The Ouled Nail of 1928 - National Geographic Magazine, February 1928 (via)
“From the open doorway of a Moorish café light pours out into the dark. Inside, a group of Arabs in costly silk and woolen garments or in rags gaze eagerly toward the end of the long room, where on a raised platform, a gaudily attired woman dances to the strains of weird instruments.
The Ouled Nail glitters with gold and silver. Her face is whitened and rouged; her lips carmined, her eyebrows blackened her cheeks and chin adorned with spangles. In her ears are gold and or silver earrings, hoops several inches in diameter; across her forehead and about her throat are bands of gold coins of many nations. Around her neck are necklaces of coins or beads from which large ornaments dangle. Massive bracelets and anklets, some six inches broad, some hinged, studded with colored stones adorn her bare arms and angles. Her feet are naked and her toes, like her fingers, are stained with henna.
No words can do justice to her costume. Her head is swathed in a lovely rainbow-hued, long fringed silk shawl which streams down her back. In a corner of it her hair is tied, except for plaits with colored ribbons hanging down her cheeks.
Over an innermost gauze garment are two or three silk vests of palest pinks or green, or yellows, and above these a beautiful rose-tinted brocaded silk jacket covered with transparent silver tissue and heavily embroidered with silver bullion. Her waist is swathed with a gold-tissue pink silk sash, and over it gold embroidered red leather belt. She wears wide rousers of pale blue silk hanging baggily over the slender ankles.
Her dancing! She moves on her toes, but barely raises them from the platform. In her hands she holds a silk handkerchief behind her head or waves it occasionally in the air. But feet, hands, legs, and arms, do not enter much into the dance; she performs chiefly with the muscles of her neck, breast, abdomen, and hips.
All her violent motions keep time with the strange music of pipe and flageolet and tom-tom, while five or six other dancers, as gaudily dressed clap their hands or utter little cries at intervals.
An Arab musician with a long cylindrical drum slung under his arm, springs up from his chair and dances wildly toward her, beating his instrument with fingers and palm as hi hops in pursuit, while she glides pat him and escapes with a lissome movement.”
How can you not be inspired by this passage? :-)
Painting: ‘Girls dancing and Singing’ by Etienne Dinet, French. Oil, 1902.
