Wendy Buonaventura: Serpent of the Nile
24.02.2003
[10] Every day that I had spent in Egypt there had been sudden, unexpected glimpses of dancing. Once it was two young girls with scarves round their hips, seen through the open window of a house in the middle of the afternoon, dancing together to music from the radio. Another time it was a group of gypsies on an open patch of ground outside the souq. It is easy to find dancing in Egypt, for in most of the Arab-Islamic world dance still has a role to play in everyday life. It has not become a thing apart, as it has in the West.
[35] Salome's story is based on a myth concerning Ishtar, the Babylonian goddess of love and fertility. In an allegory on the death and rebirth of nature, Ishtar's lover dies and is taken down to the underworld, which also represents the fruitful womb of the earth. Ishtar is so distraught that, dressed in all her finery, she sets out to bring him back.
In order to enter the most secret chambers of the underworld she has to pass through seven-times-seven gates, and at each set of gates, as the price of admission, she divests herself of a jewel and a veil. While she is absent from the earth no crops grow, nor is there love or rejoicing of any kind. Only when she returns with her lover does nature blossom forth again after the barren months of winter.
[50] Flouting convention, the dancers became the principal public expression of sensual joy and beauty, and so they have remained. In many countries of the acient East, dancers were thought to bring good fortune, for something of the old 'divine' power of temple dancers clung to them.
[90] It is impossible to compare European dance with its Arabic counterpart, for the two stem from a radically different use of the body, as well as a different concept of 'performer' and 'spectator'. The above comments beg the question, what artist is not a voyeur - in other words, an observer, looking from the outside in? Similarly, what entertainer is not performing to please his or her audience? To delight the eye of the onlooker - or, as Kabbani would have it, the voyeur - is the chief raison d'être of the professional dancer.
[95-96] Western interest in the Ouled Nail focused largely on their physical appearance. 'An exhibition of mummies or relics', noted one French anthropologist with wonder, remarking on the women's henna'ed hair, their eyebrows pencilled in to meet over the bridge of the nose and their apparently ill-matched layers of clothing.
This costume consisted of embroidered, smock-like dresses worn one on top of the other, with open, bell-like sleeves either left hanging or gathered in at the wrist. Over these dresses was worn a haik, a length of woollen or cotton cloth, draped around the body and secured at the shoulder with a bezima, an outsize clasp which sometimes had chains and talismans to ward off evil spirits attached to it.
Shawn, who saw the Ouled Nail in the 1920's commented that these bezimas were often the size of pancake-turners. He added that the women's jewellery covered them like chainmail and that, to protect themselves from thieves, they wore huge bracelets, 'really murderous-looking objects' with studs and spikes an inch or two long projecting from them.
The women wore their waist-length hair braided with woll and twined round their ears, where it was held in place with strips of material. Some of them wore tiaras inlaid with coral, turquoise and enamel, and earrings so large they had to be hung on ribbons of fabric and tied over the head.
[101] When a dance is taken out of its cultural context and served up as a theatrical spectacle in the outside world it necessarily changes. The ways in which it does so are largely to do with satisfying the expectations of its new-found audience, who come to see it armed with their own unconscious tastes and prejudices.
[114*] "Pardon, Madame.
You will not be seeing the Persian this evening," I said, just as
indignant on behalf of the singer as for those of us
to whom this dead-drunk Herodias had barked out her orders.
"What's that?" she asked, her wine-fuddled eyes opening wide.
"Our art is far too sad for such a happy crowd." I turned my
back on her, as did my Hindu musicians.
[127] 'The Delirium of the Senses"
This celebration of the body was something new in Western dance at the time, as was her* costume: fleshings covered in costume jewellery. The Radha cycle of dances invoked each of the senses in turn. She kissed her fingertips, inhaled the fragrance of flowers and pressed them to her breast; she donned a set of finger cymbals and played them, inclining her head the better to appreciate their music; and wrapping a golden skirt around her, with her supple spine bending slowly backwards, launched into a whirl of spinning movement which culminated in a climactic faint to the floor.
[142] In Moreau's portraits, Des Esseintes finds the superhuman figure of his dreams. Obsessed with unravelling the deeper meaning of the story, he examines every detail of the paintings. Looking at the sacred lotus blossom which Salome holds between her breasts, he asks, does this flower suggest the sacrifice of virginity, or does it represent the allegory of fertility? Or - and this is the explanation he appears to prefer, for he dwells on it at length - is Salome 'the symbolic incarnation of undying lust, the Goddess of immortal Hysteria... a true harlot, obedient to her passionate and cruel female temperament'?
[188] Again like an Oriental carpet, whose design continues into the borders, the implication is that there is no end to the pattern; it may go on and on, duplicating itself in untold ways.
[188] A performer may send a wave of motion rippling up and down her torso until it comes to rest in the hips. As it sinks into the pelvis it becomes a horizontal movement, tracing undulatory designs around the hips - circular, looping figures weaving in and out of each other with wave-like fluidity. And so a pattern develops, moving smoothly up and down the body until the music changes and a new mood, a new type of movement is needed.
As this change occurs a dancer may pause, creating a moment of absolute stillness, a frame for a completed design, before moving on to the next. At such a moment there is a certain suspense: the eye of the spectator is rested, yet the mind is alert, anticipating what may follow.
[192] Dazzling virtuosity may impress us, yet if a performer is merely interested in showing off her technical brilliance her performance leaves us cold. It is like being shown an exquisite flower with no perfume.
[196] A Tunisian dancer once said to me, 'If someone from my country asks me what I do for a living and I tell them I'm a dancer they say, "Mm. Very nice. But what do you do for a living?"'
This reply is an indication of how unusual it still is for a woman of her eduaction to be an entertainer. It also reflects the degree to which, as she says herself, 'In my country, everyone's a dancer. Dancing's not work. You can't call it work. A day I don't dance is a day I don't live.'
[202] Initially, all they know is that it fascinates them; only later do they discover that, through dancing, they have come to explore aspects of their essential femininity with which they had lost touch.
