ALL OF THE DANCESSHARE FUNDAMENTAL UNDERLYINGMEANINGS INWHICH PEOPLES’ CLOSE COMMUNIONWITH THEIRANCESTORS AND THE NATURAL (INCLUDINGANI- MAL) AND SPIRITUALWORLDS FIGURE PROMINENTLY. ABOVE ALL, EACH OF THESE DANCES EMBODIES ANAWARENESS OF A GREATER COSMIC ORDERAND OFTEN THE IMPORTANCE OF RECIPROCAL RELATIONSHIPS INMAINTAINING THAT ORDER.
ing as they snake through the plaza, and oc- casionally pausing to dance in place. As Gloria Lomahalftewa (Hopi) writes,
the village men provide the dance’s prayer songs, which often evoke the natural world and thank the Creator for the Hopi way of life. As with the ancient Maya, Hopi life is based on corn agriculture and the need for summer rains that nurture corn and thus Hopi people. Traditionally, Hopi depended upon rain for their survival. They also de- pend upon each other to carry out their com- munal and ceremonial obligations, including ceremonial dances. In the Hopi Butterfly Dance, Hopi youths participate in prayers and thanks for rain, nature’s gift, and a Hopi lifeway centered since their Emergence on desert farming.
SEMINOLE STOMP DANCE
coincides with the ripening of corn. The ceremony takes place annually, in May or June, at the tribe’s ceremonial grounds, un- disclosed locations in South Florida where religious rituals are held. Stomp dancing, an integral part of the Green Corn Ceremony, takes place each evening during the gather- ing. Men and women dance in single file, in a continuous line of movement behind a spiri- tual leader, singing call-and-response songs and keeping time with a coconut rattle. The dancers form a spiral, which circles counter- clockwise around a central fire. With their knees slightly bent and bodies relaxed and slightly inclined forward, the men and wom- en circle the fire in close formation with slow stomping steps of three or four inches. The men sing out the responses, while the women provide the rhythm with the sound of their leg rattles. And as Willie Johns (Seminole) writes, the stomp dancers’ increasing energy creates a wind, forcing the smoke upward. The swirling smoke carries the song’s mes- sage to the Creator, who blesses the dance, a
T
he Seminole Green Corn Ceremony, the Seminole’s primary traditional religious and social gathering, always
fundamental component of the Seminole’s annual rite of thanksgiving.
TLINGIT
KU.EEX ENTRANCE DANCE
from whom it has received certain rights, is a basic protocol at Tlingit
ku.eex includ- ing, importantly, the dances that are a vital part of them. Among the Tlingit along the Pacific Northwest Coast,
ku.eex are hosted by clan leaders to memorialize a clan member’s death approximately one year after the person’s death. At the beginning of the
ku.eex, the hosts –
R
dancers, drummers and singers – make their entrance performing an Entrance Song. The dancers appear one at a time, each wearing a robe with his or her crest. Crests are animal emblems, or totems, that identify clan mem- bers and honor ancestral encounters in the history of the clan. With their elbows bent outward to spread open their robes, the dancers circle the dance floor with shoulders, chests and hips turning to the right and then to the left, and occasionally strike positions facing towards or away from the audience. The men dance more robustly, frequently crouching and turning their heads from side to side. Women move more gracefully. And as Maria Shaa Tlaa Williams (Tlingit) writes, when all the dancers have entered the perfor- mance space and the entrance song ends, the dancers line up and turn their backs to the audience, to display the crests that explain their existence in the world.
CUBEO OYNE DANCE
and Brazil but was suppressed by mission- aries in the 1940s. It occurred up to a year after a person’s death and lasted several days. Men wear knee-length bark-cloth outfits painted in scales for fish, in wings for birds
T
he Cubeo mourning, or weeping, cer- emony was once performed regularly along the Uaupes River in Columbia
ecognition and remembrance of a clan’s relationship with the ancestral being from whom it descends, and
and insects, and in other animal designs; they imitate animal spirit beings from the Cubeo world. As Janet Chernela writes, the range of animal spirits represented is large, but the principle spirit beings are Butterflies, Dung Beetles, Jaguars, Aracu (fish) and Sloth. These and other animal spirits include both beneficial and malevolent demons that are otherwise only visible to shamans. They enter into the village of the
deceased, upon the weepers’ (women’s) domain, and dance and perform among the mourners. The dancers, sometimes in pairs, perform distinctive gestures of the animals they represent and accompany their movements with songs imitating animal sounds while beating the ground rhythmically with dance battalions. The dancers/animal spirit beings, the primordial mourners, transform the collective mood from somber grief to unrestrained play.
POWWOWS: YAKAMA GIRL’S FANCY SHAWL DANCE
P
owwows have become one of the most powerful expressions of cul- tural identity in the Indian world
today. With roots in Plains Indian ritual and ceremonial dances, they are public and intertribal events that draw Indian people together, in the United States and Canada. Powwow dancing emerged by the 1930s
in response to government efforts to pro- hibit ceremonial dances among Plains Indi- ans. Powwows spread across and beyond the Plains in the 20th
century. One of the favorite
expressions of powwow dance for young Yakama girls is the Fancy Shawl Dance. The Yakama sponsor several powwows a year, the largest being The Yakama Nation Com- memoration of 1855 Treaty Days Powwow that takes place in June on the Yakama Na- tion reservation in southwestern Washington
CONTINUED E SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION 37
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