A dancing costume for European tastes
By name, “House of Midnight Darkness”
While the children are dancing, the older boys and girls are refurbishing their costumes with flowers, shell necklaces, anklets and bracelets of leaves. One or two will probably slip off home and return dressed in elaborate bark skirts. A bottle of cocoanut oil is produced from the family chest and rubbed on the bodies of the older dancers. Should a person of rank be present and consent to dance, the hostess family bring out their finest mats and tapas as costume. Sometimes this impromptu dressing assumes such importance that an adjoining house is taken over as a dressing room; at others it is of so informal a nature that spectators, who have gathered outside arrayed only in sheets, have to borrow a dress or a lavalava from some other spectator before they can appear on the dance floor. The form of the dance itself is eminently individualistic. No figures are prescribed except the half dozen formal little claps which open the dance and the use of one of a few set endings. There are twenty-five or thirty figures, two or three set transitional positions, and at least three definite styles, the dance of the taupo, the dance of the boys, and the dance of the jesters. These three styles relate definitely to the kind of dance and not to the status of the dancer. The taupo’s dance is grave, aloof, beautiful. She is required to preserve a set, dreamy, nonchalant expression of infinite hauteur and detachment. The only permissible alternative to this expression is a series of grimaces, impudent rather than comic in nature and deriving their principal appeal from the strong contrast which they present to the more customary gravity. The manaia also when he dances in his manaia rôle is required to follow this same decorous and dignified pattern. Most little girls and a few little boys pattern their dancing on this convention. Chiefs, on the rare occasions when they consent to dance, and older women of rank have the privilege of choosing between this style and the adoption of a comedian’s rôle. The boys’ dance is much jollier than the girls’. There is much greater freedom of movement and a great deal of emphasis on the noise made by giving rapid rhythmical slaps to the unclothed portions of the body which produce a crackling tattoo of sound. This style is neither salacious nor languorous although the taupo’s dance is often both. It is athletic, slightly rowdy, exuberant, and owes much of its appeal to the feats of rapid and difficult co-ordination which the slapping involves. The jester’s dance is peculiarly the dance of those who dance upon either side of the taupo, or the manaia, and honour them by mocking them. It is primarily the prerogative of talking chiefs and old men and old women in general. The original motive is contrast; the jester provides comic relief for the stately dance of the taupo, and the higher the rank of the taupo, the higher the rank of the men and women who will condescend to act as clownish foils to her ability. The dancing of these jesters is characterised by burlesque, horseplay, exaggeration of the stereotyped figures, a great deal of noise made by hammering on the open mouth with spread palm, and a large amount of leaping about and pounding on the floor. The clown is occasionally so proficient that he takes the centre of the floor on these ceremonious occasions.
The little girl who is learning to dance has these three styles from which to choose, she has twenty-five or thirty figures from which to compose her dance and most important of all she has the individual dancers to watch. My first interpretation of the skill of the younger children was that they each took an older boy or girl as a model and sedulously and slavishly copied the whole dance. But I was not able to find a single instance in which a child would admit or seemed in any way conscious of having copied another; nor did I find, after closer familiarity with the group, any younger child whose style of dancing could definitely be referred to the imitation of another dancer. The style of every dancer of any virtuosity is known to every one in the village and when it is copied, it is copied conspicuously so that Vaitogi, the little girl who places her forearms parallel with the top of her head, her palms flat on her head, and advances in a stooping position, uttering hissing sounds, will be said to be dancing a la Sina. There is no stigma upon such imitation; the author does not resent it nor particularly glory in it; the crowd does not upbraid it; but so strong is the feeling for individualisation that a dancer will seldom introduce more than one such feature into an evening’s performance; and when the dancing of two girls is similar, it is similar in spite of the efforts of both, rather than because of any attempt at imitation. Naturally, the dancing of the young children is much more similar than the dancing of the young men and girls who had had time and opportunity really to perfect a style.
The attitude of the elders towards precocity in singing, leading the singing or dancing, is in striking contrast to their attitude towards every other form of precocity. On the dance floor the dreaded accusation, “You are presuming above your age,” is never heard. Little boys who would be rebuked and possibly whipped for such behaviour on any other occasion are allowed to preen themselves, to swagger and bluster and take the limelight without a word of reproach. The relatives crow with delight over a precocity for which they would hide their heads in shame were it displayed in any other sphere.
It is on these semi-formal occasions that the dance really serves as an educational factor. The highly ceremonious dance of the taupo or manaia and their talking chiefs at a wedding or a malaga, with its elaborate costuming, compulsory distribution of gifts, and its vigilant attention to precedent and prerogative, offers no opportunities to the amateur or the child. They may only cluster outside the guest house and watch the proceedings. The existence of such a heavily stylized and elaborate archetype of course serves an additional function in giving zest as well as precedent to the informal occasions which partially ape its grandeur.
The significance of the dance in the education and socialisation of Samoan children is two-fold. In the first place it effectively offsets the rigorous subordination in which children are habitually kept. Here the admonitions of the elders change from “Sit down and keep still!” to “Stand up and dance!” The children are actually the centre of the group instead of its barely tolerated fringes. The parents and relatives distribute generous praise by way of emphasising their children’s superiority over the children of their neighbours or their visitors. The ubiquitous ascendency of age is somewhat relaxed in the interests of greater proficiency. Each child is a person with a definite contribution to make regardless of sex and age. This emphasis on individuality is carried to limits which seriously mar the dance as an æsthetic performance. The formal adult dance with its row of dancers, the taupo in the centre and an even number of dancers on each side focussed upon her with every movement directed towards accentuating her dancing, loses both symmetry and unity in the hands of the ambitious youngsters. Each dancer moves in a glorious individualistic oblivion of the others, there is no pretence of co-ordination or of subordinating the wings to the centre of the line. Often a dancer does not pay enough attention to her fellow dancers to avoid continually colliding with them. It is a genuine orgy of aggressive individualistic exhibitionism. This tendency, so blatantly displayed on these informal occasions, does not mar the perfection of the occasional formal dance when the solemnity of the occasion becomes a sufficient check upon the participants’ aggressiveness. The formal dance is of personal significance only to people of rank or to the virtuoso to whom it presents a perfect occasion for display.
The second influence of the dance is its reduction of the threshold of shyness. There is as much difference between one Samoan child and another in the matter of shyness and self-consciousness as is apparent among our children, but where our shyest children avoid the limelight altogether, the Samoan child looks pained and anxious but dances just the same. The limelight is regarded as inevitable and the child makes at least a minimum of effort to meet its requirements by standing up and going through a certain number of motions. The beneficial effects of this early habituation to the public eye and the resulting control of the body are more noticeable in the case of boys than of girls. Fifteen- and sixteen-year-old boys dance with a charm and a complete lack of self-consciousness which is a joy to watch. The adolescent girl whose gawky, awkward gait and lack of co-ordination may be appalling, becomes a graceful, self-possessed person upon the dance floor. But this ease and poise does not seem to be carried over into everyday life with the same facility as it is in the case of young boys.