Bras are their letdown!

From GUS SMALES in Port Moresby

When Viscount Dunrossil, then Governor-General of Australia, toured Papua New Guinea in 1960, the organisers of the Mo robe Dis trict Show in Lae decided to take a firm stand.

Tribal dance groups who wanted to perform during the Governor- General’s visit and to be in the running for the prizes on offer had to throw away all their modern Junk, the show organisers ruled.

“If you call yourself traditional, then that’s what you have to he, ” the ruling said. The result was a hasty redesign of many costumes, some of the changes being made inside the showground itself only minutes before the dancing started. Dancers worked feverishly to rid themselves of silver foil trappings, bottle-top sequins, studded leather belts, col oured glass, copper wire and trendy sunglasses.

The only concession allowed was the use of commercially-made paints and dyes. It didn't matter much whether you bought your face paint over the counter, or pummell ed it out of bark and clay the final effect was much of a muchness.

It’s now 17 years since the Mo robe Show Society put its foot down, hut the evidence suggests that PNG is losing the battle against modernism in traditional costumes.

The country’s tribal ceremonial costumes vary much more widely in design than even casual visitors sometimes realise.

They range from rough cloaks of leaves, mud and hark to elaborate handcrafted creations supple mented by colour and ornamental accessories.

Some dancers paint their faces, either crudely or with intricate designs. Others mask their faces, or cover head and body with an all-en veloping costume.

Weapons, symbolic objects and musical instruments are essential accessories for tribal costumes on many occasions. But some tribal groups go beyond this and carry complicated structures on poles or in frames, often surmounted by representations of birds, animals and fish.

Traditionally, the materials used in the costumes range from simple mud and clay to animal hones, skins and teeth, to shells, feathers, fins, hark, cane, leaves, flowers and grass.

Some areas have developed deco rated fabrics, usually based on pro cessed hark rather than on weaving techniques. Human hair is often used in costumes, and sometimes human skulls and other human re mains hut not as commonly as often believed outside PNG.

But the products of modern con sumer society are now fast moving into the traditional picture. John Mekintz, a younger generation Papua New Guinean radio jour nalist, lamented the change in a broadcast from Mt Hagen, the scene of one of the world's most famous annual exhibitions of tribal-style dancing. At the Mt Hagen Show, tens of thousands of decorated men and women dance for hours on end to the heat of drums and the shrill note of bamboo flutes.

Fresh from looking at this year's show, Mekintz said he feared that unless something was done quickly the old arts of traditional costume making and decoration would soon die out. Coloured towels, sunglasses, modern trappings and modern materials were widely in evidence, he said.

The situation was not surprising in view of the cash income boom in the highlands. It was easier and no doubt more pleasant to buy a bottle of imported body oil rather than to use pig fat or home-grown oils laboriously squeezed from a tree.

Mekintz said he didn't think much could be done to change the situation because the people were now living between two worlds, un dergoing a transition which couldn't be stopped. And, with an eye to the women dancers he saw in Mt Hagen, he gloomily described how far too many of them had worn bras as part of their ceremonial cos tume.

“Either they are beginning to feel shy, or they have got so used to them that they can't do without them, ”he said.