there is no "Sephardic dance"

[Judith R Cohen <judithc...>]

hi, there is no one phenomenon "Sephardic dance".

> >, Judith Brin Ingber studies and performs Sephardic dance. She wrote a 
> > piece on it that ran in JFER some years ago.

Judith Brin, a lovely and knowledgeable dancer and person, does not
"perform Sephardic dance". SHe performs Judith Brin dance, which her
group presents, if not explicitly, then implicitly, as "Sephardic
dance", and this has led to some innovative and aesthetically very
satisfying performances, but also to misleading notions of the existence
of "Sephardic dance".

Then, by Sephardic , do you mean specifically related to Judeo-SPanish
culture? or to "pan-Sephardic" (i..e. the putative opposite of
Ashkenazi) ?

If pan-Sephardic, it's a different story - there is Yemenite dance, many
of whose steps and stylings, as you know, have been adapted by
choreographers to Israeli dance. There is Bukharan Jewish dance, which
I'm not knowledgeable enough to compare in detail to Bukharan non-Jewish
dancew, but is similar, anyway. 

If it's Judeo_Spanish culture, then it depends on the area. In Morocco
(leaving out non-Hispanic Morocco for the moment), what I've always seen
done at weddings is what it occurs to me to dub "kosher belly dance" -
basically a discreet, (fully garbed of course), style of oriental dance
with a certain economy of movement, but I don't think it's terribly
different from what other Moroccans would do. Young Sephardic girls
often studied Spanish dance in Spanish Morocco, but not as "Jewish" at
all. In fact, I've heard criticisms of people singing Moroccan
Judeo-Spanish songs as "she's too infl;uenced by flamenco".

In the former Ottoman areas, one danced "a la turca" or "a la franca".
"A la turca" was the east Mediterranean parallel, basically, to what
I've just described for Morocco. "A la franca" referred to the rage for
French culture in the early 20th century, "franca" meaning French but
extended to "European" or "Western", and came to include foxtrot, etc.,
much as Yiddish culture adapted, say, the quadrille.There is an old
Master's thesis about these two forms as practiced by ROdesli Jews in
Los ANgeles; I have a copy around somewhere, I think. 

There is also a description in an old article by Nikolai Kaufman about
Bulgarian Jews doing a wedding dance to one song which involved a sort
of mime going forwards and backwards and greeting among the new in-laws.
But I don't know whether it was influenced by the adjacent Ashkenazi
community in Bulgaria. Finally, there is one solitary Moroccan kids-type
mime dance with a little song (it's on one of our Gerineldo recordings,
Biba Orduenya) - the "this is how you plant, this is how you sow the
seed" etc. The song exists in several Hispanic (and French and other)
cultures; and the Sephardim of the Ottoman area sing it too, with a
different tune. It also exists, with similar movements , in the Canary
ISlands. There has been a lot of speculation about how old it is and
whether it was adapted by Jews fairly recently, or not, and so on: the
Moroccanversion in any case is a modern tune, the eastern a little less
so. 

That';s about it! Anedote: years ago, when I was doing extensive field
research among Montreal Sephardim for my dissertation, I watched a young
(then) Israeli-French folk dance teacher earnestly and gracefully
teaching Israeli folk dance to a group of Moroccan Jewish women, all in
their 60s or 70s or even 880s, many with their hair dyed resolutely
jet-black, make-up, gold jewellery, often fairly largely and comfortably
built, and all elegantly and carefully dressed. They dutifully took
hands and followed the steps at Maurice's behest. Then he put the music
on - and they immediately all dropped their hands and, each
individually, went into the "kosher belly dance" routine.

best, Judith





 

 
> > I'm not knowledgeable enough to know what scholars make of her dance and/or 
> > writing, but URL below, fyi.
> > 



> Just wondering, is there anyone who has done research on the dances of Jews 
> of Sephardic origin; i.e., how do/did Jewish dances
> in places like Morrocco or Salonika differ or resemble the dances of the 
> surrounding culture?
>  
> I've never come across these sorts of dances--only Israeli dances that 
> utilize Sephardic melodies but don't attempt to show the
> actual dances of Sephardic Jews.  I know there are performing troupes but 
> haven't had the opportunity to see any of them out here.
>  

> Best,
>

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