Cane, Staff, Sword, Sceptre
a Workshop with
Andrea Deagon

Workshop Goal: To explore images and archetypal meanings of the cane (staff, sword, sceptre) in the Middle East, with the goal of adding richness and meaning to our performances of raqs al assaya and sword dances.  We will begin with the broader picture – archetypal gestures and poses with canes in antiquity and the present.  Then we will look at the meanings and images of the cane within Egyptian culture.  Throughout, we will be exploring these ideas through imitation and response to visual images.

Part I: Warmups  

(In the opening part of the workshop, we will use the cane as a kinaesthetic object, and focus on how we move in relation to it.)

Part II: Images

• Paidia – “play” – effects of balancing; kinaesthetic responses
• Peking opera – triumph and conflict
• Morris dancers – cane and travel; conducting (others, energies?)
• Sahure’s pyramid, deities’ canes – different postures
• Ptah – divinity, authority, masculine/feminine
• Scribes – cross-body positions
• Ibn Saud – tradition; sceptre
• Bedouins – travelers, masculine
• Shepherd – many images (Shepherd dance, cane and pot)
• Coffee grinding – pounding and grinding – stirring the cook pot
• Opium pipe – luxury and authority, intoxication?
• Maenads – torches and thyrsus (spear, creative tool, gender, shared emblem, the wild)
• Dervishes – shamanism, beaters, spears, hunting

Part III: Combat and Culture

• Veiled women and completeness – dancing with a cane?
• Tahtib – combat within community, individual and society
• Tahtib kinaesthetics – extended, fast (feet), rotation &  extension, engagement
• Musket dance – dance with weapons
• Sword dances – orientalizing ideas
• Assaya as masculine thing – always there
• Feminine – cane on belly
• Authority to “speak” in social contexts
• Social interactions reflected in cane play – combat of genders?