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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.)
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