Three Loves Seven, Chapter 24, Part 1 - "The Seven-Seven Dance"

Dear Gentle Readers,

Just a warning, by itself, this next portion will seem like notes that someone makes to himself, even more than some of the other sections.

Many years ago, I was a volunteer worker and a ticket buyer for what something called the L.A. Festival. It was several weeks of arts events presented by artists of all kinds from Asia and the Pacific Islands, and Australia. I went on successive nights to view ceremonial court dances by professional troupes from Cambodia, Bali, Java, and Thailand. These dance traditions shared many things from their deep-past Indic traditions, but they were also quite distinct as you would surmise. These performances made an impression on me and have fired my imagination ever since. It is the narrative dance styles, particularly of Thailand, that I have in my mind's eye that I imagine the princesses doing as they enact this composition that their old mentor Madame Jorani created.

I have gone to as many of this type of traveling performance that I have been able to find in the decades since, and I have viewed many videos, but nothing really compares to that peak experience I had that year. I make no effort to describe this dance in recognizable detail. It is for you the reader, to conjure up in your head what kind of unique approach a diaspora culture would come up with in interpreting old cultural materials.

And so, the story continues ...

Personal Journal Entry

U.S. Time:             Thursday, August 23, 2012

Island Time:          Dragon, Month 7, Day 7, Xingqi 4

                              Day of the Seven-Seven Festival

Project date:          Week 9, Day 5

In all of my various travels for business, despite my going to the East Asian countries, my trips have never coincided with any of the so-called Seven-Seven, Tanabata, Chinese Valentine’s Day, or Magpie festivals, so I’ve never seen how this particular holiday plays out. If I have been present, I was probably in some remote bush location, far from any civilized enactments. So, I had absolutely nothing to compare Dog Island’s observances to.

Supposedly it was a holiday when no “work” was supposed to be done.  Nevertheless they were all up as usual before dawn, doing a lot of preparations for a large seashore picnic that would happen sometime midafternoon, once the special dance had been presented.  Food preparation seemed like a lot of “work” to me. The Second Princesses all had needlework projects they were supposed to be presenting as well. The younger ones were all working on embroidery patterns which would eventually be incorporated into their wedding garments. The older ones, who had presumably finished that work, were embroidering their distinctive Manchurian headdresses. It was not a true presentation, but rather an inspection of works in progress.

I was allowed to watch things going on, despite being a foreign presence. I wanted to go off and continue my geosurveying, ready on standby to do my part in the dance, but they would have none of it—they wanted me handy. Lee got tired of me just spectating and put me to work carrying things, cleaning pots, and removing shellfish from their homes. My recent stint in the Karma-Free Hilton made me feel sorry for these little guys imagining that they were as sentient as my centipede friend acted, but I knew that in a few hours, I would be deriving great culinary pleasure from their little fried bodies, so their violent deaths and dismemberments were not in vain. A large bunch of them would be going into a flaming hot pit that Lian and Qin Qin were tending on the beach.

I tried to recall the story of the Cowherd and Weaver Girl as my mother had told it to me at bedtime. There are probably as many versions of this story as there are parents who tell it to their children, but I recall my mother calling it the Chinese Valentine’s Day Story. An orphan boy is raised by his brother and sister-in-law and is given the task of tending the family cow. He gets the name of Cowherd. When the cow goes dry, he is is put out of his brother’s house and given the cow. They then go to live in the woods and subsist on foraging.

The cow, it turns out, is a supernatural being rather like a guardian angel to Cowherd and she advises him one day to spy on the seven sister fairies who come to bathe in a nearby stream once a year. He is to steal one of their garments which allow them to fly and he should not return until the fairy agrees to marry him. He will then gain prosperity.

At this point I think my mom changed the story. He finds the bathing maidens, sees where they have set down their celestial robes and he swaps out garment for one of them and then hides. In doing so he makes noise and that causes the maidens to startle, panic, grab their robes, and flee to heaven.

It is the youngest and smallest of the fairies, the seventh, whose robe he has swiped. She is unable to find her garment and flee. She finds his shirt and puts it on to cover herself and it is at point that Cowherd reveals himself. He accuses her of stealing his shirt and she is outraged by that, saying that someone stole her garment. As it happens, he suggests, he found a garment of that description and shows it to her. She demands that he give it back. To which he responds, not until she agrees to marry him. She thinks that’s a preposterous request and refuses. And so they are at impasse.

Cowherd walks away, telling her to come see him when she’s ready to deal, causing her to lament and cry. Unlike the cow, he is not a hard-ass and he feels sorry for her and caves in, saying he’s willing to settle if she would just hang out for a while and tell him about the heavenly world. Mom would emphasize a point to me here in the story that I should never coerce a girl like this. That’s why I’m pretty sure this was her version.

