Product Description
Newly updated and lavishly illustrated, this classic celebration of female dancers of the Arab world is available in an appealing new format. "Serpent of the Nile" traces the origins of this ancient art, which survived in the face of commercialism, religious disapproval and changing times. Wendy Buonaventura demonstrates 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 captured the imagination of writers and artists such as Flaubert, David Roberts and Jean-Leon Gerome, and imitators Colette and Mata Hari. Often based on common fantasies about Middle-Eastern women, this obsession produced evocative images and inspired fashion, theatre and popular entertainment. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (11)

A beautiful but limited history
I would like to second everything in Teresa Robert's review.This is a beautiful, wonderful book.But as an actual history of "oriental" dance it lacks nuance and complexity, which is partly due to limited evidence and the author's romantic attachment to the women-centered mythology about this dance.For instance, the text overstates the evidence for connections between the belly dance of the last 150 years and the practices of ancient, goddess worship in presumably more woman-friendly times.I share this same romantic attachment to the dance's feminist roots, but actual history is always more fought and complex.As a result the author over-generalizes and does a incomplete job analyzing the orientalism that feeds so much of the beautiful imagery she includes.In the end, this book is great resource for costuming, late 19th century orientalist accounts of the women's dance, and a vast range of old pictures & photos.Moreover it does a decent job with the early to mid 20th century history and professionalization of the dance.Just look to additional sources for a more well-rounded history, particularly for pre 20th century and regional dances/costuming.I still highly recommend this book to anyone interested in bellydance or orientalism.The images alone are worth the price.

serpent of the Nile
This book was supposed to be hard to get ahold of.
But I ordered it and it came in a timely manner,
in good shape.
Thanks!

FortheBellydanceAfficionado
Lots of colour pictures ... past&present ...includingoldpaintings, quotes & accounts of the people who actually watched belly dancing...&thentriedtodescribeit!

For those just starting out to find out about Bellydancing & such enthusiasts,thereare some pictures of famous older dancers, past & present .. Samya Gamal, Fifi Abdou & Sohair Zaki.
More like a collection of cameosthanarealin-depthexplorationoftheArtForm, or Elucidation of the styles&Expression...but it IS agoodcoffee-tablebook&nice, informativeread.

For the Pictures, if Nothing Else
I can't speak to the accuracy of Wendy Buonaventura's history of belly dancing, though I found no evidence of the most controversial complaint, that she fails to note the role of European Orientalists in fabricating our notions of Middle-Eastern dance. In fact, she discusses this very thing at length.

The treasure in the book is the collection of paintings. Where else can you see Dinet's gorgeous watercolors? I had never even heard of him. Are the pictures accurate? I suspect they are. Are they representative? Of course not. Like Gauguin in Tahiti, the Orientalists saw what they wanted to see.

Inspirational, but Flawed
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. ... Read more

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"For information in English about outstanding theater companies in most countries, this is likely to be a standard. Highly recommended." Library Journal ... Read more

Product Description
From East to West The raven has turned gray O Reader of the unknown Help us in our ordeal! With a fine touch, Aida Bamia has explored the work of Muhammad bin al-Tayyib 'Alili (c.1894-c.1954), a hitherto virtually unknown oral poet of Algeria, bringing to her analysis new understanding of folk poetry as part of a people's collective memory and their resistance to colonization. For 'Alili's audience the despair and suffering faced by poor farmers before independence is embodied by the raven, grown old and gray with ceaseless frustration and humiliation.Because of its oral–and all too often ephemeral–nature, the work of poets such as 'Alili could escape close scrutiny by French colonial administrators who sought to eradicate nationalistic and ethnic elements. With succinct commentary, Bamia presents an outstanding historical and contextual background for 'Alili's repertoire, while she details the richness and variety of poetic forms that had developed in North Africa. In doing so, she shows an intimate grasp of the poet's repertoire and technique, as well as of the colonial and postcolonial implications of Algerian folklore and poetry. ... Read more

Product Description
1918. Contents: What has India Contributed to Human Welfare; Hindu View of Art: Historical and Theory of Beauty; That Beauty is a State; Buddhist Primitives; Dance of Siva; Indian Images with Many Arms; Indian Music; Status of Indian Women; Sahaja; Intellectual Fraternity; Cosmopolitan View of Nietzsche; Young India; Individuality, Autonomy and Function.Withover 25 plates, figures and illustrations. ... Read more

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A complete introduction to traditional Japanese dance, this text will delight readers with its lively descriptions and beautiful illustrations. This book discusses Kabuki dance, modern dance movements based on Kabuki dance and the influence of Western dance.

