ABSTRACT
The kaiko celebration of the Tsembaga of Highlands Papua New Guinea is a year-long festival culminating in the konj kaiko – pig kaiko.1 Kaiko means dancing, and the chief entertainments of the celebrations are dances. During 1962-3 the Tsembaga entertained thirteen other local groups on fifteen occasions, not counting the grand finale, the konj kaiko.2 To make sure that a kaiko was successful, young Tsembaga men were dispatched to neighboring areas to announce the shows – and to send back messages of delay should a visiting group be late; in that case the entertainments were postponed. A kaiko day began with the dancers, all men, bathing; then they took several hours putting on costumes and facial and body makeup. Self-adornment is an exacting, precise, and delicate process. When dressed the dancers assembled on the flattened, stamped-down grounds where they danced both for their own pleasure and as rehearsal in advance of the arrival of their guests. The visitors announced their arrival by singing – they could be heard well before they were seen. By this time many spectators were
gathered, including men, women, and children from neighboring villages. These spectators came to watch, and to exchange goods. Finally,
The performance transformed combat techniques into entertainment. All the basic moves and sounds – even the charge into the central space – were adaptations or direct lifts from battle. But the Tsembaga dance was a dance, and clearly so to everyone present at it. The dancing was not an isolated phenomenon – as theater-going in America usually is – but a behavior nested in supportive actions. The entry described took place late in the afternoon, and just before dusk the dancing stopped and the food which had been piled in the center of the dancing ground was distributed and eaten. It might be said, literally, that the dancing is about the food, for the whole kaiko cycle pivots on acquiring enough pigs for meat to afford the festival.
