[Ansteorra] ME dance in Ansteorra

Stefan li Rous StefanliRous at austin.rr.com
Tue Jul 13 20:51:03 PDT 2004


   Michael Silverhands wrote:
> Middle Eastern dance has come a long way. It is now on the "big radar
> screen"; it has its own Kingdom event; but it is still (in my opinion) 
> in
> its infancy with regard to the populace being able to tell the 
> difference
> between non-period and period dance. That's not a crime on their part, 
> nor
> do I think it's an insult on my part to say so; it's just the nature of
> how our understanding of history tends to evolve over time.
While I can see where some might take offense at Michael's words, I 
heartily agree with his comments. I hope that even those who are in the 
forefront of the research and practice in this area will agree upon 
reflection. He was talking about the general state of things and not 
everyone. Even in the early days of the SCA we had folks making suits 
of mail using butted iron rings while others were using soda can 
pull-tabs. Now we have folks making suits of riveted mail. There is 
always room for improvement. That doesn't mean what has been 
accomplished so far was poorly done for the state of the current 
knowledge.

As much as I can admire bouncy, cabaret style dancers, I too, would 
like to see more dancing, including clothing, authentic to our period 
and regions of study. There is this one file in the DANCE section of 
the Florilegium:
ME-dance-msg      (48K)  1/25/01    Middle Eastern dance, 
"bellydancing".
http://www.florilegium.org/files/DANCE/ME-dance-msg.html

I would love to have additional information for this file, preferably 
with footnotes or resources. Or if anyone has written them or is 
willing to write them, an article or two on Middle Eastern dance. My 
standard policy is that the copyright stays with the author and I will 
take updates or removal :-( requests at any time. I'd just like to get 
the information out there where folks can use it. And yes, I can work 
with diagrams and pictures if you are the copyright owner or have 
permission to use them.

For those interested in European dance, I'm also interested in articles 
on this.

Stefan
--------
THLord Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
    Mark S. Harris           Austin, Texas          
StefanliRous at austin.rr.com
**** See Stefan's Florilegium files at:  http://www.florilegium.org ****




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