Cemal Oyunu as Ritual Dance: Liminality, Embodied Memory, and Social Cohesion in Rural Thrace

Cemal Oyunu is a seasonal folk ritual from rural Thrace (Tekirdağ region, Turkey) that combines masked characters, animal disguise, bells, improvised verse, and collective movement. This study examines Cemal Oyunu through the lens of ritual dance and performance theory, emphasizing its embodied and choreographic structures. Drawing on participant observation and oral testimonies, it highlights how repetitive movement patterns, controlled chaos (noise, sudden chases, mock fights), and comic role reversals produce a liminal social space. Using core concepts from ritual theory, especially liminality and communitas, this study argues that Cemal Oyunu operates as an embodied technology of social cohesion: it reactivates collective memory through rhythm, costume, and performative speech while staging cycles of death–renewal and winter–spring transition.