9:36 AM - 10 Jun 2013 EGYPT
selbattouty - Sarah El Battouty
@tariksalama @mennamourad @zeinobia raised ballet shoe #streetballet #OccupyCultureMinistry
pic.twitter.com/PWNEhS9Wni
THE POLITICAL BODY AND THE BODY POLITIC
“russian ballet dancer vladimir shklyarov died after falling from a fifth-floor window in st. petersburg
he had previously spoken out against the war in ukraine saying ‘politicians should be able to negotiate without shooting and killing civilians’”
Shen Yun’s Longstanding Labor Practices Attract Regulators’ Scrutiny - New York Times . November 17, 2024
“The New York State Department of Labor has opened an inquiry into the global dance group and its treatment of the children and teenagers who stage its shows worldwide.”
New York Times
Ballerinas Reclaim The Streets of Cairo - Upworthy . January 5, 2017
“Taher quickly realized that the dancers in the photos weren’t just dancing. They were taking to the streets where they could express themselves freely, without inhibition. For women in Cairo, feeling free and safe in the street is unusual.”
A Viral Dance and ‘Happiness Campaign’ Frustrates Iran’s Clerics New York Times. December 16, 2023
A 70 year-old fish market stall owner who dances “to make people happy” sparked viral dance protests in Iran. Dancers were arrested, beaten, had Instagram accounts censored, and were “forced to sign a pledge that they would never again sing and dance in public.”
DANCERS AT RISK
Dancing girl ‘murdered by Taliban after refusing to give up traditional performances despite death threats’ - Daily Mail . January 11, 2009
Taliban underlines its growing power with killing of ‘dancing girl’ in Pakistan - The Telegraph . January 11, 2009
Story of Shabana from Swat: a wedding dancer killed by the Taliban style shariat - Let Us Build Pakistan . January 23, 2009
“Shabana’s bullet-riden body was found slumped on the ground in the centre of Mingora’s Green Square, strewn with money, CD recordings of her performances and photographs from her albums.”
Dancing Girls of the Swat Valley - The Pulitzer Center . September 13, 2011
“Along a dimly lit alley, the wooden doors of small brick houses are barred shut. The silent passage lies just off the Banr, a street once known for Swat Valley’s famous dancing girls.”
The Tenth Dancer - 360 Degree Films . 1993
“Under the brutal regime of Pol Pot over ninety percent of Cambodia’s artists were killed, including most of the classical dancers of the Royal Court Ballet. Only one in ten survived. This is the story of the tenth dancer.”
Execution of Mohammad Salas, Iranian Sufi Dervish - US Department of State . June 18, 2018
“We condemn the Iranian government’s execution of Mohammad Salas, a member of the long-persecuted Iranian Gonabadi Sufi Dervish community.”
Bangladesh's ‘mystic minstrels’ more popular despite attacks - The Express Tribune . December 9, 2014
“Bangladesh’s ‘mystic minstrels’ have long been dismissed as hippies and even attacked and killed after being branded heretics in the country.”
ENDANGERED DANCE
They Once Danced for Royalty. Now It’s Mostly for Leering Men. - New York Times . Jan 5, 2019
“‘It used to be more about the art, the dancing and music,’ said Kiran, 28, who asked that her last name not be used because of safety concerns. ‘Now, after one or two songs, all the men think about is the bed.’”
Climate Change and Indigenous Peoples of the Amazon - Inter-American Development Bank
“Indigenous peoples in the Amazon basin are among the most vulnerable to the effects of climate change due to their heavy reliance on natural resources.”
How a Potawatomi tribe lost its culture and what it takes to bring it back - Michigan Radio . August 14, 2014
“For a Potawatomi tribe in the Upper Peninsula, tribal culture almost vanished around the 1940s. But for the past four decades, there have been efforts to bring tribal culture back.”
Art not Sex, Pakistan’s Dancers Take a Stand - The Express Tribune . May 12, 2016
“‘We constantly have to explain to people that dance is an art form, it’s not just about what happens in the red light areas, not just about entertaining men and sexuality,’ says Suhaee Abro.”
Foreign Belly Dancers? Egyptians Shake Their Heads (and Hips) - New York Times . July 8, 2018
“The arrest of a Russian belly dancer exposed simmering tensions in Cairo’s belly-dancing scene. Critics say foreigners are sullying an ancient art form. Many Egyptians love them.”
Tokelau Warrior Dance for Climate Change Awareness at Smithsonian - OceanDoctor . Nov 12, 2011
“In front of the Giant Squid exhibit, dancers from Tokelau provided an impromptu Warrior Dance”
CENSORSHIP
#IAmMySong - @insightindia_tours. March 17, 2021
“When the Afghan Ministry of Education recently banned girls over 12 yo from singing in public, girls and women the world over began posting #iammysong, rejecting the silencing of their voices. And @Twitter #IAmMySong”
The Dying Art of Belly Dancing in Conservative Egypt - VICE . November 20, 2013
“‘Nobody [in Egypt] sees this as an acceptable profession. It’s degrading for them. They go into it for the same reasons as a woman in the US goes into prostitution,’ said Luna, an American dancer and Harvard graduate who originally moved to Cairo to...”
