Dominique Vivant, Baron de Denon (a.k.a. Vivant Denon), 1747-1845

Date of Travel: 1798-1801 

Source: Vivant Denon. 1803 (1973).  Travels in Upper and Lower Egypt.  New York: Arno Press.

In Rosetta, on the anniversary of the birth of Mohammed:

…We found all the preparations for a Turkish festival.  The street was the assembly-room, which was lengthened or contracted according to the number of guests.  An alcove covered with carpeting was occupied by the distinguished personages.  Fires, combined with a number of small lamps and large tapers, formed a whimsical illumination.  On one side was a band of martial music, consisting of short squeaking hautboys, small kettle drums, and large Albanese drums.  On the other were stationed violins and singers; and, in the middle, Greek dancers …

[Description of music]  After this couplet, the violins took up the same refrain with new variations, which the singer disguised by sharp movement, until he had entirely lost sight of the air, falling into the wild expression of sounds, without harmony, and without principle.  This was what, however, charmed his auditory [audience] still more and more.  The dance which followed was of the same description with the singing: it was not the expression of joy, or of gaiety, but of an extravagant pleasure, which made hasty strides toward lasciviousness; and this was the more disgusting, as the performers, all of them of the male sex, presented in the most indecent way scenes which love has reserved for the two sexes in the silence and mystery of the night. (202-5)

Commentary: Since he mentions “Greek Dancers” I am assuming that the dancers he describes a few paragraphs later are the Greeks he just mentioned, confirming Edward Lane’s comment  that dancers of other ethnicities (Greek among them) were common in the Arab world.  The festival at which they danced was on the street, but a street that had been transformed through lighting and preparing a part of it with carpets and such.  As has probably been common since cities emerged, the street is the festival location – there are many instances of performances taking place in the street from antiquity to the present.  Denon sees in the singing a kind of excess of emotion, which reflects the fact that music in the Arabic tradition is consciously directed at conveying emotion and involving the audience in it.  Denon describes the male dancers as showing “extravagant pleasure” which moves toward “lasciviousness” – so he is repelled by the emotional nature of the dance as much as by its “lasciviousness,” which he probably derives from its hip articulation techniques.  He describes “scenes” that evoke sex – does he mean that the dancers actually enacted sex scenes, or that they related to one another while dancing in a way that Denon saw as sexual, or simply that they danced with a technique that made Denon think of sex?  It is hard to say, since he is not specific in describing what they did, only in the things it called up for him.

     We see here a festival in which the dancers were males, and given the later reluctance of the sheiks to bring female dancers out in front of the French soldiers, you have to wonder if the absence of female dancers was related to concern about how the French would treat them.

At Metumis:

We requested of the sheiks a sight of the almees, a description of female dancers similar to those of India.  These chiefs, a part of whose revenues they probably constituted, made some difficulty in allowing them to be brought into our presence.  If polluted by the inspection of infidels, their reputation might suffer, and they might perhaps even be obliged to forfeit their condition in life.  The vileness of a christian in the eyes of a mussulman may be estimated from this anecdote, since the objects which are the most dissolute and abandoned in this sect, may notwithstanding be profaned by the view of a European.  The preference, however, of the general, together with that of two hundred soldier, and some old offences for which the shieks had an atonement to make, soon removed every obstacle.   The almes arrived; and we could not perceive that they participated in the slightest degree in the political considerations and religious scruples of the sheiks.  They made some difficulty, however, and that with a tolerable share of grace, in granting what we should have considered as the smallest of their favors, that of uncovering the eyes and mouth.  In a little time their forms were completely displayed through colored gauze fastened by a sash, which they tightened from time to time negligently, and with an air of levity no means disagreeable, and somewhat a la francaise.  they had brought with them two instruments, a pipe and tabour, and a kind of drum, made from an earthen pot, on which the musician beat with his hands.  They were seven in number.  Two of them began dancing, while the others sung, with an accompaniment of castanets, in the shape of cymbals, and of the size of a crown piece.  The movement they displayed in striking them against each other gave infinite grace to their fingers and wrists.  At the commencement the dance was voluptuous: it soon after became lascivious, and expressed, in the grossest and most indecent way, the giddy transport of the passions.  The disgust which this spectacle excited, was heightened by one of the musicians of whom I have just spoken, and who, at the moment when the dancers gave the greatest freedom to their wanton gestures and emotions, with the stupid air of a clown in a pantomime, interrupted with a loud burst of laughter the scene of intoxication which was to close the dance. 

