Marya

Well, I have seen sword dances depicting fighting on video as well as live. They used an Amazon motif. I have also seen a video from Lebanon with men using swords in a dance that utilized mock fighting positions.

Some of the various Fakeloric/tribalish style dancers do not emphasize the grace and balance skills but emphasize the warrior aspect.

I used to use the warrior aspect in a sword dance. People loved it. I created it somewhat tongue in cheek (in my mind we were Middle Eastern Ninjas) our costume included a long black cape, turbans, big white puffy sleeves, a vest, tassle belt and full shalvar. we used the cape in the dance and we did a little sword play too. I created the dance before the September 11, 2001 event where planes crashed into the twin towers of the World Trade Center. After that I felt ashamed to be perpetuating a stereotype and promoting an image of the Middle East that was fake and wrong. I tried to rework it using different costumes but it just didn't feel right.

I have seen a sword used in a folkloric vignette of an imaginary 19th century Gawazee scene. This story line is a least possibly true, where some soldier asks a Gawazee to use his sword in a dance because he thought it would be entertaining. There are orientalist paintings that have this theme as well.

I generally like sword dances that emphasize balancing skills, but when I was developing mine, my teacher told me to pretend the sword was real and handle it as if it was extremely sharp to create the illusion that it was a real weapon and dangerous because the audience would like that better.

The sword is of course a potent phallic symbol and the image of a beautiful woman handling a sword in any fashion leaves little to the imagination

Marya