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Let the words of Jelaluddin Rumi, the great 13th century Sufi poet, soothe you and transport you to the magical, mystical place where the soul yearns to return. Today, this spiritual poetery is more needed and relevant than ever. ... Read more

Product Description
Bessie Schonberg was one of the foremost dance educators of the 20th century and was highly influential in contemporary dance. Schonberg taught at Sarah Lawrence College from 1936 to 1975, where she created and directed one of the first autonomous dance departments in American higher education. Founded on the philosophy of progressive arts education, the Sarah Lawrence program served as an important example for other emerging dance programs in the decades between the 1940s and 1970s, a time of significant growth in college dance programs in the United States. Some of her former students became well-known professional choreographers and dance educators, including Carolyn Adams, Elizabeth Keen, Meredith Monk, Lucinda Childs and Victoria Marks, and several contributed information to this study.Schonberg's life and career were deeply intertwined with many of the most important figures in American modern dance, including Martha Graham and Martha Hill; with historically significant events such as the emergence of the Bennington Summer School of Dance; and with premiere dance institutions such as Dance Theater Workshop, Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival, The Julliard School and Dance Theatre of Harlem. The book examines her early life in Germany and family background, her years of professional preparation in America as a dancer and educator, and her educational experiences at Bennington College Summer School of the Dance. It also describes curricular innovations that chairperson Schonberg instituted at Sarah Lawrence, and her original methodology for teaching choreography, as observed at Jacob's Pillow and Dance Theater Workshop. This book is "[a] thorough and exhaustively researched volume to help tell the story of a unique twentieth-century American art form and how it came to be." ... Read more

Product Description
Volume I, Book 22.Introduction to Egyptian-style fire dancing incorporating hand candles, tray candles and candelabrum. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Good basic candle book
This is a nice little soft bound book introducing the various forms of candle dancing. She discusses choreography, choosing props, origins and traditions, and hints and tips for making your dance lovely. She does include safety tips, as well as stick figures to explain basic choreography. ... Read more

Product Description
Volume 1, Book 13.Student choreographies for a variety of Middle Eastern dances:"Raks Araby", "Drum Solo", "Aman Aman", and "Farhat Shabab". ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Please save your money!
Honestly... you will get better choreographies after 3 months in a basic beginners belly dance class! I'm not sure why the book is geared for the 'Advanced Student Dancer', but your money would be better spent on music or a video! ... Read more

Product Description
Contains 15 songs for an intermediate pianist, with rhythmic notation for finger cymbals, tambourine and bongoes. All of these tunes are recorded on Ameraba record album AM 2501 "Strictly Belly Dancing, Vol. 4". ... Read more

Album Description
Love triangles, glitz, melodrama, music and tragi-comedy areall part of the hugely successful musical-movie genre known as Bollywood.The Rough Guide To Bollywood Gold showcases the leading singers andrevisits some of the most glamorous movies from this vast and everexpanding scene.

Artists include:Jolly Mukherjee & Sridevi, Kishore Kumar, Rahul DevBurman, Asha Bhosle, Mohd. Rafi, Mukesh, Lata Mangeshkar, Mahendra Kapoorand Shailendra Singh ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Why is Aishwarya Rai on the cover of this classics CD?
I like this CD just fine, but I have a picky issue with the packaging. It confused me to find that the "Gold" refers to a classic Bollywood era roughly 1960-1980. I was expecting a more contemporary collection because World Music slapped Aishwarya on the cover as an obvious marketing ploy. Why not one of the heartthrobs of the era?

The songs all have great character; the info in the booklet about performers and careers is nice; the extra data track interview with DJ Ritu is half good (she is interesting - the interviewer, unfortunately, is a dork who seems prepared only with superficial questions); some of the songs make me want to seek out the movies, and it was nice to hear the live, very rare version of R.D. Burman singing his own Mehbooba Mehbooba (though I think I like the version in Sholay better).

Bollywood at Its Beautiful and Bombastic Best
If you're looking for a fix of Indian pop culture, this CD will definitely do the trick! "Bollywood Gold" is full of wonderfully vibrant music, all of it overflowing with powerful emotion spiced up with a healthy dash of sentimentality and melodrama.The instrumentation is good, of course, but in this genre vocals are the main thing, and so this CD features some of the classic voices of Indian film--beautiful and charismatic voices either feminine or masculine (and highly distinct in that regard) that tell a story in their own right, that are able to evoke a wide range of feelings in the listener regardless of whether the latter understands the lyrics or not. If you've seen these movies, you'll relive them here for sure. If you haven't, like me, then the enchantment of this music might trick you into thinking you have--or else inspire you to go looking for them afterwards.

