Cilende: the mask dance at the Luvale Culture Festival (Angola)

Authors

  • Isabel Penoni Laboratory of Anthropology of Art, Ritual and Memory (LARME), Graduate Program in Social Anthropology, National Museum, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.11606/issn.2525-3123.gis.2018.142391

Keywords:

Masks, Dance, ‘Culture, ’ Luvale, Angola

Abstract

This article presents new ethnographic and visual material on the dance of the makixi, the ancestors manifested in the form of masked dancers, originally found in the circumcision rituals (mukanda) practiced by Bantu peoples from the large area of confluence between Angola, Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo, including the Luvale. Proclaimed Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO in 2005, the main locus of their performance today is the large Luvale ‘culture’ festival, held since the 1950s in Zambia and more recently in Angola. Based on an ethnography of the Angolan version of the festival, researched between 2013 and 2013, the author focuses on the makixi dances, which comprise the event’s main attraction, showing the close relationship between the morphology of the masks and the dance styles, helping to narrow the enormous gap opened up by the lapse of almost forty years without any research being carried out in the area due to warfare.

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Author Biography

  • Isabel Penoni, Laboratory of Anthropology of Art, Ritual and Memory (LARME), Graduate Program in Social Anthropology, National Museum, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

    Isabel Penoni is a theatre director, filmmaker and anthropologist, with a postdoctorate at Musée du quai Branly Jacques Chirac (Paris, France). Associate researcher at the Anthropology of Art, Memory and Ritual Laboratory (LARMe), PPGAS-MN-UFRJ, she develops research and collabora- tive creations on the urban periphery of Rio de Janeiro and in different indigenous areas worldwide. Currently she is engaged in a new postdoc- torate at the Postgraduate Program in Dramatic Arts (PPGAC) at UNIRIO. She is founding director of the Rio theatre group Cia Marginal, responsible for directing the shows “Qual é a nossa cara?” (2007), “Ô,Lili” (2011), “In_Trânsito” (2013) and “Eles não usam tênis naique” (2015). In cinema, she directed “Porcos Raivosos?” (10’, 2012) and “Abigail” (17’, 2016), both shown at the Directors’ Fortnight (Cannes 2012 and 2016) and winners of awards at diverse national and international festivals.

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Published

2018-07-23

Issue

Vol. 3 No. 1 (2018)

Section

Articles

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How to Cite

Penoni, Isabel. 2018. “Cilende: The Mask Dance at the Luvale Culture Festival (Angola)”. GIS - Gesture, Image and Sound - Anthropology Journal 3 (1). https://doi.org/10.11606/issn.2525-3123.gis.2018.142391.