TRIBAL DANCE

Tribal dance!!! --The last minor performance of the subject. Before we got any ideas of what to perform, six of us were watching the seniors’ videos on tribal dance and we can’t stop ourself to laugh since they were so entertaining and extraordinary where their creativity were beyond our mind. After watching five videos, I suddenly had this idea of demon tribe.

We were really wanted to get rid of the stereotypical label of our group, “fun and cheerful” and we were hope that the idea of demon will reflect on serious and solemn matter that will show to Pn. Ju that we were no more on the surface level, on the contrary, trying to explore on something uncommon. So basically, our story line was; there was a demonish tribe who were in the belief of demonism. One day, a member fell sick and the rest of the members help to cure the sick member by a healing ritual leads by a leader of the tribe. Then, we discussed on the equipments that can be used to make sound during the ritual from the natural sources and not forgetting the costumes.

We were having a bad time since on the day of making the mask at Astaka Seni, everyone was enjoying doing the mask using the cornstarch and balloons while we were so frustrated to use the paper plate to form the mask since it didn’t come out like what we expected. So, everyone in my group seems to be so grumpy and moody. Later, Pn Ju comes out with a funny lines “Kiranya ku tahu….”-implying that if we know using the paper plate wasn’t practical, we might consider to use the sticky cornstarch and balloons.

After the class, we went to buy the cornstarch and balloons. We started to do the masks at 5 p.m. and finished around 10 o’clock. We decided to use the red colour for the entire masks just to be uniform and the red colour did actually represent the evilness. Later, we had a practice on the dances while using our natural musical instruments; bottles, cans and rocks. It was quite tiring.

Before the actual performance, we did the last touch up on the masks using the traditional herbs where the leaders have more on the masks. We agreed to wear the black garbage bag for our tribe’s attire and unashamedly I asked them from a “makcik cleaner” in my college and she generously gave quite few to me.

On the actual performance day, we were the ninth group and we were in our costume earlier since it was a tedious task to wear the garbage-bag shirt and its skirt with a belt made out of dried leaves. It was so hot since the sweat can’t evaporate through the plastic. We were using our own language where every word was added with prefix “wuwu” where I become “Wuwuda”. During the performance I was laughing alone and luckily it was covered with the mask. I just can’t help it since seeing my friends who were so energetic and full of determination in doing the ritual. The last part was my favourite part where we danced the “grateful” dance (after the sick member cured) by using the tones of “We will rock you.” It was so nice and full of fun. After the performance my face was so itchy because of the mask.

Well, Pn. Ju said that she felt entertained and likes our performance and said that we were far improved from the last performance. And not forgetting, she was linguistically enhanced. J