Dance mask

Fischer and Himmelheber, in their authoritative study of Dan art (1984), stress that the variations in form and function of Dan masquerades are too confusing to allow any clear-cut classification, since masks often change their roles during their careers If a mask has been divorced from its original context it is often not feasible to assign to it a definite status although it may be possible to fit it within abroad category. Among the Dan, narrow eyes are a sign of feminine beauty. In this mask, such eyes, together with the oval beardless face, indicate that it is a gle mu, a ‘gentle’ mask, and since it has eyes, it is probably a tankagle rather than the similar deangle.

Tankagleis a ‘dancing, miming masquerade’ and may be accompanied by an orchestra and chorus. The masker usually wears leg-rattles, carries a calabash rattle and may be dressed in a fabric cape and enormous fibre skirt. Holes around the rim of the mask are for a bonnet-like head-dress (komo) with 85 cowrie-shell decoration; the head-dress is important in defining the role of the mask.

Tankagle masks usually have attractive feminine faces; the vertical cicatrisation scar on the forehead and nose is a feature of the southern and western Dan, and emphasises bilateral symmetry, admired in Dan beauty. Inside, the smoothly carved interior has hollows just below the eyes with a median trough which seem clearly designed to accommodate the nose and cheekbones of the masker.

The men who wear the masks are called zo (master); to become a gle zo (performer of the masquerade) he must have had a dream sent to him by the mask-spirit. While the actual mask may be handed down through generations by inheritance, the masquerade itself depends on the dream – an ‘acknowledgement’ by the mask. A mask may thus spend as much as a generation ‘resting’ until a new zo is visited by a dream. Its re-emergence may be accompanied by a different masquerade – costume, movements and musical accompaniment – as dictated in the dream.

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