Anyway, she agrees to that and they talk and exchange stories and turn out to have an enjoyable time together. She says her name is Weaver Girl because it is her job to weave the clouds that appear in the sky every day. They say goodbye and part company, but Weaver Girl has second thoughts, especially thinking about the husbands her father had picked for her older sisters—not thinking he had done justice on any of them. She figured she’d do better with this fellow and tells him she agrees to wed him.

In more traditional tellings, he just blackmails her and she caves in, but she must either love him already or comes to love him since this is a celebrated love story. I suppose in a culture that typically arranged marriages, it made more sense to romanticize trying to fall in love with the person you happened to get paired off with. If this actually happened, you really hit the jackpot.

And so she stayed and together they prospered and they have two children, a son and a daughter. They are content, at least until the grandmother goddess discovers Weaver Girl missing, retrieves her, and forces her back to the land of heaven. The cow spirit advises Cowherd to kill her and tan her hide which he can then wear and use it to travel to heaven just like his wife’s robe and reclaim his bride. Cowherd takes the cow’s advice and is able to rise to heaven and he is reunited with Weaver Girl. They attempt to flee, but the grandmother goddess will not permit they’re being together and she takes a hairpin and creates a vast river of stars to separate them, but a flock of magpies takes pity on the lovers and forms a bridge across the river on which they can meet in the middle.

Even grandmother is impressed by this sentiment and relents at bit, allowing the lovers to meet once a year on Seventh Day of the Seventh Month.

The Seven-Seven Dance: Assorted observation notes on the performance

Opening scene: My part required me to pantomime the hard work of chopping wood, carrying water, tilling soil, and tending the cow. Big Mei played the role of the cow. They do not require me to adopt the mannered, Hindu-like postures and gestures that they have mastered. They tell me just to move in a way natural for myself.

Scene 2: Sister-in-Law comes out, berates me, the Cowherd, and beats me nearly unceasingly with a stick. Almost seeming to want to be typecast, Qi volunteered to play the role of Sister-in-Law.

Scene 3: One day I present a dry milk pail to Sister-in-Law. She beats the hell out of me and turns us both, Cowsie and me, out on our own.

Scene 4: As I sit there dejected, Cowsie surprise me by starting to talk. This turns into a humorous and bawdy dance where Cowsie squirts me with liquid expelled from bladders in her costume udders.

Scene 5: Cowsie takes me deep into the forest and together we stake out a stream. We watch as the Seven Sister Fairies descend, disrobe, and bathe in stream. I found myself thinking a lot about Swan Lake as we did this scene. I steal a garment while the sisters bathe. This is a long, drawn-out circle dance. The Seven Sisters are Lee, Lian, Na, Lum, Ting Ting, Mu, and Feng. Changes of location are indicated when pairs of Second Princesses come into staging area, furling and flapping large swaths of colored and/or patterned cloth.

Scene 6: A twig is snapped and the Six Sisters flee. The Seventh Sister, played by Feng, is left vainly searching for robe.

Scene 7: I present myself and the robe, the Seventh Sister relents to my offer of marriage, and we do a simple duet dance together.

Scene 8: In heaven, the grandmother goddess summons the Seventh Fairy, but when she does not come, a search of heaven only turns up an empty seat at the cloud-making loom. The goddess then embarks on a search of the earth. The role of the grandmother is double-cast by the same dancer who does the sister-in-law, who is in this production, Qi.

Scene 9: On earth, the Seventh Fairy bids me off to work as she sets down to her loom in her work there in the human world. She scolds our son and daughter who run about mischievously, played by Xiao Mei and Jie, and sends them outside to play. The grandmother appears, she chastises her granddaughter for her laziness, and takes her against her will back to heaven.

Scene 10: Cowherd and his children lament when they return and find the Seventh Fairy missing from home. Cowsie advises what happened and advises that I must kill her body so that I can wear the hide and rise to heaven wearing it. This is depicted with a ritual killing and skinning. I remove the cow costume from Mei and put it on myself. Taking the two children in hand, we go off in pursuit of the Seventh Fairy.

Scene 11:  Arriving in heaven we find wife and mother and do a dance of joyful reunion, and then hearing commotion in the distance, we flee.  Grandmother comes in pursuit, overtakes us and large banners of stars are set separating me and the children from their mother.

Scene 12: The final scene is the only one executed in a very flashy acrobatic move. Everybody except myself and the Seventh Fairy and two spotters, gets down on the ground on their backs, and they simulate the magpie bridge using the soles of their feet and palms of their hands. The two principals, the lovers, walk on these soles and palms to meet in the middle. To walk on this bridge of feet and hands requires a tremendous sense of trust. It gave me a sense of what the mythical Cowherd possibly felt as he relied on the support of so many others to get to embrace his wife. The dance ends at this point.

© Copyright 2012 by Vincent Way, all rights reserved.