Commentary:  The local leaders, the shieks, did not want the almées to perform for the French military.  Why would this be?  The reason Denon gives is that the French, and non-Muslims, would profane the almées by looking at them: even the almées, whose reputation was low in their own culture, were still capable of being spoiled by being seen (let alone used as prostitutes) by the French.  Maybe Denon was right, but it makes you wonder if there’s not more to it – perhaps previous encounters with French (or other Western) soldiers or travelers that led the almee to fear more concrete attacks than just being looked at by infidels.  This event took place in ____ after 2 years of French military presence in Egypt, and as Karin van Niewkirk points out, ___ years before this, there had been no problem with the traveler ___ being allowed to see the almees.  Mistreatment at the hands of the military or by other travelers might explain the change. 

Interestingly, the almées do not want to remove their face veils for the French, though they are eventually persuaded to do so.  This seems to indicate a desire to maintain personal modesty against the French: doing their job, as they are required to do, but drawing the line at personalized contact.  (Dancers are usually shown unveiled and it seems that that was how they usually performed, so this is somewhat unusual.) 

Denon describes the almées’ dance as lascivious, as he does the dance of the male performers above, and perhaps it was.  He may also have been misreading the technique of hip articulation.  When he mentions the musician who laughs at the end of the dance, he may be remarking on someone playing the role of ____ that is described by van Niewkirk in dance troupes of the 1980’s, who joked with the audience and collected tips.  If Denon interpreted spirited shimmies as imitations of passion, and noted that they were reaching a crescendo, laughter might have seemed out of place.  But if the dance performance represents celebration and good feeling, then the laughter does not seem so bizarre.

His description shows male musicians, and an ensemble of some kind of flute ( a nay?), a clarinet, and a darbukka, while the dancers accompany themselves on zils.  It also reflects the fact that the almees were singer/dancers, and that our tendency to separate the two roles as different arts was not so much the case here, where the two were two different aspects of the almees' skill, together with poetic ability, education, grace and charm, not all of which is appreciated by the Western traveler.

These dancers swallowed large glasses of brandy as if it had been lemonade.  Accordingly, notwithstanding they were all young and handsome, they were haggard and jaded, with the exception of two of them, whose beauty bore so striking a resemblance to that of two of our Paris belles, that we all joined in a general exclamation when they disclosed their features.  So truly is grace a gift of nature, that Josephina and Hanka, who had received no other education than that which is bestowed on the most infamous profession in the most dissolute of cities, when the dance was ended, possessed all the delicacy of manners of the women whom they resembled, and the soft and endearing voluptuousness which they, no doubt, reserve for those on whom they lavish their secret favors.  I could have wished, I confess, that Josephine had not resembled the otehrs in her style of dancing.

Notwithstanding the licentious life of these females, they are introduced into the harems to instruct the young persons of their sex in all that may render them agreeable to their future husbands.  They give them lessons of dancing, singing, gracefulness, and, in general, all of the voluptuous attainments.  It is not surprising, that with manners which make the principle duty of women to consist in bestowing pleasure, those who follow the profession of gallantry should be the teachers of the fair sex.  They are admitted to the festivals which the grandees give to those of their own rank; and when, from time to time, a husband wishes to entertain his harem in a particular manner, they are also sent for.  This is what composes the subject on plate 50.  (230-35)

Commentary: Professional dancers in the Middle East often did (or do) display behaviors that are masculine (such as publicly conducting business or drinking alcohol, and talking to unrelated men).  The French are surprised by the way they do it, but it has been argued that this adoption of masculine habit and style is deliberate, to take the professional dancer away from the connection of feminine shame.