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Producer
Léon Louis Auguste Edouard Dardenne (°1865 - †1912)
Theme
dance/masked dance
Legend
Léon Dardenne stayed alone for nearly three months at Chilomba station on the banks of Lake Moero. He painted this dance for which he gave an exact description: "In the evening, I went to see the dancing in the village. This is a very strange dance, accompanied by five drums. Apart from a matitis belt (sic), the dancer wore bracelets on his feet made of dried shells, filled with seeds, which made a deafening noise. The other dancer, clothed in animal hides which dragged along the ground, looked even wilder. The dancers performed for me and got increasingly excited. The drums sounded louder and louder and played increasingly quicker. The dancer turned, gyrating his hips just inches from my nose and turning around like a spinning top. Behind them, a group of women kept time with the dancing by beating their heels on the ground and singing a song in unison which was started by the men and then taken up by the women, with a very sad cadence but nevertheless rather harmonious. At the head, walked a young and very beautiful woman and behind came the old women, even wilder dancers. The viewers formed a circle and did not take part in the dances. This seemed to be regulated. In fact, it is always the same dancer who seems to go mad which looks marvellous under the light of a rather veiled moon and in the last embers of a dying fire" (From the archives of the Dardenne family, notebook 1, 23-11-1898, pp. 139-140, a copy of which is kept in the RMCA).
Inscription
Danseur à Chilomba Dardenne Léon, Nov 1898
Date of acquisition
1911
Dimensions
41cm x 53,5cm
Technique
graphic arts > drawing > charcoal drawing
Inventory number
HO.0.1.73
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