Aniseteph

I just saw a clip of Ouled Nail dancing in a documentary. BBC - BBC Four - Edwardians in Colour: The Wonderful World of Albert Kahn

Amazing early colour photos, including some of the Ouled Nail at the turn of the century or so (none of which made it to the above link of course!), AND a bit of movie footage of them dancing, though it was not clear if this was taken at the same time.

Description off various belly dance sites:Clip of Ouled Nail dancing: a sort of flapping movement with their hands, and not so much as a hint of a shimmy or anything "roots-of-belly-dance". Perhaps they toned things WAY down for the camera, and it was a very short and perhaps unrepresentative clip. But it made me wonder about where that quote came from and whether it is authenticated research or recycled made-up stuff. Anyone out there know?

Moon

I can't find it, I only get something with sound

Flapping hand movements.. do you mean like they kind of open and close their fingers to their thumbs quite fast? (sorry hard to explain). I couldn't find the video, but it sounds a bit like a movement I once learned from a Moroccan lady. She said it is an important movement in some Berber tribe dances.

Aniseteph

Hi Moon! The link was just to part of the BBC site about the documentary - they haven't got the video clip or the Ouled Nail photos on it, but they have got some of those early colour photos.

It was only a few second clip - they had their hands palms down between shoulder and waist level, elbows bent, and as far as I could see flapped their hands outwards from the wrists, as if they were shooing something away or drying nail polish. But I suppose it could have been opening and closing the fingers now I think about it. It was clearly in time to some music at a medium speed, fairly relaxed - one was standing still and another was doing the hand movement while turning slowly on the spot. And no hip/torso movements at all as far as you could tell because they were very covered up.

getting annoyed I can't watch it again now in case I'm remembering wrong!

Aisha Azar

Dear Aniseteph,
According to my grandfather, who was in Algeria when he was in the navy and spent some time there, the Ouled Nail did very different dances in private than they did in public. (Kharmine might want to cover her eyes or ignore this since there will be very little verifiable info here!). I learned Ouled Nail from Aisha Ali, who did not do anywhere near the body movements as described above. There was a fluttering of the fingers, gliding around with a few pelvic rocks and this kind of half gallop. Now, what my grandfther described as having seen in private was very different and gives credibility to those who referred to thier dances as muscle dances or as more like what you described. He told me that they dance naked except they kept on their jewelry and that they could move their bodies in unimaginable ways, with muscle contractions through the abdominal area and in their arms too that were just amazing. My grandfather told me he thought he had heard they trained to learn all that muscle control starting at about age three. The women would come from the Atlas mountains where they lived. and work as entertainers and prostitutes in the cities and towns, and then go home with a sizeable dowry and then get married and become good wives.
Regards,
A'isha

Aniseteph

Thanks A'isha. I suspected the dance that all the fuss was about would have been thoroughly unfit for the lenses of even the most investigative of early documentary movie makers! I even wondered if they were just playing around after being told to dance for the camera, because it seemed so (for want of a better word) lightweight. Certainly nothing that would earn anyone a headdress-full of coins .

Kharmine

Fortunately, once again, we don't have to rely only on one person's collection of observations by friends and family members -- nice, but not by themselves the best and only standard necessary to verify information, as any real researcher can testify.

The respected ethnographic dance researcher Aisha Ali not only performs and teaches dances of the Ouled Nail, she personally documented them (through firsthand visits and observations) in Northern Africa. Her recreations of the dances are easily available in her "Volume II: Dances of the Arab World" dvd which is sold on her web site: Belly Dance with Aisha Ali

I've also seen very, very old film, taken by Thomas Edison's movie company, of Middle Eastern dancers in 1894, who were almost certainly among the performers at the 1893 Columbian Exposition. (We know some of the Algerian performers at this event were Ouled Nail, as Donna Carlton has researched and written about in her "Looking for Little Egypt.")

Maybe this film was in the BBC documentary?

As I remember it, there was a group of women wearing headdresses and lots of light-colored fabric. They did a lot of hand movements,they didn't step around much, and their hips and abdomens moved pretty emphatically. They were dressed very much as I have seen old, authentic photos and drawings of Ouled Nail dancers.

Edison had hoped to have his "kinoscope" up and recording in time for the Exposition but didn't have it ready in time. By at least the the next year, his company was filming and releasing performances by ethnic dancers, some of whom may have performed at the fair. You can read about these very early dance films at: Venus - Fatima's Coochee-Coochee Dance

I'd have to go through all my dance bookmarks to try to track the particular Edison film clip down, and when I do I'll post the link -- if someone else finds it first, please don't wait for me! This tiny bit of film barely lasts a minute, but it's a lot like a dance described in the 1950s in "Flute of Sand."

"Flute of Sand" was written by a young Englishman named Lawrence Morgan who lived in a small Arab town in the Northern Sahara where girls of the Ouled Nail tribe went to live, perform and build up dowries. He lived there for a year, specifically to research the truth about these legendary "dancing girls."

His description of their dances is a little long for this space, so I recommend getting a copy and looking up pages 45-47 (first published in 1956 by Odhams Press Ltd., London -- if it's not at your local library, try Amazon.com or Abebooks for a used copy). I will note that he mentions:

1) the dancers' stomach muscles moving to the rhythm of the music,
2) a dance that had girls slashing the air with daggers,
3) a dance of "delicate, winglike movements" using "wisps of colorful silks" in their hands and the feet moving "only inches at a time,"
4) an old dancer who moved with "slow, doll-like" movements, her fingers "beating the air in quick, expressive spasms",
5) dancers who moved their heads right or left without moving their necks
6) all the dances were done fully clothed except for one done in the nude at the end of about a two-hour show and only before strangers, with all the male musicians turning their backs and facing a wall. Morgan says that after the dancers got to know him, they insisted that he leave before they'd come out naked. So, apparently, nude dancing was not commonly done in front of friends and family.

