Serpent of the Nile: Women and Dance in the Arab World (Spanish and English Edition)
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.65 (853 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 0863560733 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 208 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 0000-00-00 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
Wendy Buonaventura is an Anglo-Italian dancer and writer. She has pioneered the development of Arabic dance as a theatre art in the West and her work has been featured at festivals throughout Europe and in the United States. Her first book on Oriental dance was published in London in 1983.Serpent of the Nile was chosen as The Observ
. From Publishers Weekly A study of the history of the Middle Eastern solo woman's dance. Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc
Thoroughly enjoyable and informative I bought this book on the recommendation of my belly dance instructor, who's had a copy for years and says it's a "wonderful resource." I agree wholeheartedly: the author has amassed all sorts of information about the background of Middle Eastern dance, and the historical illustrations (many of which are from private collections) are superb: Dinet's paintings of Ouled Nail dancers made my head spin with costume ideas.But this volume isn't just for dancers: while dance holds the book together, the author has also created a fascinating study of the uneasy re. "Inspirational, but Flawed" according to Teresa Noelle Roberts. Wendy Buonaventura obviously loves raks baladi ("country" or folkloric belly dance) with a passion. As sometimes happens with authors passionate about a subject, she unfortunately treats her opinions as facts upon occasion. As a dancer, I love the glorious Orientalist pictures, early 20th-century photos and fascinatingly slanted accounts from Western travellers, and I love her feelings for the dance. It's a beautiful book to peruse, and you can get some marvelous ideas for theatrical costuming from it. But like the Orientalists she reviews, Buonaventura pr. A beautiful but limited history I would like to second everything in Teresa Robert's review. This is a beautiful, wonderful book. But as an actual history of "oriental" dance it lacks nuance and complexity, which is partly due to limited evidence and the author's romantic attachment to the women-centered mythology about this dance. For instance, the text overstates the evidence for connections between the belly dance of the last 150 years and the practices of ancient, goddess worship in presumably more woman-friendly times. I share this same romantic attachment to the dance's feminist ro
Focusing on the 19th- and early-20th centuries, the book shows how Arabic dance came to be influenced by Western ideas about art and entertainment. In the heyday of Orientalism, Arabic dance exerted a powerful influence on the Western imagination - on such writers and artists as Flaubert, David Robers and Jean-Leon Gerome, and imitators Colette and Mata Hari. Yet, as the book's illustrations show, this obsession also produced evocative images. A celebration of the female dancers of the Arab world and their impact on the West, this book explains the origins of this ancient art, which has survived in the face of commercialism, religious disapproval and changing times. But the influence was two-way. Their fascination was often based on common fantasies about the women of the Middle East. At the turn of the century, the genre also had an impact on fashion, theatre and popular entertainment.