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ALONG THE HERDING TRAILS THE YEARS...
SCRIPTED AND EMBODIED RITUALITY
IN A YOIK-NOH PERFORMANCE!
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JOHANNA DOMOKOS
This paper explores how two major forms of poetic rituality manifest in the
dramatic works of the Sami author Nils-Aslak Valkeapdd (1943-2001), owing
to the influence of Sdmi and Japanese cultures. More precisely, this presenta¬
tion focuses on the mapping of scripted ritual elements, which inspire, influ¬
ence, and contribute through their embodiment to the aesthetic presentivity
of a yoik-Noh play and its performances. Scripted rituality relates to the role
and function of ritual elements and patterns that are fixed in some form before
they reach their addressee (the writer, the reader, the actor, or the audience). Its
counterpart, embodied rituality, relates to the role and function of ritual ele¬
ments and patterns as they manifest, as well as carrying out the interpretative
and performative processes while the text or performance “happen.” Moreover,
this study also demonstrates the dialectic relation between scripted and em¬
bodied ritual elements during the multiphase artistic process.
RITUAL AND ART
As emphasized in the main theses of Wolfgang Braungart’s article Ritual and
Aesthetic Presentivity, included in this book, art is constitutive for rituals and
rituals are constitutive for art”. Art and ritual substantially draw from their
aesthetic presentivity.* Understood as central for their aesthetic organization,
The present paper is based on my previous research results published as Betwixt, liminal
and transformative. Key concepts in Ailu’s work, in T. Valtonen — L. Valkeapia (eds.): Mind
soin — Mun Cuojan. Kirjoituksia Nils-Aslak Valkeapään elämäntyöstä, Rovaniemi, Lapland
University Press, 2017, 259-276. That study reflected on the relation of the ritual and the
liminal. This paper elaborates on poetic rituality a step further and develops new analytic
concepts, that of scripted and liminal rituality for a more nuanced understanding of ritual
elements in arts.
Wolfgang Braungart: Ritual, in D. Weidner (ed): Handbuch Literatur und Religion, Stuttgart,
Metzler, 2016, 427-434, 427; Saskia Fischer: Ritual und Ritualität im Drama nach 1945,
Paderborn, Fink, 2019b, 28.
3 Braungart: Ritual, 433; Fischer: Ritual und Ritualität, 34.
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