This seems to go along with what we know from older accounts of Ouled Nail dancers (if anyone needs exact references I will try to look them up -- they've been repeated often in several places) -- that they sometimes performed in the nude in commercial establishments. They were not known to do so at the 1893 Exposition. (The only dance show that got raided was the "Persian" venue; it had hired Western girls to dress and dance in a very provocative manner.)

Morgan says that the dances were "individually different, but with a variation which at times was so slight as to be almost imperceptible."

Hope that helps, Aniseteph!

(I hope that anyone reading this will not just take my word for any of it -- that's why I gave references that can be verified. )

I don't know if the Ouled Nail are still operating they way they used to -- Morgan says by the time he left, a rapacious and very Western-style young Algerian woman was trying to take over the Ouled Nails in that particular area and turn them into a brothel-type operation, whereas they were then acting as independent contractors who could decide whom to accept as customers and what to charge.

__________________
What if the hokey pokey is really what it's all about?

Aniseteph

Wow Kharmine! See, I knew someone out there would know...

Of course they did not credit the tiny clip, and documentaries being the way they are it may not have been contemporary with the photos they were showing. But they looked it. The photos were taken in Africa because the documentary was about Albert Kahn having film makers and photographers to travel and collect material for his archive. And I think they mentioned a French film maker but I didn't catch the name.

Well I shall look out for the repeats - it will come round again and again and again..... oh the joys of digital TV, so much choice of things you've seen already and will watch carefully for undulations under the costumes!

Kharmine

I saw a very few things about Ouled Nail on YouTube, but not yet the Edison film clip so shall keep on looking. There is a short little documentary of still photos which doesn't demonstrate any dancing, and I don't think is very helpful.

From what I'm reading now, the Ouled Nail women's lifestyle changed drastically when the Algerians revolted against their French colonial masters in 1954-62.

Curious foreigners and Algerian men with some money had helped make up the bulk of a good audience for the Ouled Nail girls, but they stayed away in droves when warfare made it impossible to travel and congregate safely within the country.

Apparently, the Ouled Nail girls just faded back into their clans as the country and its government changed. There was a real desire among Middle Eastern countries of that era to look "modern" and "civilized" and their governments (such as Egypt's) tended to downplay the old role of "dancing girls" except as sanitized folk art presentations.

I suspect some of these women migrated to bigger cities out of the war zones where they could perform in clubs and cabarets, but if they had to compete with flashier raqs sharqi professionals they probably would have adapted their dance styles.

__________________
What if the hokey pokey is really what it's all about?

Aisha Azar

Dear Aniseteph,
In fact, when we read Morgan, listen to my grandfather, or study with Aisha Ali, we are taking another person's word for what took place and what they witnessed. None of these sources is any more verifiable than any other, with one difference:
A'isha Ali saw the dances and the people through the eyes of a dancer. When I studied with her, I understood that she might report something different because of this alone. She may see body movement differently than Morgan or my grandfather because it is her business to understand movement. She is a dance ethnologist rather than a traveler with other motivations. I kept this in mind when I studied Ouled Nail and other dances with her. She also cares deeply about the people themselves and teaches with a humility and concern for the culture that one rarely sees. I admire her very much. Her teaching style is pretty organic at times, but I think she gets it right.
Nevertheless, if I want to start wondering about how verifiable her info is at every turn, I am going to lose out on a lot. Some of her info is not written in books or testified to by a long list of other dancers, writers, etc., but no way would I doubt what she says is true. I feel the same way about my grandfather. He added a lot to my personal knowledge of the Ouled Nail without having ever read a book about them. Because of my prior knowledge of the dance and the culture, I was able to surmise that what he said had the ring of truth. His info was gathered in the same way as many travelers who reported back from the Middle East and North africa, and whose books and papers we quote. The only difference is that he passed his info on by word of mouth to me.
I would highly recommend that anyone who has a chance studies with Aisha Ali. She is a real source of the human element of the dance, as well as the dances themsleves.
Regards,
A'isha

PS: I guess I should add to this that if you can get a copy o National Geographic, January 1914, there are some excellent photos of the Ouled Nail. Also Arabesque, July/ August 1977, Lorie Muir did an excellent article aclled "Costume of the Ouled Nail", and names the parts of the costume, descriptions of the dance etc. and Leona Wood did excellent notes on the back of Aisha Ali's album, "Music of the Ouled Nail and Traditional Music of Tunisia". ( I have the actual vinyl and wrote the notes up at the time for my Ouled Nail file or I would never have remembered that!!)

Kharmine

Folks, take the word of one or 200 sources -- it all depends on what you feel is helpful toward making your best decision, forming the most accurate picture, achieving satisfaction on any particular point.

By looking into the backgrounds and cross-checking the information of several sources, one can decide for oneself whether those sources are reliable and credible. By then combining the information from several credible sources, one has a better chance of coming to a clear and accurate answer.

If one source of information provides all that you need, more power to you.

If you don't have the complete reassurance and faith in that one source that someone else cites, by all means do not let that person discourage or even scoff at you for seeking more concrete information.

That person is likely to be far more invested in his or her ego than in whatever you are pursuing.

__________________
What if the hokey pokey is really what it's all about?