Kaday Village Cultural Tour (cont.)

All Photos on the Yapese Cultural Experience pages were graciously provided by Dianne Strong of Guam.

Dianne has written a great book on Kimio Ausek and the wrecks of Truk Lagoon.

A Big Thank You to Dianne for the photos and generous support over the years!

The dancers are dressed in traditional Yapese clothing--colorful grass skirts for the women and hibiscus and fabric loin cloths for the men. They are all wearing decorative headdresses and arm and leg bands made from young coconut leaves. The dancers form a line between the rows of ancient stone money and begin to chant and clap their hands in a hypnotic rhythm.

As the dance progresses, the action grows with more chanting, clapping, twirling and stomping, all done in a very artful way. Yapese dance is a form of story-telling, and it is one way of passing along history to the younger generations. Each village performs its own dance, and some dances are for men, some for women, some for children, and even a few are mixed with boys and girls.

Today's dance was a standing dance, performed by both girls and boys from the village. Photography is welcome at the village for these functions, and the stone money behind the dancers makes for a perfect backdrop. Other dances are sitting dances, and the more lively dances are bamboo stick dances, in which the dancers smack bamboo sticks together in unison. These dances are quite impressive and indeed take a lot of practice to avoid broken hands or a lump on the head. The dance finishes with a loud shout and the dance group disperses among us.

After the dance we retreated to the stone platform and watched in awe as the girls began weaving baskets, hats and toy cubes (to be played with like a ball) from coconut leaves. It was nearly impossible to follow the hands of the girl weaving as she flipped the leaf this way and that, and before long a basket was taking shape. Weaving has long been used to create practical tools.