“Eastern” Dances Seen on the Stage Are Not Real

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 122, 13 August 1927, Page 22

“Eastern” Dances Seen on the Stage Are Not Real

Weird Gyrations and Slitherings NATIVE MOVEMENTS Many so-called ** Eastern ” dances are seen on the stage , hut nowhere else. In the following article James Playce , in a stage journal , shoics lioio utterly unlike they are to the true native conception. He has lived for many years in the East and is thoroughly acquainted with his subject. American producer recently announced to a rather higli-brow audience at a New York lecture that Eastern dancing has never yet been shown on any stage—legitimate or musical comedy. He was perfectly right. The weird gyrations and fandangos and slitherings, which do duty as “Eastern” dancing on the stage, are what the public has been led to believe as representative of dancing as it is done in the East. Many people answer that, of course, the true Eastern dance could not be performed on any European stage on the grounds of decency alone. This may be so to a certain extent. Some of the Indian Xautch dances are not altogether free from suggestion. There are Can-Cans which shock even the morals of present-day Mayfair, but there are at the same time many Eastern dances which are not only innocuous, but full of grace and charm and meaning. If you read Richard Burton’s translation of the Thousand and One Nights, you will find frequent reference to Arab dancing girls. Unfortunately, when a play with an Arab background is staged in London, the most fantastic forms of dancing are always given, some of them very beautiful it is true, but, practically without exception, none of them are like anything which has been seen or will be seen throughout the Islamic countries of to-day or yesterday. The whole essence of Eastern dancing is in the more or less stationary pose of the body. There are no Terpsichorean slides and dives. The performer stands perfectly still, and during the whole of the dance probably never moves more than one foot outside the imaginary circle in which he or she is standing. Inherited Grace Probably the finest dancers in the Islamic world to-day, apart from India, are a section of women known right across Northern Africa from Moroccan Marrakesh to Kaiouran in Tunisia as the Ouled Nails. These people are not pure bred Arabs; thev are of Berber descent, and ever since Mohammed drove his camels over the Meccan trade routes, the Ouled Nails have lived to delight the Arabs by their dancing. It does not matter where you see them, the dances are alwavs the same. You can watch them in Fez or Tangier, or Mekhnes in Morocco, or in Tourggourt or Biskra in Algeria, or again, you can see them in Sfax or Tunis, or Zaguan in Tunisia. They are the same for the simple reason that these dances have been handed down, from generation to generation as unchanging as the East itself is unchanged.

No Arab would consider himself educated unless he were capable of judging and appraising at Ouled Nail dance; and so it is that every night in the little oases and townlets of the Sahara *and the Moroccan Hinterland, you will find a group of may be 50 or 60 white burnoosed True Believers squatting on the ground watching a series of Ouled Nail dances.

The orchestra for such a dance b generally made up of four men. One plays a Barbat, a kind of two-stringed fiddle, two others play what corresponds to our oboe—actually it is jast a reed pipe with a bell mouth—and the fourth throbs continually on a tom-tom. The beat and time of the music is very similar to the Blue*. It is slow. It is low of pitch and of a minor wailing quality. The tunes are simple and once heard never forgotten. By that same token they never vary. There are about five standard tun*s for a smaller number of standard, age-old dances. There is the Dance or the Winds, which is performed by a girl with a scarf in hex hand, and then there is the Dance of the Fingers when the display of henna-tipped fingers and henna-circled palms hare their special meaning. The Dancer’s Costume Each dance lasts about 10 minute* A girl, generally between 18 and 25 years old, walks into the circle of squatting Arabs. Her eyes are blacked with kohl, the tips of ber fingers, tips of her toes and palms and heels are dyed red with henna. 0b her forehead, more often than not five little blue tattoo marks represent the hand of Fatima. Her ankles carry four or five silver bracelets. Sh* wears white trousers, very baggy at the thighs and caught in and tied jus* below the calves. Contrary to popular belief, she is not in the least Wt naked. She wears a blouse which » reminiscent of early Victorian tint**, with high puffed shoulders. Her hair is encircled with a gold band and from her cars hang ear-rings loade* down with gold coins, the gifts of admiring audiences. Round her waia* she wears a silver girdle with a large buckle, chased and engraved entfl Koranic inscriptions. As we shall see, this plays a large part in the dance*. Once inside the circle of squatUßl Arabs she begins to dance. That w to say, her body does. Her eyes taK on a glassy fixed stare, and the thing you notice is that the silver round her waist is gyrating &P J n “ down—a good four inches up ana good four inches down —in time withe music and without any effort. (The stomach muscles ox t Ouled Nail women would be an ' teresting study for the Royal cones' of Surgeons!)

The Dance of the Fingers For two or three minutes the does nothing else. The orchestra ny and wall and groan and throb an ecstatic expression in their aai; eyes, and only when the key chants* does the dancer take on a “•“WT, attitude. If she is performing “ dance of the fingers, she wdl. ai about three minutes’ belt mov ' iiold her hands out in front oi ■ palms outwards, and start rn ° vl 'r fingers to and fro. It is hard . , any idea of the beauty *» *T swiftly moving, henna-tipped The Arab, of course, w ] atc *?s s „ nt little movement and applaud . all. All the while the be !: ment is in progress, and so is t movement. Once again the - the music changes, and the ' t 0 still standing in her circle, make her anklets ring b> , 10 her feet, and later, very sl»"t, turn around and around, - 0 f h<f the audience has a full v , le< j face, which of course is When she is finished, she J £ too* sister dancers at the bacl< c ’ tbis tio* and another takes her pla ?\. im jiar to to perform a similar dance—*!* di fr e rEuropeans that is—but ut . saua tent to the white-robed hgu desert ting on the floor of the room, sand, as the case may be. The Kellie Bramley c ° nH f D ' ((l( , r playing “Fair and Warmer. weeks the Grand Opera Hi U ‘ jje ney, will house them again, “ opening play is not yet cl^ ocin ! ttle j{jt Fours.” “Mixed Doubles, A i of Fluff,” and ‘Camille” have added to the company s nsi Can we weep at “Camille Xellio declares she will , play John Raymond was her Arr ing the part at three days nou«“