able to record the native dances of specific cultures, preserving them in their pristine form before they are corrupted by contact with outside cultural influences.

I have recently had the privilege of viewing two videos made in the late 1970s in which male villagers wearing costumes symbolic of their culture's masculine archetypes sing to younger villagers and dance in a ritual mating display responded to even by those entirely unaware of its cultural context.  The first recording was made on location with the dancers in their native area.  For the second, the dancers were transported to a Los Angeles television studio with a live audience for a performance broadcast on television on January 6, 1979.

We are quite lucky to have a dated record of that performance, since it was there, in an act of aggressive cultural appropriation, that the young members of the audience, egged on by the show's host, displayed their own simplified version of the dance.  Unaware of its social significance or the symbolism of the costumes, their superficial interpretation (really only a set of arm movements) focused only on the alphabetic recitative that forms a part of the chorus of the ritual song.  In a moment of stupendous arrogance, the show's host even suggests to the startled dancers that they incorporate this new version into their own performance.

This cultural faux pas would be only a minor footnote in dance history were it not for the national reach of the broadcast and the catchy beat of the song, which caused the simplified version to became a nationwide craze which has survived in various forms to this very day on the social dance floor as well as in non-dance venues.  It is vanishingly rare to have both an unadulterated version of a village dance as well as a recording of the moment in which it was whitewashed into a popular dance fad.

More than three decades after these videos were made, after much careful study, I am pleased to be able to finally present a reconstruction of the original chorus of this ritual village dance.

About the dance
The moves of the original ritual dance are tied to the verses and choruses of the particular song with which it is associated.  During the verses, the majority of the dancers are primarily marching in place, with occasional pauses or turns, while a lead performer sings and dances a solo in front of them.  Various miming gestures (pointed and shaken fingers, crossed arms, hip thrusts, palm-down gestures of negation) are made, reminiscent of both the "miming" branles described by Arbeau in late sixteenth-century France and the hand jive of the 1950s.  At times the dancers seem to be performing individual interpretations of different moves.  The television studio recording reduces the individual variation in favor of a more coordinated group choreography during the verses, presumably rehearsed for the occasion.

The heart of the dance, however, is in the chorus section, in which the choral dancers sing and dance in unison.  I have focused here on their motions rather than the more flamboyant variations of the soloist.  

The chorus proper consists of two alternating parts, the second part having different lyrics the second time: AB¹AB².   All of this is repeated three times during the course of the song.  In the simplified form, the dancers make miming motions only during the A parts. 

The formation for the choral dancers is a simple side-by-side line facing the audience.  The center dancer in the line has a slightly different choreography in the second part of the chorus (A2 below).

The music for the dance is a steady rhythm divided into eight-beat segments.  Each chorus of the dance is signaled by five dramatic chords, as detailed in the introductory segment.

Note: in the reconstruction below, "Y" refers to a particular position in which the legs are spread apart, weight evenly distributed, with the arms raised and separated like the top of the letter "Y".  While holding this position, the dancers often bounce lightly on their heels on each beat and, as noted in the reconstruction, clap their hands together.

Introduction
1-2-3-4-5-6    Wait (five dramatic chords on first five beats)
7-8                  Squat, quickly bouncing up into Y position

First chorus (A1)
1-8                  Y, clap, Y, clap, step right, touch left/clap, step left, touch right/clap
1-8                  Y, clap, Y, clap, step right, touch left/clap, step left, touch right/clap

First chorus (B1)
1-6                  Step right, touch left/clap, step left, touch right/clap, step right, touch left/clap
7-8                  Step left, touch right to the side/clap, turning counter-clockwise to face away from audience
1-6                  March in place six counts (right-left-right-left-right-left), clapping on the even beats
7-8                  Step forward right, then turning 180 degrees counter-clockwise to face audience, step forward left  toward audience; clap on the final step

Second chorus (A2)
During the next sixteen beats, the center dancer holds the Y position, weight balanced on the left foot, clapping on the even beat and bouncing the right heel down on every beat.

The side dancers face away from center dancer and do the following:

1-8                  March in place (right-left-right-left-right-left-right-left), clapping on the even beats
1-2                  Turn toward the center dancer (right-left), clapping on the second beat
3-8                  March in place six counts (right-left-right-left-right-left), clapping on the even beats

Note: on the turn, dancers to the right of the center dancer turn left (counter-clockwise) and dancers to the left of the center dancer turn right (clockwise).

Second chorus (B2)
All dancers together:
1-8                  Step right, touch left/clap, step left, touch right/clap, step right, touch left/clap, step left, touch right/clap
1-8                  Repeat previous 8 beats

Performance notes
When stepping to the left or right, for emphasis, the entire body swivels to that side, arms swinging for emphasis, and the step is made "forward" along the line.  The supporting leg may be bent during the "touch steps" and the upper body bent forward slightly.  Despite the superficially similarity, these steps differ noticeably in style from the simple (or single) step used in Arbeau's branles and other early dances, in which steps are made sideways and an upright posture is maintained.

Dance/music correlation tip
The emphasis in the music and the clapping in the dance are on the even beats: one-TWO-three-FOUR-etc. The first four beats of the chorus alternate ritual alphabetic recitation with clapping, as shown below:

1    "Y!"
2    clap
3    "M!"
4    clap

Alternate introduction
In the original recording, on the second repetition of the ritual chorus, the dancers demonstrate an interesting alternate introductory sequence:

(All dancers together, turned 90 degrees counter-clockwise)
1-2-3                Wait
&4                    Pelvic thrust: pull hips back and quickly push them forward while pulling the elbows back for emphasis
5                       Pause
6&7&8             Five jogging steps in place, left-right-left-right-left

On beat one of the dance, the dancers turn 90 degrees clockwise bringing the right leg out to Y position.  

References
1. Original video record of performance in native setting, c1978.
2. Televised performance with audience visuals (simplified dance), January 6, 1979.
3. Post-performance interview and repeat of audience visuals, January 6, 1979.

Comments

[mneme.dreamwidth.org]

Hee!

Got the source in one (not hard, given the clues you gave as to which village the song/dance originates in, despite my being -largley- unfamiliar with both the original and the simplified/popularized dance).

[Susan de Guardiola]

The three reference links at the bottom should provide all the background. :)

[Danby Carter]

Ha Ha! A delightful April Fool's post