Ivory Coast: Baoule People & Goli Dance – First Dance
Ivory Coast is famous for several tribes that perform very elaborate ceremonial masquerade dances. We visited the Baoule people, a group in the central part of the country. The dance is called Goli and usually the entire village participates in it – from tiny kids to elders. There is a lot of singing and walking in circles and traditional musical instruments involved in the prelude to the main performance, which consists of two separate dances and costumes with masques performed by two people (symbolizing one person but with male and female personalities). In the first dance, called kple kple, the masqueraded dance perform very energetically (kind of like a sunbird flopping winds from the motion frequency point of view). The intensity of each dance sequence is increasing in tempo and fervor.
