{"id":544,"date":"2010-07-21T16:39:05","date_gmt":"2010-07-21T06:39:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mijts.net\/wordpress\/?p=544"},"modified":"2010-07-21T16:39:05","modified_gmt":"2010-07-21T06:39:05","slug":"mask-festival-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mijts.com\/wordpress\/?p=544","title":{"rendered":"Mask festival – Part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

After the dawn arrival of the boats to open the mask festival, the activities moved to the local football oval. On the Wednesday afternoon I took the wife of Nick\u2019s boss up there as the program said that the mud-men were performing at 1pm and I was keen to see them. It was an interesting afternoon \u2013 my companion, who is visiting from Japan for a few weeks, only spoke Japanese so we communicated mostly in sign language. It was hot, windy and dusty and no performers in sight!<\/p>\n

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We sat under a Coca Cola \u2018tent\u2019 for an hour and were rewarded for our patience \u2013 although not by the mudmen as they were a no show that day. However, from 2pm onwards there were several performances by Tolai Tubuan groups \u2013 from six different villages.<\/p>\n

After our long wait, some men and boys assembled by the \u2018sacred men\u2019s area\u2019 (no females allowed in there) wearing red laplaps and carrying their traditional \u2018man bags.\u2019 <\/p>\n

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They then sat together on the oval, chanting, singing, playing drums and clacking sticks \u2018calling\u2019 the performers and accompanying their dances. They sat in the hot sun doing this for a couple of hours!<\/p>\n

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There were a few Duk-Duk dances.<\/p>\n

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But most of the groups featured the \u2018female\u2019 Tubuan mask.<\/p>\n

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Whilst all similar, there was some variety in appearance across the groups.<\/p>\n

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They danced in pairs and there was great variety in the dance style of the different groups.<\/p>\n

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One group featured an action where they dropped to the ground and rolled. They were very flexible and agile and despite their masks and costumes were able to quickly get up and continue dancing again.<\/p>\n

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We really enjoyed these dances and I took HEAPS of photos \u2013 thank goodness for digital cameras!
\nNick and I returned to the festival on Saturday morning and much to my joy we saw the mud-men \u2013 more about this in Part 3!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After the dawn arrival of the boats to open the mask festival, the activities moved to the local football oval. On the Wednesday afternoon I took the wife of Nick\u2019s boss up there as the program said that the mud-men were performing at 1pm and I was keen to see them. It was an interesting […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-544","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mijts.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mijts.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mijts.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mijts.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mijts.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=544"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/mijts.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":559,"href":"https:\/\/mijts.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544\/revisions\/559"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mijts.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=544"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mijts.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=544"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mijts.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=544"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}