The enthralling San healing dance at Kuru
Zolani Kraai | Friday September 4, 2015 18:00
The event opened with a San healing and ritual dance that attracted hundreds of Batswana from as far as Kasane, Shakawe, Tsabong, Bokspits, Moshupa and Gaborone.
On the eve of the official opening all the participating San groups from various selected settlements gathered at the Dqae Qare Arena.
Other groups from North West Botswana, including Kasane followed suit and warmed up for the evening main course but only to give room to the San groups for their dance.
The programme was strictly San healing dances.
“This is the San cultural dance that goes back a thousand years, where the various groups sing, dramatise and sing traditional music around the fire,” Greg Laws, the General Manager and Financial Advisor of the Kuru Trust said.
Aaron Johannes, Kuru Development Trust Chairperson, told Arts & Culture that the healing and ritual dance of the San provided an unusual effect of social healing and communal bonding.
He said at the core of this ritual dance is a supernatural potency called n/um.
“For the San, the word n/um has a wide range of meanings, in different contexts to refer to medicine, energy and power,” he said, adding that in relation to the healing dance, n/um is a substance that lies at the pit of the healer’s stomach.
“N/um kausi meaning medicine owners, and it is activated through healing dances,” he said.
Johannes further explained that women sit around the fire clapping their hands and singing highly evocative and powerful medicine songs.
He said the healers, usually men, dance in response to and around the women.
“The first few hours are usually relaxed and low key. Then the women intensify their complex melodies and intricate rhythms as they sing songs without words.
“Men would then dance and beat a circular path in the sand several inches deep, displaying rapid, intricate, graceful body movements,” Johannes said.
Suddenly, lights around the arena dimmed, clapping intensified, and concentration lines the faces of the singers and dancers, as well as the spectators.
After a round of an intense ritual dance some men guide the main group of healers, away from the hot red coals placed in the middle of the arena. To avoid being burnt they slowly succumb to mother earth, gasping for breath with legs kicking about. Suddenly the lights are switched on to signify the end of the two-hour dance.
One of the healer’s legs begin to tremble, his chest heaving. Shaking his body vigorously, the healing ended. The San ritual dance usually lasts all night. According to Johannes, on special occasions the dance can go on into the third day.
He said the ritual and healing dance, especially the spell, bridges the gap between the world of the living and of the spirits.