From the back of their heads long waving strings, made of leaves, are hung, flying out behind them and touching the ground. Their woolly hair is gaily festooned with bright-coloured feathers, white and red, pure white, pure red, and reddish brown and green; and above these there is often a brilliant red cockade which stands straight up.
Armlets adorn their arms, and a narrow belt with a scanty attachment suffices for the covering of the lower part of their bodies. Long streamers of palm leaves hang, in some cases, from both armlets and leglets. Their drums are also gaily decorated with strings and streamers.
On arrival on the ground they form up in rows {52} and begin a peculiar crouching movement by bending their knees and rising on toe and heel, to the accompaniment of a monotonous dull thumping on the drums. Every now and then a different beat is sounded, and instantly the men change their positions. Whilst this peculiar shuffling movement is going on a crowd of girls appears and begin to dance in and out among the men, and then vanish again almost as quickly as they appeared. Their costumes are equally quaint, the chief adornment being a mat hung round their waists and open on one side. The remaining portions of their bodies are nude, with the exception of necklaces and curious feather adornments on their heads.
Fine creatures some of them are, and as they prance about in striking attitudes, dodging in and out of the rows of men, swaying their skirts backwards and forwards, they present a fascinating picture and, as they warm to the dance, the continued shuffling movements of the men, the swirling of the women’s skirts, their swaying bodies, and glimpses of elaborately tattooed legs, and the measured beating of the drums, the only sound that breaks the silence, a giddiness steals over the spectators and a weird feeling of monotony takes hold of them.
READY FOR THE DUBU DANCE
{53}
Then suddenly the whole scene will change, the girls, who a few seconds before were swirling round the men, vanish, the drumming ceases, the long rows are broken up, and the men too disappear, leaving only the crowd of eager spectators who remain gazing at nothing.
A wonder comes into one’s mind if it is all a dream, for throughout the whole dance no sound has escaped the performers, and the silence and the half-darkness produce a scene of peculiar uncanniness. But soon all is movement again and other performances have to be gone through. New figures are introduced as in our round dances, but there seem to be no set places for the girls; they appear and dance independently in and out of the rows of men as if to show off their fine figures, their beautiful skins, and bewitching ways, some dancing and acting more or less demurely, whilst others throw themselves about with an abandonment and coyness that it would take a most practised Western flirt to excel.
Every attitude and every movement seem to be accompanied by an action of the apron or skirt, which is swerving with a perfect rhythm backwards and forwards, or from side to side. But this is not the women’s dance, they are merely adjuncts to the performance and use their admission to it more for {54} love-making than anything else. Their real dance comes later when they mount the Dubu, and this is the dance so strongly objected to by the missionaries, but, strange to say, the natives themselves seem to take very little interest in it; they call it “the dance belong women”; and were it such an immoral proceeding, surely the men would crowd to see it.