The bathing dance.--The dancer gyrates and pirouettes in the ordinary style for several minutes when, by a bending movement, he intimates the picking up of some heavy object. He simulates placing this on his shoulder and then imitates a woman's walk, indicating thereby that he is a woman and that he is going either to get water or take a bath. All this, as well as subsequent representations, are performed in perfect time to the music. By a slow movement and with many a backward glance to see whether he is being watched, he reaches the end of the dancing place which evidently represents the stream for he goes through a pantomimic drinking. He then cautiously and after repeated backward glances, divests himself of all his clothes, and begins the bathing operations. He is frequently interrupted, and upon the supposed appearance of a person presumably a male, he indicates that he has to resume his skirt. The operation of washing the hair and other parts of the body are portrayed with appropriate gestures and movements, as are also the resuming of his dress and the return to the house with a bamboo tubeful of water.
The dagger or sword dance.--This dance is performed only by men, two of whom may take part in it at the same time. It consists in portraying a quarrel between them, the weapon used being either the Mandáya dagger, as on the upper Agúsan, or the ordinary war bolo, as in the central and lower Agúsan. Appropriate flourishes, parries, lunges, foils, advances, and retreats, all extremely graceful and skillful, are depicted just as if a real encounter were taking place.
The apian dance.--This is a dramatic representation of the robbing of a bee's nest. The gathering of the materials and the formation of them into a firebrand, the lighting of it, and the ascent of the tree, are all danced out to perfection. A striking part of the pantomine is the apparently fierce stinging the robber undergoes, especially on certain parts of his body.31
31The pubic region is referred to.
This part of the performance always draws screams of laughter from the spectators. The whole ends with a vivid but very comic representation of the avid consumption of the honey and beebread.
The depilation dance.--This is an illustration, by dancing movements, of the eradication of hair especially in the pubic region. The dancer, indicating by continual glances that he is afraid of being seen, simulates the depilation of the pubic hair. The pain thereby inflicted he manifests by the most comic contortions of his face.32