Yacouba Stilt Dancers

Sacred masked dance performed on three-metre stilts

The Yacouba (or Dan) people of western Ivory Coast are best known internationally for their masked stilt-dancers — performers who balance on three-metre stilts wearing carved wooden masks and woven raffia skirts, executing acrobatic spins, leaps and even backflips. The dances are performed at funerals, harvest festivals, important ceremonies and — these days — for visitors who arrange them through their hosts.

In Gouessesso, asking at the village level (a small fee will be expected) can usually produce a performance within a day or two. The drum and song accompaniment is as much the point as the dancing. UNESCO inscribed the Gba gbo masked dance on its Intangible Cultural Heritage list in 2017.

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A story
The stilt-dancer mask, called Gle Wa or Gba Gba depending on the village, is sacred to the Dan people and is traditionally trained for from childhood. The most famous dancers can perform splits, somersaults, and acrobatic stunts on stilts up to four metres high — the masked figure is considered to embody a forest spirit and is treated as such while in costume.

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