THE HINDOO EGG DANCE.

Evening Star, Issue 4098, 15 April 1876, Page 2 (Supplement)

THE HINDOO EGG DANCE.

The dancer, dressed in a corsage and a very short skirt, carries a willowwheel of moderate diameter fastened horizontally upon the top of her head. Around this wheel threads are fastened, equally distant from each other, and at the end of each of these threads is a slipnoose, which is kept open by a glass bead. Thus equipped, the young girl comes toward the spectators with a basketful of eggs, which she passes round for inspection to prove that they are real, and not imitations. The music strikes up a jerky, monotonous strain, and the dancer begins to whirl around with great rapidity. Then, seizing an egg, she puts it in one of the slipnooses, and with a quick motion throws it from her in such a way as to draw the knot tight. The swift turning of the dancer produces a centrifugal force which stretches the thread out straight like a ray shooting from the circumference of the circle. One after another the eggs are thrown out in these slipnooses until they make a horizontal aureole or halo about the dancer’s head. Then the dance becomes still more rapid, so rapid, in fact, that it is difficult to distinguish the features of the girl; the moment is critical the least false step, the least irregularity in time, and the eggs dash against each other. But how can the dance be stopped ? There is but one way—that is, to remove the eggs in the way in which they have been put in place. This operation is by far the more delicate of the two. It is necessary that the dancer by a motion, exact and unerring, should take hold of the egg and remove it from the noose. A single false motion of the hand, the least interference of one of the threads, and the general arrangement is suddenly broken, aud the whole performance disastrously ended. At last all the eggs are successfully removed; the dancer suddenly stops, and without seeming in the least dizzied by this dance of twenty-five-or thirty minutes she advances to the spectators with a firm step, and presents them the eggs, which are immediately broken into a dish to show that they are genuine.