Tribal sword dance
Dancing with swords is an ancient skill in
North-Africa. Especially bedouin dancers of the sahara used to do it
as a sing of the women that they carry the honour of their husband.
Some tribes had sword dancers at their wedding to bring good luck. A
few paintings and engravings of the french artist Jean-Léon
Gérôme (who stayed in Egypt in the 18 th century) show
sword dancers balancing an sabre on their head.
Sword dancing - in
arabic called Raqs al Saïf - is widely spread in Turkey, the
Middle East as well as Pakistan-India (remember the sword dance in
the movie Qurbani?) and Iran (Shamshir-bazi).
Raqs al juzur
A characteristic of Tunisian dance is the horizontal forward and
back movement of the hips, reminiscent of the Twist of the 1960’s.
The costume of the dancers consists of a melia, a draped
garment, which is held together by two silver fibulas (the ancestor
of the safety pin). The melia belongs to the family of the
most elementary kinds of clothing, in which a straight swath of cloth
without tailoring or seams is draped around the body, as for example
the Roman toga, the Indian sari or the Indonesian
sarong. A specialty of the islands of Kerkennah and Djerba is
Raq al Juzur in which the dancer, accompanied by the mizwid
(bagpipe) and drums, balances a clay pot on her head while she
follows the beat of the drum with her hips. A wool belt with large
tassels at each side emphasizes the strong hip movements. Men also
perform this dance, often balancing high towers of heavy clay pots on
their heads. This dance has become a national symbol for Tunisia.
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