A tourist attraction helps preserve tradition.

VICTORIA FALLS, Zimbabwe - Mary "Fred" Forrest's four tribal groups perform a program called Traditional Dancing every night except Christmas at her Falls Craft Village, a tourist attraction that replicates the life-style of six ethnic groups in Zimbabwe.

Forrest and her husband, Cyril, had the idea to create a public showcase for native dancing in the Zambezi river area after they reproduced a tribal Ndbele village near the fabled falls. The Forrests, who had made an extensive study of traditional African societies, constructed the village according to the specifications of a tribal headman. Falls Craft Village is now the only place in Zimbabwe where traditional dances can be seen on a regular basis. Though Zimbabwe has a national dance Company that performs native dances, its venues are limited and the dancing in tribal communities is off-limits to the public.

Traditional Dancing began in February 1970 with one Makishi (the collective name for several tribes) dancer, who was then working as a tailor, and four drummers. Later, seven dancers from the Shangan tribe were added to the troupe to perform in public the dances done in their villages. Forrest, who has studied ballet and modern dance, expanded the Traditional Dancing program after her husband's death in 1982. Now, seventyfive dancers and drummers perform ten or eleven different traditional dances every night.

The dancers are divided according to tribe; and group captains, who are elected leaders, select the dances for each program from tribal repertoire. The choreography is based on longstanding tradition. There are Mwaso Makishi dances, performed as part of circumcision rituals; the high jumps and air turns of the Chibububu Shangaan dancers preparing for war; the pyrotechnics of the animal-possessed and costumed Kasinja Nyau dancers, who perform at native funerals; and Kalelwa/kaluwe/chikuza numbers, in which fathers teach their sons dance techniques.

"We need to preserve the heritage of our country," says Forrest, who observes that many of the traditions of "our culture" are lost when unemployed Zimbabweans have to move to the townships, leaving their tribal villages. Although Forrest says she always supervises and "tidies" the performances, straightening bent elbows and crooked lines, she claims that "the dances are 100 percent authentic." She says that she was reassured of this when she was invited to a secret ceremony of a village that asked to borrow the Traditional Dancing costumes made by Forrest's Makishi troupe. "The dances were exactly the same as those done in the arena," Forrest comments happily. Steps are accurate because they are passed down from father to son. There are now three boys, aged eight, ten, and eleven, performing every night with their fathers and older brothers.

Mindful of the dancers' needs, Forrest has established a dancers' welfare fund, which provides medical insurance and supplements the wages that the dancers receive for their nightly hour-and-a-half performance. The fund also pays funeral expenses and widows' pensions. Forrest is also paying school tuition for the young members of her dance troupe, putting their earnings into bank accounts for their later use. Forrest thinks that the fund "is an investment in the future of the dancers who are preserving Zimbabwe's past."