As with most "Rough Guide" CDs, this one excels in giving the listener a fine range of tracks both listenable and representative, all lovingly handpicked by an expert aficionado of that specific musical form. "Bollywood Gold" comes to us courtesy of DJ Ritu, who in the liner notes does a wonderful job of introducing the different singers (Asha Bhosle, Lata Mangeshkar, Mohammed Rafi, Mukesh, Kishore Kumar, Manna Dey, Jolly Mukherjee, and Mahendra Kapoor) as well as giving a crash course in the social history of playback singing in Indian film, after which each track (in order) is explained in good, relevant detail (including but not limited to what movie the song comes from). All of this comes after a movingly personal reflection on what this wonderful music meant to Indian immigrant families in England, of how important it was in their lives--making this quite a bit more meaningful than the average "greatest hits" album. And, as this listener found out, some of that enthusiasm is definitely contagious. ... Read more

Product Description
The Distorting Mirror analyzes the multiple and complex ways in which urban Chinese subjects saw themselves interacting with the new visual culture that emerged during the turbulent period between the 1880s and the 1930s. The media and visual forms examined include lithography, photography, advertising, film, and theatrical performances. Urbanites actively engaged with and enjoyed this visual culture, which was largely driven by the subjective desire for the empty promises of modernity--promises comprised of such abstract and fleeting concepts as the new, exciting, and fashionable.

Detailing and analyzing the trajectories of development of various visual representations, Laikwan Pang emphasizes their interactions.In doing so, she demonstrates that visual modernity was not only a combination of independent cultural phenomena, but also a partially coherent sociocultural discourse whose influences were seen in different and collective parts of the culture. The work begins with an overall historical account and theorization of a new lithographic pictorial culture developing at the end of the nineteenth century and an examination of modernity's obsession with the investigation of the real. Subsequent chapters treat the fascination with the image of the female body in the new visual culture; entertainment venues in which this culture unfolded and was performed; how urbanites came to terms with and interacted with the new reality; and the production and reception of images, the dynamics between these two being a theme explored throughout the book.

Modernity, as the author shows, can be seen as spectacle. At the same time, she demonstrates that, although the excessiveness of this spectacle captivated the modern subject, it did not completely overwhelm or immobilize those who engaged with it.After all, she argues, they participated in and performed with this ephemeral visual culture in an attempt to come to terms with their own new, modern self. The Chinese visual culture examined here was highly contested; by examining constant flux and instability, there emerges a new understanding of the modern subject, one who faces not only the erasure of the past, but also a pluralistic future. Chinas modern visual culture reveals that through the intense interactions and mutual penetrations among subjects and their environment, modernity is constantly renewed. ... Read more

Product Description
First published in 1981.

The overthrow of the 'gang of four' in October 1976 had profound effects in all areas of Chinese society, and probably nowhere can this be more clearly seen than in the performing arts. Jiang Qing, Mao Zedong's widow, was strongly interested in the performing arts and exercised great influence over them. This book describes her influence and the effects its removal had on the arts. Although the period covered is mainly that since the death of Mao, there is also considerable reference to the years following the Cultural Revolution. ... Read more

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...this original and scholarly study upsets received theories on the history of the dramatic art in Arabic...[and] opens up fascinating, new and unexpected vistas...
--R.B. Serjeant, Emeritus Prof. of Arabic, Cambridge University

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Customer Reviews (1)

The Portuguese music in Malaysia
This book provides some interesting information on the culture, especially musical traditions, of the Portuguese settlement in Malaysia. This is a good book, but this definitely college language so it can be somewhat hard to read for some people. Besides cultural aspects, an historical background is also provided. ... Read more

Product Description
This bilingual edition of recent verse by the celebrated Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami (award-winning director of such films as Close-Up and Taste of Cherry) includes English translations of more than two hundred crystalline, haiku-like poems, together with their Persian originals. The translators, noted Persian literature scholars Ahmad Karimi-Hakkak and Michael Beard, contribute an illuminating introduction to Kiarostami's poetic enterprise, examining its relationship to his unique cinematic corpus and to the traditions of classic and contemporary Persian poetry. Of interest to enthusiasts of cinema and literature alike, Walking with the Wind--the second volume in Harvard Film Archive's series "Voices and Visions in Film"--sheds light on a contemporary master who transforms simple fragments of reality into evocative narrative landscapes. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Not haiku ... acute visual perception translated into verse
The translators of this work provide a very astute introduction to the poetry placing it in perspective with regards to Kiarostami's cinematography, the Persian poetic tradition and 20th century innovation.Through this they guide the reader to listen for the space between objects compared, to observe the "grand scheme" implied in the particular, to note how the "obvious" is unobserved and surprising.

