Jasper Republican, Volume 1, Number 46, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 July 1875 — Arab Dancing. [ARTICLE]

Arab Dancing.

A writer says: “ You must understand that Arab dancing is more curious than pretty, but it is strange to you, and wild. You would be sorry to miss seeing it. They have brought five, all dressed in va-rious-colored gauzes and spangles and gold-cOin ornaments, trousers frilled and gathered round the ankle with a ring and hair plaited in two - long tresses to the knees. You see, in point ©f dress they are far more decent than our own balletgirls, and that erven the Lord Chamberlain could not object to them. Their instruments are the tom-tom/ the tambourine and a sort of zitterd. . They crack their fingers by putting jtheir ‘hands -together, by pulling back the second and third fingers of the lefthand with the index singe the right, and by letting them rebound, with a noise louder than any castanets Their voices:-ate meladcholy, nasal and boyish, and. all their songs are in a minor key. They used to set my teeth on edge at first, but I have grown to love them now. lam very fond of music, but I have never been able to pick up an Arab air. It takes a year before one can perceive the difference between one air and another, or whether it is intended to be joyous or sorrowful; but after this initial tion the music becomes most expressive. Even their military bands, like all their music, sound half a note below concertpitch. You must watch them singing. They put on a miserable look, hang their heads sideways, turning up their eyes like dying ducks, and then out corries a wail reminding one of an harp hung in ft tree. All sit cross-legged in a row upon the divan, and they will sing and sway from side to side. That olmzM.who was once the bestdanceV, and It now the size of six' ordinary mortals, can. no longer dahcfe. We are going to have .a pat seul,' This ..girl*-' will move about the room,, jWith little, wriggling steps in. time .to the mitaic, neatly double herself backward and throw herself in an sorts Of contortions and altitudes till I am 'convinced that all;her bones are made of gristle. 1 One .tiling . which perhaps you will that her dancing means sonjetWng, whereas ours is only intended for exercise or to give people a chance ot talking, She has told you by pantomime whbfe "Histories—of how she was at -home with her mother, and how she went to market and to the bazaar; how she did the washing and cooking; how her father (the sheik) wanted her to marry, and how she didn’t want to marry, for that Ali was fighting far away in the desert. ..-She wonders ,if he thinks of her, and ph© look| at the moon and knows that he can see it too, and'as'ks wtei he wifrcome back. the music and the steps change. He is coming back and they arg dressing ljer to be his bridej shefy walking in the brijflal procession,""veiling face sos tflßfte, etc. The performers are clamoring for raki. I think they deserve a little, 4?ut we-must* pot Jet thefofhave "tdo much. Now I will ask for my favorite sword*dance. That thin.. Mh<b tjificoful girl will take her turn. and describe to you, a fight by pantomimfe. You will be surprised at the way she can handle a cimeter, as if 1 she had learned broadsword all her" lifd. She whirls it round her bead and throat, under her arms, over her bach like lightning, and within an inch of our faces, as if she were slashing at sixty unseen enemies, dancing all the time.” .