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Polynesian Dancing shows Signs of its Religious
Origin

(3) And the dance is in its origin pantomimic. It is meant in all its earlier stages to imitate the action in which success is desired, and has a religious atmosphere and guidance. Dancing in modern Europe has been divorced from religion, and, having long lost its picturesque or imitative purpose, has passed into the conventional stage, in which a new movement or step has no aim except variety and perhaps grace.

(4) Polynesian dancing has advanced far on the road to conventionalism. It has shed much of its pantomimic purpose, and its religious meaning, and in this it reveals the collision of two or more cultures. In a region marked by so much that it is so highly primitive, nothing but the clash of different religious systems could explain its divorce from rites and ceremonies and its appearance as an almost purely secular art, intended to amuse and delight an assembly of spectators. Had it not been secularised, the women could not have taken part in it amongst a people who looked on all religion as an affair of men; and that it was once wholly religious is shown by its character. It is not like European dancing, a harmony of "twinkling feet." It is wholly occupied in posturing, waving the arms and bending the body, as if before a shrine. It is the upper part of the body that is chiefly engaged. Where the feet come in, it is only to effect the occasional advances or retreats, as if to and from the altar, or in the resounding thud of the war-dance. The Polynesian dance is oftenest stationary.

(5) The old religious significance was still retained in the funeral dance of the Maoris, and perhaps in their triumph dance and their war-dance, and here and there throughout the islands it appears, as in Nukuhiva of the page 204Marquesas group during the religious festivals held to celebrate the maturity of the breadfruit the men alone take part in the dancing, and dance naked. In short, whatever dances were monopolised by the men we may be sure still kept something of the old religious atmosphere about them.

(6) War amongst the Maoris was the most sacred of all employments; the fighting men were tapu, and could not cook food or carry cooked food, and the war-party had to be consecrated and deconsecrated by the priest, with most elaborate rites. The war-dance, often indulged in just before battle in order to rouse daring to frenzy and to shake the hearts of the enemy, had something religious about it, and was confined to the men. It was a New Zealand development, and with its wild, goblinesque movements of body, limbs, and facial features, and its terrific energy and music, formed a piquant contrast to the soft, posturing, licentious dances that prevailed all through Polynesia. One has to go to Melanesia and Papuasia for analogies; and these are not to be compared, in spite of their hideous masks. The Maoris turned their faces into close imitations of their demonlike carved images. But the thrust-out tongue, the wild rolling eyes standing out of the head, the fierce grimaces, and the quivering hands and fingers, with the accompaniment of the deep-drawn cries and the stamp of feet, had all the advantages of living movement to add to the terrifying effect. It is difficult to efface the deep impression that its massive energy and furious, almost epileptic, passion makes on the mind, when produced by hundreds. It surpassed in fury anything that kava or any other drug or fermented liquor could have given to the harmonious movements of a mass of warriors. And in the olden days it had the grimmest of religious purposes. Now it has degenerated into an exhibition and a spectacle.

(7) But it shows better than any others the pantomimic page 205origin of all dance. Every act, every movement, every grimace was intended to give a realistic picture of the battle the warriors were about to enter, as well as to stir to overwhelming frenzy their religious zeal. And most of the other dances in which men alone engaged were more or less realistic imitations of this war-pantomime. Even in the islands the dances of men reveal shadowy reminiscences of war. To this is doubtless due the predominance of the upper part of the body, and especially of the arms and hands, in their dances. If these had originated in hunting or nomadism, or even agriculture, we should have had more use of the legs in them. But there is one curious use of the legs in dancing that is not easily explained without some knowledge of the animals used in agriculture. It is the backward kick that forms the pice de rsistance in the amusements of the two farthest separated branches of the Polynesian race the Malagasies and the Easter Islanders; otherwise they merely posture and use their arms; but the men in dancing have grown most expert in imitating the savage kick of the four-footed animal.