The Wedding Dance

Intro:
Our country was a rich country filled with many different cultures, traditions, and beliefs from
our ancestors… and one of these has something to do with marriage.
Long ago, in the outrageous mountains of Cordillera, there lived a couple named Awiyao and
Lumnay. They were happily married for a long time but unfortunately, Lumnay wasn’t able to
bare a child. And because of what the unwritten law demands, they knew…

**gangsas beat (background music)**

Lumnay leaning on the ground (pillow); Awiyao enters, and stand behind Lumnay
AWIYAO: “Im sorry tis has to be done. I am really sorry. But neither of us can’t help it.”
-“Why don’t you go out and join the dancing women?”
Awiyao held Lumnay on his left shoulder
AWIYAO: “You should join the dancers”… (PAUSE)
“as if nothing had happened.”
Awiyao stands
AWIYAO: “if you really don’t hate me for this separation, go out and dance. One of the men
will see you dance well, he will like your dancing, he will then marry you. Who knows but that,
with him, you will be luckier than you were with me.”
LUMNAY: “But I don’t want any man”… (PAUSE)
“I don’t want any other man.”
AWIYAO: “you know very well that I won’t want any other woman either. You know that
Lumnay, don’t you?”
-silence-
LUMNAY: “Yes… I know”
AWIYAO: “It is not my fault, you cannot blame me; I have been a good husband to you.”
LUMNAY: “Neither can you blame me.”
AWIYAO: “No. you have been a good wife to me… its only that a man must have a child.”
LUMNAY: “You know that I have done my best”
AWIYAO: “Yes, I know.”
“I came home, because I didn’t find you among the dancers. Of course, I am not forcing
you to join my wedding ceremony. I came to tell you that Madulimay, although I am marrying
her, can never become as good as you are. You are on of the best wives in the entire village.”
LUMNAY: “That has not done me any good, has it?”
Awiyao held her face but Lumnay’s eyes looked away.
He let go of her face, and she bent to the floor.
AWIYAO: “This house and the fields I dug out will always be yours. I will give
them to you.”
LUMNAY: “No, I have no use for any of that.”
He looked at her, then turned away, and became silent. They were silent for a long time.
LUMNAY: “Go back to the dance; they will wonder where you are, and Madulimay
will not feel good… Go back to the dance.”
AWIYAO: “I would feel better if you could come, and dance… for the last time.”
LUMNAY: “You know that I cannot.”
AWIYAO: “Lumnay, if I did this, it is because of my need for a child. You know
that life is not worth sharing without a child. The men have mocked
me behind my back. You know that.”
LUMNAY: “I know that.”
She bit her lips now, then shook her head wildly, and sobbed.
Narrator: Lumnay had thought of the seven harvests that passed, the high hopes they had at
the beginning of their new life together, the day he took her away from her parents across
the roaring river, on the other side of the mountain. It was quite an exhausting trip but both
of them were happy… Happy that nothing in this world can measure. Happy and deeply in
love back then. He was the most beautiful man she has ever seen—he was strong, and for
that she had lost him.
She flung herself upon his knees, clung to them, and cried.
LUMNAY: “Awiyao, Awiyao, my husband, I did everything to have a child…
But I am uselass, I must die.”
AWIYAO: “It will not be right to die.”
Awiyao hugged her in his arms.
LUMNAY: “I don’t care about the fields, I don’t care about the house. I don’t care
for anything but you.”
AWIYAO: “If you die it means you hate me. You do not want me to have a child. You
do not want my name to live on in our tribe.”
“If I do not try a second time, it means I’ll die. No one will inherit my name.”
“And if I fail… I’ll come back to you. Then both of us will vanish from the life of our tribe.”
LUMNAY: “I’ll keep my beads, I’ll keep them because they stand for the love you
have for me. I love you.”
People of the Tribe: “Awiyao! Awiyao! O Awiyao! They are looking for you at the dance!”
AWIYAO: “I am not in hurry.”
LUMNAY: “The elders will scold you. You better go.”
AWIYAO: “Not until you tell me that it is alright with you.”
LUMNAY: “It is alright with me.”
AWIYAO: “I do this for the sake of the tribe”
LUMNAY: I know
He went to the door.
LUMNAY: “Awiyao!”
Narrator: He stopped as if suddenly hit by a spear. It pained him to leave. She had been
wonderful to him. What was it that made a man wish for a child? Suppose he changed his
mind? Why did the unwritten law demand, that a man, to be a man, must have a child to come
after him? And if he was fruitless—but he loved Madulimay. It was like taking away of his life
to leave her life like this.
LUMNAY: “Awiyao, it is hard!”
She gasped, and she closed her eyes and hurried her face in his neck.
People of the Tribe: “Awiyao! Awiyao! Come out now!”
Lumnay’s grip loosened, Awiyao exits. Lumnay sat while crying.
**gangsas beat (background music)**

LUMNAY: “It is not right!” (stoped crying)

“I would go to the dance. I’d go to the chief of the village, to the elders, to tell them it is not
right. Awiyao was mine; nobody could take him away from me. Let me be the first woman to
complain, to denounce the unwritten rule that a man may take another woman. I would tell
Awiyao to come back to me.”
Lumnay exits
Narrator: She made for the other side of the village where the dancing was, but she stopped.
What if somebody had seen her coming? She did not have the courage to break into the
wedding feast. Lumnay walked away, away from the village. Fear started eating her courage,
the courage she had for Awiyao. The courage that might be the only hope she has to redeem
her love, her Awiyao.
*gangsa*
-END-