Characterizing the Movement
In the YouTube video “ALGERIE, DANSE DES OULEDS NAILS” we see a 1-minute archival clip from a 1938 silent Algerian film featuring an Ouled Naïl dancer. The clip was uploaded by a channel called Lobster Films. Lobster Films is a French company that focuses on restoring silent and/or black and white films. Their YouTube channel and website features many films from the 1900s in an archival format. The comments on this particular video thank the company for this feature and discuss how rare it is to find anything with the Ouled Naïl dancers. The clip begins with a sign introducing the star of the video as Fatima and that she is performing with her group. There is no sound in the movie, however; there are 2 men playing the drums and some sort of flute as an accompaniment to Fatima’s dance. Fatima comes in the frame and one of the first things that can be seen is her jewelry. Some of this jewelry includes the coins she earned from her profession that hang around her neck (Ali, 1). Fatima is wearing a cream-colored gown that covers almost all of her body and has a blue scarf wrapped around her head. Some of the distinctive aspects of Fatima’s movement include her wrists that she moves up and down, her head that she moves side to side, and her hips that she moves in both a thrusting motion and side to side in a swaying motion. We can infer that these movements are being timed with the live music in the video. Fatima then brings up a man with her who moves his wrist like Fatima and turns to the music with her. Finally, Fatima brings in a young girl with her and both link hands and move their wrist up and down together. Fatima leaves the frame and the young girl performs the same movements as Fatima including the head shaking and hip swaying. It’s possible that this young girl is Fatima’s daughter given that the Ouled Naïl practice is often passed down the tribe (Ali, 1).
This video will be used as a primary source to characterize the movement of the Ouled Naïl and some of the generational practices of the Ouled Naïl. Furthermore, comparing the clothing in this video to the clothing portrayed in the postcards from Malek Alloula’s The Colonial Harem emphasizes how deeply the colonizers warped the narrative of the Ouled Naïl to fit their colonial agenda of reducing the personhood of these dancers.
Citation: Lobster Films. "ALGERIE,DANSE DES OULEDS NAILS." Youtube, 2011, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXRWrE823IA&t=3s
Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXRWrE823IA
LAKME - Temple Dancers (Devadasis) uploaded by Hugh Drover
In the YouTube video “LAKME - Temple Dancers (Devadasis)” we see a 5-minute clip from a performance of an 1883 opera known as Lakme written by Léo Delibes. The video is uploaded by a channel called Hugh Drover. There is no actual evidence of this channel being an official channel for the opera, however; the channel has uploaded many clips of the opera. Lakme refers to the French pronunciation of Lakshmi or the Hindu goddess of wealth. The opera is centered around the British colonization of India and the exotic nature of the Orient. This background of the play is an important lens through which to analyze the play the movement advertised as that of the “Devadasi”. The costume of the main dancer is different than the more traditional saris that the onlookers on stage are wearing. Instead of a one-piece outfit, she wears a cropped blouse and looser pants. Another distinction between the main dancer and the onlookers is that her hair is down unlike the onlookers who have their hair pulled back. Her outfit bears more skin than the saris worn by the other women and is a direct example of colonial sexualization of dancers. The music playing in the background is instrumental and starts off softly and builds as the dance progresses. The most apparent aspect of the video is the ballet which makes up much of the dance. I've annotated three specific sections of this video. As you watch the clip on the side, the annotations will appear at certain timestamps. There seems to be attempts at traditional movement like with the hands at 0.48 seconds, however; each attempt is somehow different than tradition. In the case of the hands, the thumb and pointer finger touch instead of fanning out like traditional mudra hand positioning. The dance in this opera parallels what was happening to the actual dance of the Devadasis. The colonizers established dance schools to alter the movement and put in place specific women to change the dance form(Soneji, 4). The colonial influence and Western movement in this opera turned the dance of the Devadasis into something else and tried to rewrite the dance of the Devadasi as the one performed in the opera.
This video will be used as a primary source to characterize the colonial influence over the dance of the Devadasi. Furthermore, this video will be examined in conjunction with information about dance revival efforts and how both connect to the current identity of the Devadasis movement: Bharatanatyam.
Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLex0NhIdbk
Copyright statement: Both videos are on Youtube and and the use of the videos in this project falls under Fair Use.
