Maskdance The Old Inuit Tradition

Uaajeerneq [owaah-yeer-nerk] - The Greenlandic maskdance is the oldest dramaticical expression among the inuits in Greenland. The Tradition has been alive for around 3-4000 years, mainly in the Eastern part of Greenland.

The Dance was used very much for entertainment, especially to get through the dark wintertimes, which could be very hard for the people, but even for the fertility rituals the maskdance was important.

In the maskdance the dancer is eliminate oneselves as much as possible, by changing and deforming the face and body (with make-up, string and stick), and come to a mental position of being a spirit where the borders between human being, the animal, the female and the male is destinct.

One is putting the maskpainting directly on the face. The dance has 3 elements: The erotic part, the frightening part and the comic part.

This is the basic content of the dance, where the dancer in between the changes of  the elements although the response you get from the audience.

Each dancer has his/her own mask design and expression, and can be very different from each other.

The colors of the mask and costume are black, red and white and have all sympolic content each. The black stands for: the unknown, magic part. The red color stands for: Life, love and the temperament. And the white color for: Clearness and the cleaness.

The part of the dance is to do maskplay among the audience and get a kind of interaction with the audience with these 3 elements. In that way the audience will be a big part of the performance.

The music is the inuit traditional song - a drumdance music.

The performance starts with the painting the face in the front of the audience meanwhile we are talking about the history of the dance, in between we do entertainment and communicate with the audience.

The second part is to do the dance/play. So the time on the stage will be half an hour, all of it.

 

 

 

 

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Elisabeth Heilmann-Blind is educated Actor and had been touring beside Greenland all around the world as to Japan, New Zealand, Phillipines, all over Europe and USA

It all began as student in Fjaltring, Denmark in 1983-85 with Tukak Theater.

1986-88 Japan, Tokyo and Yokohama to study Noh-Theater with Kanze Hideo, Budoh-dance with Kazua Ohno and Aikido with Takeda Sensei.

Film: Arctic Fire Lamedeer's documentary (1984)

Japanese TV-film (1985).

Husqvarna (1997)

En liten Julsaga (A small X-mas story) (1999)

Döende rytmer (Dying Rythmn) (1999)

Instructor in dance and drama, Greenlandic Maskdance and butoh-dance in Sweden

http://www.samiteahter.org