13 - Orientalism
and East meets West
During the 17th and 18th Century Europe colonized vast parts of the world, with France and Spain
colonizing large parts of the Middle East, especially North Africa. Travelers and artists
traveled to the Middle East and their writings more than anything else reflect both their fascination and their negative
reactions to the things they saw, either way they were fascinated. All this gave rise to the term Orientalism, which is a loose term applied to the art created by Europeans and inspired by the Middle East. So as such it is not an accurate account in any way of life in the Middle East. But after having said that the works are so vast and actually very beautiful that provided you keep in mind the overall way this Art came into being, you will be well rewarded in your study.
Here are some interesting quotes:
French painter Delacroix when on a visit to North Africa in 1832:
'They are closer to nature in a thousand ways their dress, the form of their shoes. And so beauty has a share in everything they make. As for us in our corsets, our tight shoes, our ridiculous pinching clothes, we are
pitiful.'
Another quote by the German explorer Carsten Niebuhr after a Danish expedition to the Yemen in 1762
'At first we did not greatly appreciate this kind of entertainment, for the music was quite poor and the women immodest, to our way of thinking. they exposed themselves in front of us in every way, and we found them ugly, with their dyed yellow hands and blood red fingernails. the black and blue necklaces and big heavy anklets, the rings in their ears and noses, and the rich use of grease in their hair was not to our taste at all. However, little by little we changed our minds and found them beautiful, even to the extent that we enjoyed their entertainment as much as we would have enjoyed seeing the finest dancers and singers in Europe.'
Douglas Sladen, 1906:
I was rather disgusted that, whenever you asked what you ought to see in Tunis, people took it for granted that you would want to begin with the Arab cafe-chantant and hip-dancing. I think these performances amongst the dullest and most revolting which the thirst for sight-seeing has ever persuaded me to sit out... [Of the dancers] They are horrible, horrible, horrible!...They are like huge, hideous, wicked, terrifying images of Moloch, waiting for men to be roasted alive in the brazen arms of their lust...The whole figure of the woman is so revolting to European ideas of feminine charm...
C F Volney, 1787:
It must be realised that in the Orient, dance is not an imitation of war, as with the Greeks, or a combination of pleasing attitudes and movements, as in our country, but a lewd representation of the most audacious love... Despite our liberal ideas, it would be difficult to describe this dance without shocking the reader. It is enough to say that the dancer, arms outstretched, with a passionate air, singing and accompanying herself with castanets, stands in one place and performs movements of the body that even passion takes care to hide in the shadow of the night.
M Niebuhr, 1792:
However much disposed to receive entertainment, they did not please us at first; their vocal and instrumental music we thought horrible, and their persons appeared disgustingly ugly, with their yellow hands, spotted faces, absurd ornaments and hair larded with stinking pomatum. But, by degrees, we learned to endure them, and for want of better, began to fancy some of them pretty, to imagine their voices agreeable, their movements graceful, though indecent, and their music not absolutely intolerable.
H de Vaujany, 1883:
[Of the Ghawazee] Their song is monotonous, slow, singularly primitive and absolutely foreign to musical ideas in our countries, yet it has an indefinable charm. Indeed, its monotony is its strength; in the course of time it submerges the soul in a kind of ecstasy and lulls it into a deep reverie...Egyptian dance has no resemblance at all to dance as we know it in Europe; it consists of a succession of poses, contortions, gestures, which have only one aim - to express or provoke voluptuous feelings...
Countess Malmignati, 1925:
When the meal was over, the Sultan arranged some dancing...the women came dancing in, slowly gliding, a big silver sword in one hand, in the other a burning torch...This dance was a slow rhythmical gliding, swinging the swords and torches in time. It was like a dance in a trance!...The dance lasted for more than three hours; when the women tired, others came gliding in to relieve them. It was a beautiful sight.
Charles Gobineau, 1926:
Hours pass and it is difficult to tear oneself away. This is the way the motions of the dancing girls of Asia affect the senses. There is no variety or vivacity, and seldom is there a variation through any sudden movement, but the rhythmic wheeling exhales a delightful torpor upon the soul, like an almost hynotic intoxication.
R Fedden, 1940s:
Inside a discreet coffee-house there will be the danse du ventre. This, from time immemorial has been performed by ghazeeyahs, the gypsy dancing girls... The dance itself is a rhythmic swaying and undulation, produced by the perfectly controlled movement of every muscle in the dancer's torso... So perfect is the control of these muscles...that from her body she can evolve a first rhythm, from this modulate to a second, cross it with a third, while always maintaining a perfect sinuosity and concentration. One is reminded of things growing, of the natural world rather than the human. When the dance ends...one has the feeling of having witnessed something as impressive as the movement of the sea or the swirl of the Nile
flood.
English traveler Lady Mary Montagu in 1717.
"The hypnotic dance was very different from what I had seen
before, Nothing could be more artfull or proper to raise certain Ideas, the tunes so soft, the motions so Languishing, accompany'd with pauses and dying Eyes, halfe falling back and then recorvering themselves in so artfull a Manner that I am very positive the coldest and most rigid Prude upon Earth could could not have looked upon them without thinking of something not to be Spoke of," she added, as quoted by Dutch social anthropologist Karin van Nieuwkerk in her 1995 study of female entertainers in Egypt, "A Trade Like Any Other."
-----------------------
Bear in mind that in the Middle East women in public outside would have to completely cover themselves, so there would be no question of what may be termed as the ordinary Muslim woman dancing in public. To them it would be the dancing in the
harems that I talked about earlier. The traveling Gypsies who were not Muslims did provide entertainment but bear in mind that we Westerners are so used to "entertainment" in the concept of something that you are a "Passive Party." In other words your role is passive, you just sit or stand there and the other "Entertains" you,
i.e. you would have the Audience and the Performer relationship. We are also so used to seeing Dance in this way, that we don't give enough weight to the idea that Dance can be an activity there is no "Performer" or "Audience." In the way that Yoga is a participation sport, so was Dance throughout the ages, and it is only in the 20th Century did the emphasis swing towards it being a Performance art.
This idea of the dance being a performance sport is so alien to the entire ethos in the Middle East that it is little wonder that so little is written about it. Something that is not particularly respected or revered would not be notated down for others to see later in history. So we are left with
largely guessing what sort of dance activities took place but I think we can more or less guess.
We are used to Yoga being an activity that we all partake in for health and spiritual benefits. So you would go to a class or you would do it at home for your benefit. But imagine somewhere along the line someone making it a performance on a stage and you would go and see a "Yoga Performance." Completely changes the
fundamental character, doesn't it?
Performance is effectively Drama where the intention is to invoke an emotional response in the audience.
Generalizing and grossly simplifying a huge area we use things such as playing on people's fears and beliefs on what is acceptable or not, invoking a "storyline" with characters that we identify with, doing daring or spectacular acts. Given the extremes of Victorian
prudery over anything bodily, let alone sex, this would make ideal "entertainment" material. To shock and thus attract prudish Victorian
travelers by the more bodacious and natural way everything would be done in the Middle East quickly developed into what I would imagine would be the main strand of "entertainment" for Western
travelers.
The concept of dance as entertainment really came I think from the Europeans. Ballet is the best example, use of the human body to effectively enhance a strong "Storyline" that would captivate an Audience. It is they that would respond to things that a nudist colony would just doze over, (imagine a stripper doing a show at a nudist colony.) So in lots of ways it was a Sad day for Dance, the change in emphasis from a participation sport to a
spectator sport which is what I believe happened around the turn of the century.