Dance In Tunisia

Dance In Tunisia

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.