Women and dance in the Arab world

"I think it is the most eloquent of female dances, with its haunting lyricism, its fire, its endlessly shifting kaleidoscope of sensual movement." With these words Wendy Buonaventura explains her own fascination with Arabic dance. Her book is a unique celebration of the female dancers of the Arab world, and their impact on the West. She explains the origins, history and development of this ancient art, which has survived in the face of commercialism, religious disapproval and changing times.

Focusing on the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, she shows 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 exerted a powerful influence on the Western imagination - on such writers as Flaubert, such artists as David Roberts and Jean-Léon Gérôme, and such imitators as Colette and Mata Hari. Their fascination was often based on common fantasies about the women of the Middle East. Yet, as the book's magnificent illustrations show, this obsession also produced wonderfully evocative images. At the turn of the century, the genre also had an impact on fashion, theater and popular entertainment.

Wendy Buonaventura is a writer and dancer who has pioneered the development of Arabic dance as a theater art in the West. She has taught and performed widely throughout the U.S., Europe and the Middle East.