Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-5nwft Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-01T00:17:51.460Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Dance and Non-Dance: Patterned Movement in Iran and Islam

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Anthony Shay
Anthony Shay*
Affiliation:
Department of Dance, University of California at Riverside
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Much Scholarly Ink has been Spilled over the Question of What constitutes dance in different societies. Several attempts have been made to create a universal category for dance that would enable dance scholars to transcend this fundamental question and get down to the business of conducting research, secure in the knowledge that all of their colleagues understand the basic definitions of “dance.”

None of the current definitions takes into account dance and dance events in societies such as those of the Islamic areas of the Middle East, Central Asia, and North Africa where the term for dance (usually the Arabic word raqṣ) can possibly bear powerfully negative or, at least, ambiguous connotations. While dance, and a word to denote that activity, exists and we can perhaps come to an agreement over what constitutes dance, an even more crucial issue is what dance is not in an Islamic environment.

Type
Articles
Information
Iranian Studies , Volume 28 , Issue 1-2 , Spring Winter 1995 , pp. 61 - 78
Copyright
Copyright © Association For Iranian Studies, Inc 1995

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1. Kealiinohomoku, Joann W., “Ethnic Historical Study,” in Dance Historical Research: Perspectives from Related Arts and Disciplines, Proceedings of the Second Conference on Research in Dance (New York, 1969), 88Google Scholar.

2. Kaeppler, Adrienne L., “Structured Movement Systems in Tonga,” in Spencer, Paul, ed., Society and the Dance (Cambridge University Press, 1985), 93Google Scholar.

3. Spencer, Paul, “Interpretations of the Dance in Anthropology,” ibid., 38Google Scholar.

4. Kurath, Gertrude P., “Panorama of Dance Ethnology,” Current Anthropology 1, no. 3 (May 1960): 235CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5. Hanna, Judith L., Dance, Sex, and Gender (University of Chicago Press, 1972), 88Google Scholar,

6. Royce, Anya P., Anthropology of the Dance (Indiana University Press, 1977), 7— 8Google Scholar.

7. Ibid., 8.

8. Ibid., 5.

9. And, Metin, Dances of Anatolian Turkey, Dance Perspectives, no. 3 (New York, 1959), 13Google Scholar.

10. Hourani, Albert, A History of the Arab Peoples (Harvard University Press, 1991), 198–9Google Scholar.

11. Farhat, Hormoz, “Dastgāh Concept in Persian Music” (Ph.D. diss., UCLA, 1965), 6Google Scholar.

12. La Meri (Russell M. Hughes), “Learning the Dance Du Ventre,” in Monroe Berger, ed., A Curious and Wonderful Gymnastic, Dance Perspectives, no. 10 (New York, 1961), 44.

13. For an overview see Hodgson, Marshall G. S., The Venture of Islam, 3 vols. (University of Chicago Press, 1974)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14. Hamada, Geoffrey M., “Dance and Islam: The Bojnurdi Kurds of Northeastern Iran” (unpublished M.A. thesis, UCLA, 1978), 25Google Scholar.

15. Choudhury, M. L. Roy, “Music in Islam,” Journal of Asiatic Society 23, no. 2 (1957): 63Google Scholar, 73, 86.

16. Looking at dance, music, and folk theater in the context of a larger sphere than the the present political borders of Iran, Afghanistan, or one of the former Soviet republics is a relatively new idea. The dance studies cited in this article refer only to present-day Iran or Muslim republics and regions in the former Soviet Union. Culturally and historically speaking, these borders are recent and many of the conclusions and assumptions reached by researchers working in the more confined concepts of Iran, Afghanistan or Central Asia in their present political configuration are untenable because this vast region, which we can call the Iranian cultural sphere, is historically and culturally indivisible. Ethnomusicologists in the West have been increasingly looking at this issue, but dance researchers have not. See Beliaev, Viktor M., Central Asian Music, ed. and Slobin, annot. Mark (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1975)Google Scholar; During, Jean, The Art of Persian Music (Washington, D.C.: Mage Publishers, 1991)Google Scholar. During calls the Central Asian republics of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan and the Caucasus area “External Iran.“

17. al-Faruqi, Lois Ibsen, “Dance as an Expression of Islamic Culture,” Dance Resource Journal 10, no. 2 (1987): 6CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18. Choudhury, “Music in Islam,” 55Google Scholar.

19. See And, Dances of Anatolian Turkey; Bourguignon, Erika, Trance Dance, Dance Perspectives, no. 35 (New York, Autumn, 1968)Google Scholar; Friedlander, Ira, Whirling Dervishes (New York: MacMillan, 1975; repr. 1992)Google Scholar; Encyclopaedia Iranica, “Čūb-bāzī” (Robyn C. Friend); Hamada, “Dance and Islam“; Rezvani, Medjid, Le Théâtre et le danse en Iran (Paris: G. P. Maisonneuve et Larose, 1962)Google Scholar.

20. Friedlander, Whirling Dervishes, 87Google Scholar.

21. Ibid., 26.

22. I am indebted to Khosrow Jamali and Boualem Bousseloub for the articulation of these points.

23. Encyclopaedia Iranica, s.v. “Ceremonial Dances” (Robyn C. Friend).

24. Katib Çelebi (1609–1657), Mūzān al-ḥaqq fi ikhtiyār al-aḥaqq, trans. Lewis, G. L. as Balance of Truth (London, 1897), 42–3Google Scholar, cited in And, Dances of Anatolian Turkey, 13Google Scholar.

