Item details
Item ID
DKH01-047_tandam_kundamba
Title Tandam kundambaŋ umbuyaplakay ‘Dancing upon the roots of wild yam’
Description This string figure represents two women dancing at the roots of a yam. The Awiakay say that it was a spirit woman who planted this yam, and now two women are dancing at its roots, so that it will grow faster. They also say that this string figure must be from elsewhere, as it was very rare that their ancestors would plant yam. Even when they did, it would be individual plants, never whole gardens.
When the string figure-maker finishes the design, she/he starts moving the loops that represent women, saying that they are now dancing. They emphasise that they are ‘dancing on the spot’. In all-night dances, in which the Awiakay dance in a clockwise direction rounding the main house post or another post they stuck into the ground for the dance, the rounding regularly stops, and the dancers dance on the spot. This is when the swaying of their grass-skirts is observed by the bystanders. One’s dancing skills are largely judged by the movement of one’s grass-skirt, which is considered sexually appealing. This association, and her intimate experience of all-night song-dance cycles where people are making comments about the dancers, makes the teenage girl in the video giggle when she says: “Just look at these two woman, the way they dance at the roots of yam” (for more on aphrodisiacal properties of Awiakay all-night song/dance cycles see Hoenigman 2015: 203-204).
The Awiakay also say that the part of the design which they call ‘two women dancing’ is interpreted as ‘two dogs’ in Asangamut.

Images:
02: tandam kundambaŋ umboyaplakay ‘dancing upon the roots of wild yam’, final design
03: tandam wild yam

Hoenigman, Darja. 2015. ‘The talk goes many ways’: Registers of language and modes of performance in Kanjimei, East Sepik Province, Papua New Guinea. Canberra: The Australian National University. (PhD thesis.)
Origination date 2018-08-18
Origination date free form
Archive link https://catalog.paradisec.org.au/repository/DKH01/047_tandam_kundamba
URL
Collector
Darja Hoenigman
Countries To view related information on a country, click its name
Language as given Awiakay
Subject language(s)
Content language(s) To view related information on a language, click its name
Dialect Awiakay
Region / village Oceania
Originating university
Operator Tina Gregor
Data Categories
Data Types MovingImage
Discourse type
Roles Hilta Waŋgam : performer
DOI 10.26278/1QR3-Z822
Cite as Darja Hoenigman (collector), Hilta Waŋgam (performer), 2018. Tandam kundambaŋ umbuyaplakay ‘Dancing upon the roots of wild yam’. JPEG/MP4/MXF/TIFF. DKH01-047_tandam_kundamba at catalog.paradisec.org.au. https://dx.doi.org/10.26278/1QR3-Z822
Content Files (6)
Filename Type File size Duration File access
DKH01-047_tandam_kundamba-01.jpg image/jpeg 512 KB
DKH01-047_tandam_kundamba-01.mp4 video/mp4 142 MB 00:01:55.605
DKH01-047_tandam_kundamba-01.mxf application/mxf 1.64 GB
DKH01-047_tandam_kundamba-01.tif image/tiff 68.7 MB
DKH01-047_tandam_kundamba-02.jpg image/jpeg 748 KB
DKH01-047_tandam_kundamba-02.tif image/tiff 28.7 MB
6 files -- 1.88 GB -- --

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Collection Information
Collection ID DKH01
Collection title Awiakay string figures
Description Recordings of Awiakay string figures
Countries To view related information on a country, click its name
Languages To view related information on a language, click its name
Access Information
Edit access Tina Gregor
View/Download access
Data access conditions Open (subject to agreeing to PDSC access conditions)
Data access narrative
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