Democratic Sentinel, Volume 7, Number 34, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 September 1883 — The Egg-Dance in India. [ARTICLE]

The Egg-Dance in India.

The Indian egg-dance is not, as one might expect from the name given it, a dance upon these fragile objects. It is executed in this wise: The dancer, dressed in a corsage and very short skint, carries a willow wheel 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 slip-noose, which is kept open by a glass bead. Thus equipped, the young girl comes toward the spectator with a basket full of eggs, which she passes around 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 slip-nooses, 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 oul straight, like a ray shooting from the circumference of a circle. One aftei another the eggs are thrown out in these slip-nooses until they make a horizontal aureole or halo above the dancer’s head. Then the dance becomes more rapid—so rapid, in fact, that it is difficult to distinguish the features o! the girl. The moment is critical; the least false step, the least irregularity of 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 most delicate of the two. It is necessary that the dancer, by t single motion, exact and unerring should take hold of the egg and remov< it from the noose. A single false motion of the hand, the least interferenci with one of the threads, and the genera! arrangement is suddenly broken, and the whole performance disastrously ended. At last all the eggs are successfully removed; then the dancer stops, and without seeming in the least dizzied by the dance of twenty-five or thirty minutes, advances with a firm step to thi spectators, and presents them with th< eggs, which are immediately broker in a flat dish to prove that there is nr trick in the performanee.