蘭嶼島上九個跳舞的原住民婦女

[英文]Nine women dancing in circle, hands clasped on upper arms, on beach, with canoes in the background. Ethnologist Kano Tadao, in a work first published in 1945, described the Tomoto Dance: @More than ten women with hands joined to form a circle and with the legs pressed together start the dance. In this position they begin to bend and stretch as they sing. The dance gains momentum as the legs come into action and the girls start jumping to the right or to the left as the circle is set in motion@ (Kano 1956, p. 437). The dance depicted here resembles Kano$s description of a Tomoto dance, though there are only nine participants. The other circular dance described by Kano was the $Magaram Dance$: @several young women form a circle with arms outstretched and hands clasping the alternating neighbors$ hands behind the neighbors$ backs to form two entwining circles. As they begin to sing the dance commences by drawing the left leg back then thrusting it forward with the foot gaining a few inches to the right. The fight foot follows as the circle slowly turns either from right to left or the reverse in rhythmic repetition$ (Kano 1956, p. 436). In contrast to the short skirts depicted in wa0003 and wa0004, the longer garment worn by the woman in the center of this photo is called an @ayub@ or women$s lightweight gown. Chen, following Kano Tadao (1956, p. 104), writes that the ayub is a @rectangular robe made of wild ramie about 100 by 80 cm. in size, usually with twelve blue stripes running lengthwise. It is worn draped over the left shoulder@ (Chen 1968, p. 172). These longer garments are also pictured in wa0069 wa0318 and wa0323. Taiwan Aborigine circle dances were a common motif in Japanese photography, narratives, and drawings throughout the colonial period. In the Warner collection see wa0073wa0127wa0131wa0143wa0152wa0275wa0338.