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By means of a novel contrivance, the gauzy iridescent draperies in which the dancer swathes herself are waved about her, now to form huge wings, now to surge in great clouds of gold, blue, or crimson, under the coloured rays of the electric light. And in the flood of this dazzling or pallid light the form of the dancer suddenly becomes incandescent, or moves slowly and spectrally in the diaphanous and ever-changing coloration cast upon it. The transformations of these tissues of living light, shown in successive visions the dreamy dancer, moving languidly in a chaos of figured draperies–in a rainbow of brilliant colours, or a sea of vivid flames….
There are several potential sources for the introduction of veil dancing into contemporary Oriental dance. After the Greek and Roman period, there seems to be no documentation of veil dancing in the Middle East or North Africa in literature or in art. At the end of the 1800’s and the beginning of the 1900’s, there were numerous photographs taken of women dancing with what looked like shawls and kerchiefs. |
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There were dances performed that used sheer diaphanous veils or handkerchiefs in other parts of the Middle Eastern world. In Azerbaijan, the people are a Turkic-speaking group from the Caucasus area. In the women’s dances they use handkerchiefs, scarves, and veils to accentuate their feminine beauty. During the dances, they delicately reveal the eyes, the nose, the face and the richly costumed breasts. This is different from the veil as it is manipulated in Oriental dance because in the Azeri women’s dances, the veil is attached to a hat or a headdress. The freedom of movement is limited because of this, but the variety of gestures is still rich and varied, and there are some gestures that the Azeri women can do because of the attached veil that are different from the Oriental dancer’s veil which is not anchored. |
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People from North Africa and the Middle East do not understand veil dancing today. They cannot transcend their first impression of it: that it is a strip-tease. That is why their Oriental dancers dance very briefly with their veils (if at all) and then abandon them. They do not spend time unveiling in their dance because they and their audiences find this distasteful. |
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