An example from the introduction of this last point: "... a sycamore leaf / falls softly / and rests / on its own shadow"

The poems are like haiku in that they are minimalist and nature based.However, the sensibility of the cosmic purpose present in these poems differs from the sensibility of cosmic nowness of the (Zen) haiku tradition.

An example: "... the clock /reads seven minutes to seven" reads in these poems as "seven" intentionally invoking cultural connotations.In haiku, it would more likely read as factual observation ... enlightened observation, perhaps, but observation.

The book is beautifully printed, Persian and English side by side, one poem per page.The poems must be read slowly, allowing the visual image time to form in your mind... but what perfect visual images ... images to savour and explore.My one regret ... I cannot read the Persian in this bilingual edition. ... Read more

Product Description
Many tombs dating to the Eastern Zhou (770-221 BCE) and Han (206 BCE-220 AD) periods contain musical instruments or their visual representations in the form of wood, stone, and ceramic figures, tomb tiles, and engravings. These finds suggest that music was viewed as an important part of the afterlife. While bells have survived more frequently than wooden instruments, and therefore have received the most scholarly attention, strings, winds, and drums are the focus of discussion in this book. The book examines the use of these three instrument types in both solo and ensemble music, as well as the social, ritual, and entertainment functions of each. When combined with bells (and chime stones), strings, drums, and winds appear to have been associated with formal ritual ceremonies. However, when appearing alone or in assemblages with other wooden instruments during Zhou, they appear to be connected with warfare and entertainment. By Han times, strings, winds, and drums seem to be associated almost exclusively with entertainment, pointing to a shift in the social life of the times. Another topic explored in this book is the association of musical instruments with wealth. When combined with bells and chime stones, they are only found in the wealthiest tombs. However, when found by themselves, strings, winds, and drums appear in small to large, modest to wealthy tombs, suggesting that they were available to a broad range of peoples in early Chinese elite society. This book analyzes an often disregarded aspect of early Chinese music, the role of strings, winds, and drums. Music in Ancient China will be a valuable book for those interested in ethnomusicology and music history, Asian art history and archaeology, and Asian studies. ... Read more

Product Description
Bedlah, Baubles, and Beads is a book about designing and crafting the elaborate bra and belt sets worn by contemporary belly dancers. Also known as "dance oriental" and "raks sharki," belly dancing has numerous sub-styles that are defined not only by their movement vocabulary, but also by their distinctive costuming.

The first part of the book provides a conceptual framework by starting with a history of this costuming style and its origins here in the United States. From there, it concentrates on introducing the reader to design principles, methods, and techniques for developing figure-flattering styles.

The second part presents the materials, tools, and processes for putting together an elaborately decorated bra and belt set. Step-by-step illustrations for applying beads, a fabric shopping guide, and directions for constructing the bra and belt bases are all illustrated with descriptive diagrams to aid the reader.

Finally, the book finishes with a portfolio of styles and ideas for expanding the performance wardrobe. From skirts to accessories, these chapters introduce the essential garments that transform the bra and belt into a complete costume.

Detailed topics include:

* Step-by-step illustrations of beading techniques, including back stitch, couching, tambour beading, scatter beading, and more.
* Directions for making high-quality bedlah, from concept to finished costume.
* Techniques for developing beading patterns using clip art sources and transforming images into dynamic designs.
* Fitting and covering bras and belts.

An extensive bibliography and a list of mail-order resources is included. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (11)

awesome!!!
I absolutely love this book!!!Descriptive, simple instructions.Helpful hints and suggestions.I recommend these books to anyone from a beginner to a pro. I also have the Costuming from the Hip.Also awesome.Tons of idea inspiring creations!!!

Love this!
A very comprehensive book, and detailed in most construction techniques and beading. Excellent and easy to follow instructions. I have been costuming for 20 years and I find this a valuable resource.

Inspirational!
This book is more inspiration than patterns. So if you are looking for straight patterns to make, look elsewhere.I really like this spiral bound book for the ideas and explanations.It is a great reference book for the belly dancer.

Bellydancers do it yourself dream!
This book is wonderful!I am currently in the process of designing my own costume and this book was exactly what I needed to help me move from just thinking about making it myself to actually starting the process!

Bedlah, Baubles, and Beads guides you through concept, design and execution.Davina writes in a simple easy to follow manner making this book great for those with basic sewing knowledge and a great tool for the advanced too.I would recommend if you have basic sewing skills to also read through a book about sewing or costume making. I'm finding that brushing up on my skills is going to help me use this great book more effectively and help my costume design and construction go more smoothly.

Overall an excellent tool! I would recommend this book to all lovers of middle eastern dance... especially those who want a fab costume and the pride of making it themselves!

The best ever.
It covers everything from body shape to how to make a bra from scratch. Excellent reference book. ... Read more