Dancing with the Forest Spirits

Unique to the Baining communities of East New Britain, Papua New Guinea, the Baining Fire Dance is performed by initiated young men on important ceremonial occasions. Wearing towering kavat masks, they dance barefoot through the flames. Their shadowy silhouettes move through the darkness to the elders’ hypnotic chanting and the rhythmic thud of bamboo poles striking wooden logs, while flickering firelight catches the painted masks and every kick sends a shower of sparks into the night.

One. Two. Three. I count silently as a masked dancer remains in the middle of the fire.

Ten seconds. Then twelve. On some attempts, I reach fifteen before he bursts from the flames, barefoot and apparently unharmed. He appears unconcerned. I am concerned enough for both of us. With every stamp of his feet, embers explode into the darkness. Sparks rise around his enormous mask, and for a moment the figure seems less like a man than one of the forest spirits the mask embodies.

Around the fire, elders chant and strike bamboo poles against heavy wooden logs. The rhythm quickens. Another dancer approaches the flames.

Baining Fire Dance is performed by initiated young men from the Baining communities of East New Britain of Papua New Guinea.

It is spectacular to witness, but it is not staged simply as entertainment. The masks, fire, music and movement belong to a ceremonial tradition connecting initiation, community life and the spirits of the surrounding forest.

A road into darkness

Several hours earlier, my husband and I are travelling from Kokopo towards the village of Gaulim, deep in the Baining Mountains. The sun is already sinking behind the forest. We have been told that the journey should take about an hour and a half, a reassuringly precise estimate for a road that soon disappears into complete darkness and has its own ideas about speed.

We are fortunate: there has been little rain during the preceding weeks. In wet weather, the track can become a corridor of mud. Even in the dry, the vehicle pitches and jolts over the uneven ground as the lights of Kokopo vanish behind us.

We have come for a performance held in connection with the National Mask Festival.

Traditionally, Baining Fire Dances take place only on important occasions.

They may accompany the initiation of boys into adulthood, commemorate the dead, celebrate a harvest, marriage or birth, or mark another significant event in community life.

The Baining are regarded as the original inhabitants of the Gazelle Peninsula. Historical accounts describe how the arrival of Tolai communities from New Ireland gradually displaced Baining communities from the coastal areas towards the mountainous interior. Their movement inland may also have been influenced by centuries of volcanic activity around the Rabaul caldera, including eruptions from Tavurvur and Vulcan.

By the time we reach Gaulim, the village is almost entirely dark. A large bonfire provides the only landmark – and, for the next several hours, nearly all the light.

Waiting beside the fire

I sit on the ground beside local families while the fire illuminates faces around the clearing. Beyond its reach, the forest has disappeared into blackness. We talk and wait as the dancers prepare out of sight. Nobody seems concerned about when the ceremony will begin except the visiting photographer, whose knees have started keeping time.

The night ceremony has traditionally been reserved for men.

Baining women and girls did not participate or watch because the forest spirits represented by the masks were believed to be dangerous to them. Women were also forbidden from entering the places where masks were made. During our visit, women and girls remain at a distance from the performance area – a reminder that the evening is governed by rules and beliefs not immediately visible to an outsider.

The dancers dress in skirts made from pandanus leaves and bark cloth. Over their heads they carry kavat masks: immense structures of bamboo and reeds covered with finely beaten white bark cloth, or tapa. Although some are almost as large as the men wearing them, their frames are relatively light – “relatively” being an important word when somebody else is carrying one.

Their appearance is unforgettable. Round eyes stare from the white surface; broad, beak-like mouths project forward; long appendages hang beneath them. Red and black pigments pick out the designs. Different masks represent spirits associated with animals, plants and the forest.

Unlike many masks used for Baining day dances, which may be left in the forest to decay after the ceremony, night masks are preserved and reused.

The distinction reflects different ceremonial worlds: day dances are associated with gardening and female fertility, while the night dances turn towards hunting and the forest spirits.

The spirits arrive

A deep, regular thumping rises from somewhere beyond the firelight. Conversation fades. Village elders seated at the edge of the clearing strike bamboo poles against large logs, building a rhythm that can be felt as much as heard. Men begin to chant.

A ceremonial leader known as the Lingen enters the clearing. His arms and legs are painted white, pandanus leaves surround his tall conical headdress, and a strip of bark cloth trails behind him. He will guide the masked figures through the performance – and he soon proves to have energy enough for several dancers.

Then the others appear from the darkness.

The fire catches the white surfaces of their masks before their bodies become fully visible. Giant eyes seem to gaze across the clearing as each dancer performs alone before the chorus, moving for the length of a song and then joining the figures circling the fire.

Once the dancers have assembled, the rhythm intensifies. Their masks tilt, turn and loom above their bodies, throwing enormous shadows across the ground. Bark-cloth banners painted with intricate designs move through the firelight. Beyond the flames there is almost nothing to see; the ceremony appears suspended between the forest and the night.

Into the flames

The dancers begin by approaching the fire cautiously. They circle closer, retreat, then advance again, kicking at loose embers as though measuring the heat. The bamboo beats accelerate towards a crescendo. The chants rise with them.

At last, one young man runs forward. Barefoot, he charges through the centre of the bonfire and kicks into the burning wood. A shower of sparks erupts around him and climbs into the night sky.

After that first crossing, the others follow. One by one, the masked men leap into the fire, stamp among the embers and emerge through smoke and flame. Some pass through quickly. Others remain inside, dancing as the fire rises around their legs. That is when I begin counting.

The masks transform the scene. Illuminated from below, their painted faces float above the flames while their shadows sway across the clearing. The elders maintain the same insistent music: voices, bamboo and wood driving the dancers back towards the heat.

Each kick sends burning fragments in every direction. The young boys tending the bonfire make sure it never loses strength. I have a more modest responsibility: making sure that the flying embers do not land on my camera – or on me. Documentary photography sometimes requires a delicate balance between remaining close to the action and not becoming part of the fire.

There are no electric lights, only the bonfire and a few handheld torches. I decide not to use flash. Photographing in such darkness is difficult. My camera’s autofocus searches the blackness with growing philosophical despair, but artificial light would flatten the mystery of the scene and intrude upon the ceremony. The fire is unpredictable and unforgiving, yet it gives the images what they need: movement, shadow and the sense that the spirits might genuinely be present.

Until dawn

As the night progresses, more people arrive from neighbouring Baining villages. The performance continues for hours. Dancers enter and leave the clearing; elders sustain the chants; boys feed new wood into the flames. The fire repeatedly collapses into embers and is built high again.

Gradually, darkness begins to loosen its hold on the forest. The chanting ends, the last flames disappear, and the masks are carried away. Without the fire, the clearing suddenly looks ordinary. Morning light reveals the ground, the trees and the people who had spent the night gathered around them.

The ceremony already seems improbable, as though the masked figures and towers of sparks belonged to a dream that ended with sunrise. Then I notice the ash on my clothes.

The forest spirits may have withdrawn with the darkness, but they have left evidence behind.