RudeTube: Belly dancing banned on Egyptian TV (final section of article - Daily News Egypt . April 7, 2013
“In 2009, Islamist member of parliament Faird Ismail said that establishing state institutes to train belly dancers would ‘seriously challenge Egyptian social traditions and glaringly violates the constitution.’”
Iran arrests 3 over World Cup video - Middle East Institute . 2014
“Iranian police have arrested three people who appeared in an online video of young men and women singing and dancing in support of the country’s World Cup football team, the official IRNA news agency reported Monday.”
“In the Khan Younis refugee camp in Gaza, Mohammed and Abdallah have found a way to distract themselves from the overcrowded tenements and squalid alleyways. Both young men have trained for years to become Gaza’s leading practitioners of parkour.”
Lawsuit: Black teens unfairly expelled from Ohio high school after making rap music videos - Washington Post . September 3, 2014
“Parents of four black teenagers say the students were expelled for making rap videos, and in a $25,000 federal lawsuit filed Tuesday, allege that an Ohio high school unfairly targeted the students because of their race.”
UAE issues warrants for men filmed dancing ‘outrageously’ in uniform - BBC . January 19, 2016
“Prosecutors accused the pair of ‘making outrageous physical movements that did not respect the uniform, the morale and the value of national service.’”
Iranian Teen Arrested for Dancing on Instagram - New York Post . July 9, 2018
“A teen in Iran was arrested for dancing to Western songs — including a Justin Bieber tune and a rap number — in videos on social media...”
ON CULTURAL PRESERVATION
Now Is The Time (Video) - New York Times . February 5, 2020
“In this short documentary from the New York Times’s Sundance 2020 series, two brothers carve their community’s first totem pole in nearly a century.”
“Peru Indigenous Women Dance Workshop” Mona Eltahawy, FEMINIST GIANT feministgiant@substack.com January 10, 2023
In a dance workshop for members of the Asháninka, Peru’s largest indigenous Amazon group, the moves celebrate resistance while lamenting those enslaved, murdered and “disappeared” by the communist guerrilla group Shining Path, which fought the Peruvian government during the 1980s and 90s. The Buenas Noticias programme began in 2019 among bereaved women in Ayacucho, the region that bore the brunt of the violence and where hundreds live without knowing what happened to their loved ones. It was adapted for the native Amazonians this year with the help of Lima theatre company La Plaza.
Yolanda Rivera Charete, a member of the workshop, fled her community, Centro Tsovameni, with eight children in 1989 when Shining Path fighters tortured and murdered her cousin, Isaias Charete, the village leader. He says they have all been “damaged psychologically.”
I feel now that I am forgetting what happened to me. I feel calm, there is not too much worry. -Rivera Charete
Mónica Silva, associate professor in performing arts at Peru’s Pontifical Catholic University in Lima, has been a choreographer on the Buenas Noticias (Good News) programme since October. She says the initiative, started by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), helps women connect with others who suffered during the insurgency and allows younger women to understand and support mothers and grandmothers.
To touch and hold somebody, it’s not just about affection, it’s saying we are together. The young never lived the violence. This moment is the chance for the mum to talk about it. It’s not just about the dance, it’s about what happens in between the dancing. -Mónica Silva
After three weeks of rehearsal, the women are to perform publicly in an amphitheater in the town square. The dances are full of movements such as slashing with a machete, casting a fishing line and weaving.
Luzmila Chiricente, 68, is the oldest member. She is the founder of Peru’s first indigenous women’s organization, Fremank (the Regional Federation of Indigenous Asháninka, Nomatsiguenga and Kakinte Women of the Central Jungle), and says it is vital that women support each other.
For the girls who don’t know what trauma is, the terror that happened to us, they will understand [now] so that it doesn’t happen again. -Luzmila Chiricente
U.S. Army Creates Cultural Heritage Task Force - NPR (All Things Considered) . November 3, 2019
NPR's Leila Fadel talks with Col. Scott DeJesse about the development of the U.S. Army's new Cultural Heritage Task Force.
Artforum October 22, 2019
https://www.artforum.com/news/us-army-creates-cultural-heritage-task-force-245137/
The United States military is establishing a group of specialists that will help protect cultural heritage in conflict zones, the New York Times reports. Unlike the Monuments Men—the famous group of 345 men and women from fourteen nations who helped recover millions of artworks seized by the Nazis during World War II—the US Army’s new initiative will focus on educating troops about the whereabouts of important artworks in an effort to prevent looting and avoiding airstrikes and ground fighting near historic sites….
The Smithsonian will hold its first five-day boot camp in March 2020 with the aim of having twenty-five reservists ready to apply their knowledge to the field at the end of it. The team will most likely be deployed with forces fighting in war zones. In addition to safeguarding cultural treasures, the group will be able to help nations following catastrophic events such as the earthquake in Haiti in 2010, which buried thousands of artifacts.