25. The term pāy-kūbi exists as a synonym for raqṣ, but is mostly confined to literary use.

26. And, Metin, A Pictorial History of Turkish Dancing (Ankara: Dost Yayinlari, 1976), 23Google Scholar; Hasanov, Kamal, Azerbaijan Gedim Folklor Ragslari (Baku: Ishig, 1988), 15Google Scholar.

27. Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi's reign witnessed the establishment of professional ballet and folk dance companies in Iran, as had been the case earlier in the Central Asian Soviet republics. Subsequently the term raqandeh, meaning a dancer of either sex (and free from the negative connotations of raqqāṣ or raqqāṣeh), came into use to give respectability to professional dancers in state companies.

28. And, Pictorial History, 145Google Scholar.

29. Interestingly, lūṭī also refers to a man with behavior that is considered chivalrous and generous. An English equivalent might be someone who would “take the shirt off of his back” for one. I am indebted to Dr. Peter Chelkowski for this point.

30. One musician stated that the rhythm was so called because it was ingested like mother's milk by Iranians, while another, more prosaic, individual simply stated that it was the syllabification or onomatopoetic description of the drum beat.

31. Farhat, “Dastgāh Concept,” 1Google Scholar.

32. Blacking, John, “Movement, Dance, Music and the Venda Girl's Initiation,” in Spencer, Society and the Dance, 70Google Scholar.

33. I am indebted to Khosrow Jamali for this point.

34. Morteza Varzi, “Performer-Audience Relationships in the Bazm,” in Caton, Margaret and Siegel, Neil, eds., ṣCultural Parameters of Iranian Musical Expression (Redondo Beach, Calif.: Institute of Persian Performing Arts, 1986), 8Google Scholar.

35. Robyn C. Friend and Neil Siegel, “Contemporary Contexts for Iranian Professional Musical Performance,” in Caton and Siegel, Cultural Parameters, 10.

36. Farmaian, Sattareh Farman, Daughter of Persia (New York: Doubleday, 1992), 37Google Scholar.

37. And, Pictorial History, 138Google Scholar.

38. See Zoka', Yahya, “Tārīkh-e raqṣ dar Īrān” (in four parts), Honor va mardom 188 (1978–79): 78Google Scholar.

39. I am grateful to Parvaneh Azad, Khosrow Jamali, and Masoud Valipour for bringing this to my attention.

40. See Kuckertz, Joseph and Mas'udieh, M. T., Mūsīqī-ye Būshehr (Tehran: Sorush, 1355 Sh./1976), 24–9Google Scholar.

41. Rezvani, Théâtre et danse, 168Google Scholar.

42. Lloyd Clifton Miller, personal communication, 1993.

43. “It is fitting that we should call this martial exercise” (Kazem Kazemayni, “Tārīkh-e mokhtaṣar-e zūrkhāneh va varzesh-e bāstānī va mūjedīn-e ān: pahlavānān va ‘ayyārān va shāṭerān,” Honar va mardom 55 [1967]: 28–34; 56 [1968]: 55–62).

44. See Sadiq, Mostafa, “Gawd-e moqaddas: paydāyesh-e zūrkhāneh,” Honar va mardom 145 (1975): 55Google Scholar.

45. Ibid., 62, and elsewhere in the article for a full description of the process

46. Lois Beck, Qashqa'i People of Southern Iran (Los Angeles: UCLA Museum of Cultural History, pamphlet series no. 14, 1978), 23–4.

47. Afshar, Iraj, Īlhā, chādor-neshīnān va ṭavāyef-e ‘ashāyerī-ye Īrān, 2 vols. (Tehran: Homa, 1364 Sh./1985), 2:636Google Scholar. See also pp. 504 and 548 for the practices of the Boyir-Ahmad and Bakhtiyari tribes, respectively.

48. Lewis, J. Lowell, Ring of Liberation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), xxiii, 1Google Scholar.

49. Tomoaki, Fujii, ed., The JVC Video Anthology of World Music and Dance, 30 videotapes (Tokyo, 1988; Cambridge, Mass., 1990), tapes 25:3Google Scholar, 26:4.

50. See Hamada, “Dance and Islam,” 111–13 for a description of a typical “stick dance” (raqṣ-e chūb) from Bojnurd. Another example can be seen in a film prepared by Iran's ministry of culture showing the dances of the province of Khorasan (in the author's collection).

51. Rezvani, Théâtre et danse, 189Google Scholar.

52. Kendal, Kurdish Music I (disc), liner notes (Barenrieter-UNESCO collection, n.d.), 2.

53. I am grateful to Sally Ann Ness for this point.

54. Mas'udieh, M. T., Mūsīqī-ye Balūchestān (Tehran: Sorush, 1985), 18–19Google Scholar.

55. Encyclopaedia Iranica, s.v. “Dance” (Robyn C. Friend).

56. Bourguignon, Trance Dance, 52Google Scholar.

57. During, Jean, “Emotion in Trance: Musical Exorcism in Baluchistan,” in Caton and Siegel, Cultural Parameters, 39Google Scholar.

58. Idem, “Musique d'extase et de guerison du Baloutchistan,” liner notes of disc, Iran 5 and 6 (Paris: Ocora, 1981).

59. Idem, “Emotion in Trance,” 39–40.

60. Lloyd Clifton Miller, personal communication, 26 October 1993.

61. Kaeppler, “Structured Movement Systems,” 93—4Google Scholar.