Serpent of the Nile: Women and Dance in the Arab World (Spanish and English Edition) [Paperback]

Wendy Buonaventura (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 1998 | ISBN-10: 0863560733 | ISBN-13: 978-0863560736

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. 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. But the influence was two-way. 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. Their fascination was often based on common fantasies about the women of the Middle East. Yet, as the book's illustrations show, this obsession also produced evocative images. At the turn of the century, the genre also had an impact on fashion, theatre and popular entertainment.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A study of the history of the Middle Eastern solo woman's dance.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Review

'A delight to browse through and just as interesting to read...sumptuously illustrated.' Time Out 'A lively and lavishly illustrated excursion into the history of the solo woman's dance.' The New York Times Book Review

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 208 pages
• Publisher: Al Saqi (July 1998)
• Language: Spanish, English
• ISBN-10: 0863560733
• ISBN-13: 978-0863560736
• Product Dimensions: 11.3 x 9.5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,284,510 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Wendy Buonaventura is a writer, choreographer and performer. Her work has been the subject of a documentary for British tv and she has written and presented for BBC Radio. Her theatre work mixes text with dance to explore cultural myths of female life. Her books combine non-fiction, memoir and fiction, and on several occasions have been selected in the British press as Books of the Year and Paperbacks of the Year. She continues to perform and lecture internationally and is Artistic Director of the annual UK dance festival Sirocco.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

71 of 76 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Inspirational, but Flawed, July 26, 2001

By 

Teresa Noelle Roberts (Mansfield, MA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Serpent of the Nile: Women and Dance in the Arab World (Paperback)

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 presents an exotic and monolithic Middle East, where Egypt represents this entire diverse region and where nothing changes over time. She also perpetuates the popular myth that this is a *women's* dance, whereas in truth both sexes dance at private functions, and in both Egypt and Turkey, men historically performed as well. (Western tourists just weren't interested!) Read this for its lovely artwork and, if you're a dancer, for a feel-good spiritual connection with earlier dancers--but if you're interested in the subject of dance history, do some further research. And if you are involved in the Society for Creative Anachronism, PLEASE don't use this book for costume documentation. Egyptian clothing pre-1600 was very, very different.

34 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Thoroughly enjoyable and informative, June 21, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Serpent of the Nile: Women and Dance in the Arab World (Paperback)

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 relationship between East and West. The influence has been mutual: Westerners have become obsessed with the seductive East, while Hollywood has had no small influence on Middle Eastern concepts of entertainment.
She also discusses the ambivalent position of the professional dancer in both societies. While Middle Eastern women seem more comfortable with their bodies than Western women, both cultures have historically been conflicted (for religious regions) about the body and sensuality in general. Middle Eastern women may dance in the privacy of their homes for their own entertainment, but a woman who earns her living dancing is viewed with equal suspicion in both cultures.
The illustrations range from the gorgeous (Gerome's beladi dancer entertaining Turkish mercenaries) to the dutiful (stiff studio photographs of early dancers) to the unintentionally hilarious (Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn are a hoot), and the printer renders them well. My only quibble: in the paperbound edition, the binding is so tight that some of the two-page spreads are hard to see as a whole (cf. the Plate Dance!). But in general this is a terrific book, and I'm glad it's back in print.

43 of 49 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars great pictures but..., August 29, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Serpent of the Nile: Women and Dance in the Arab World (Paperback)

The quality and quantity of pictures in this book is wonderful and there is also some good information but unfortunately all the information is not very accurate and there are even many things that are not true. As a book this is nice to watch but as this book has become "a bible of belly dance" when other more accurate documents have been hard to find I can't rate this higher because readers tend to believe everything that is written here.