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Old 4th June 2011, 07:00 PM   #50
ariel
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Join Date: Dec 2004
Location: Ann Arbor, MI
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Every ethnicity that was using swords as weapons had a dance with swords. No surprise here.
Just to clarify. I have never heard of a Russian sword dance called Buza. Dance with Sabers by Khachaturyan is a choreografic invention. While there were caucasian sword dances in the Caucasus, Khachaturyan's 's example cannot serve as an authentic evidence. Ukrainian Combat Hopak is a recent invention of Ukrainian nationalists claiming that most, if not all, Western culture stems from an ancient tribe called Ukr and that Sanskrit is just a bastardized ancient Ukrainian language ( I am not joking). Hopak is an old Ukrainian dance and has nothing to do with swords or martial arts ( unless we call every male dance martial). Combat Hopak is just an amalgam of Tae Quon Do, karate and a host of other east asian martial arts performed while wearing voluminous ukrainian pants. Fake from the beginning to the end. Generally all sword dances are just examples of male strutting. Re-phrasing Eli Wallach in " The good, the bad and the ugly", If you want to cut, cut. Don't dance.
Old Omani Kattara looks to me like an ossified tradition of pre-islamic arabian swords. See old mamluk swords in Yucel's and Aydin's books.
Daghestani armourers at the end of the 19th century made their living by mass-exporting their rather poorly-made blades to Arabia ( perhaps, the connection was via tens of thousands of Circassian and Daghestanis emigrating to the Ottoman lands in the 1870's). Shamil died in Medina, his son not far from there.
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