THE HINDOO EGG DANCE.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XI, Issue 52, 23 February 1876, Page 4

THE HINDOO EGG DANCE.

The dancer, dressed in a corsage and a very abort skirt, carries a willow wheel of moderate diameter fastened horizontally on the top of her head. Around the wheel threads are fastened, equally distant, from each otber, and at the end of each of these ends is a slipuOose, which is kept open by a glass bead. Thus equipped, the young girl comes towards the spectators with a basket fuir of eggs, which she passes round for inspection to prove that they are real, and not imitations. The music strikes up ajerky, 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 turuing of the dancer produces a centrifugal force which stretches the thread ont 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 rapisf, 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 tbe two. It is necessary that the dancer by a single motion, exact and unerring, should take hold of the egg, and remove it from tbe noose. A single false motion of the hand, the least interference of one of the threads, and tbe general arrangement iB suddenly broken and tbe wbole performance disastrously ended. At last all the eggs are successfully removed; the dancer suddenly stops, and without seeming in the least dizzied by thie dance of 25 or 30 minutes she advances to the spectators with a. firm step, and presents tbem the eggs, which are immediately broken into a dißb, to Bhow that they are genuine.— Scribner's Magazine.