gp

Thanks to Ariel and his shaska topic which gave me the idea for this topic.

First it brought me back to my own pencak silat days. With Pencak Silat each student has to prove his graduation for each degree by fighting against a virtual opponent AND move in sync on Indonesian music. The latter being imperative. Below an example by a friend of mine in NL
Followed by 2 exhibition performances from Indonesia as performances are also accompanied by music.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_WlJ9D29FQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQT...t_radio=1&t=116
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2w...k_Iu_7Y&index=3

Back to the shaska:

First let me explain about a very interesting traditional dance in the Caucasus : the Lezginka.

Interesting because it is not only cross-border but also cross religion and centuries old. You name it ( Dagestan, Chechnya, Ossetia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, the Cherkess and Georgia), they all dance it
It is both slow and fast in which the female stands for grace and purity, hency portrays a swan gliding across the water in her dance movements.
Whilst the male is the protector, ruler of the sky and claims the territory and portrays an eagle. Powerfull and fierce.

A nice example is this one :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEW8bDQTBBg
As with all dances it developed / evolved from a wedding dance to an identity dance to show strenght and pride (remember the eagle...) and became a seperate or single male dance as well
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIkO9E_Wyc0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6sYGTpaacA

but the Caucasus has also strong women, so some don't dance like a swan but...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUKpJz6Tk6o
(poor husband...)
or look at this lady at 0:53
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhAUnH1tvyQ


as for the shaska: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvORvTfCDH0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CtAH1utQ8w
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOEmMbiKNrs

David

gp

Moreska is a romantic war dance with swords that spread originally from the Mediterranean countries in the 12th and 13th centuries.
It is supposed that Moreška first came to Korčula (Dalmatia - Croatia) from Spain in the 16th century across the South of Italy and Dubrovnik.
Later, through centuries, Moreška disappeared from the Mediterranean with presence only in some parts, still deeply rooted in Korčula, where its today's pattern is that of of an attractive war dance with real swords

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqUa7KxPmyU

excerpt from an article "Blackened Faces and a Veiled Woman: The Early Korcula Moreska" By Harris, Max; Feldman, Lada Cale



Mock battles between Moors (or Turks) and Christians are one of the most popular features of the folk theatrical repertoire almost anywhere that Spanish culture was once dominant. Beginning, perhaps, in the late thirteenth century, and varying in form from small dances to massive street theater, they are still immensely popular along Spain's Mediterranean coast and throughout much of Latin America. Scholars have tended to pay most attention to the traditions westward travels from Spain to the Americas, where the conquered peoples often insinuated a "hidden transcript" of indigenous resistance into the "public transcript" of European Catholic triumph. But the tradition also traveled eastward to parts of Italy and Germany under Spanish rule and, further, to parts of eastern Europe not ruled by but engaged in trade and diplomatic relations with Spain. One such place in eastern Europe where the tradition still thrives is the medieval walled city of Korcula on the Croatian island of the same name.

The island of Korcula sits in the Adriatic Sea, close to the mainland and about equidistant between Split and Dubrovnik. Known to Greek antiquity, because of its thick woods, as Korkyra Melaina (Black Korcula) and to the Romans as Corcyra Nigra, its strategic position on the Adriatic trade route between Europe and the East has meant that the island has been governed by external imperial powers for much of its history. Venice, the most frequent and longstanding of these, ruled the island for a brief period after 1000 and, again, in 1125/29-1180, 1254-1358, and 1420-1797. Korculan attitudes to Venetian rule were ambivalent at best. In the last and longest of these periods, the only realistic alternative to Christian rule by Venice was Muslim rule by the Ottoman Turks. Korculans, according to Vinko Foretic, grudgingly preferred the former, "with all its evils," to the latter. Testimony to an enduring Korculan resentment of Venetian rule can also be found in the still popular legend of the Crnomiri (Black Peace) brothers, reputed to have led an uprising against the first Venetian duke of Korcula, Petar Orseolo, in 1000.

The island has a rich heritage of traditional sword dances. Five villages boast kumpanije (companies) whose members perform a linked sword dance, varying slightly from one village to the next. The city of Korcula has two groups that perform a traditional moreska, a mock-combat sword dance in which two sides, variously identified as Whites and Blacks, Christians and Moors, or Turks and Moors, clash swords over the fate of a veiled young woman. The dramatic narrative of the moreska clearly locates the dance in the widespread tradition of mock battles among Muslims and Christians mentioned earlier.

The authors of this article have seen the moreska performed on several different occasions: at the opening ceremony of the Dubrovnik Summer Festival; at the opening of Korcula's annual Festival of Sword Dances, organized since 1997 by the island's Tourist Board; and in its traditional setting on 29 July, the feast day of Sveti Todor (St. Theodore). The traditional moreska on the feast day of Sveti Todor used to last a full two hours. To cater to the recent influx of tourists, the dance is now performed some fifty times a year in a shortened version, lasting only half an hour. The longer version, which involved more repetitions of the same dance figures, is no longer staged.

Today's moreska begins with a scene in which the Black (Moorish) King drags the chained and veiled Bula (Muslim woman) into the playing area. He pleads his love. She protests her allegiance to the White King, whom she calls by the distinctively Turkish name Osman. The two "armies" follow, each consisting of an equal number of dancers, usually between eight and twelve apiece. After a vaunting exchange between the Black and White Kings, the two sides perform a series of seven figures, in which clashing swords cause frequent sparks to fly. …

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The Rugova war dance (Albanian: Vallja me shpata e Rugovës or Loja Luftarake e Rugovës; Serbian: Борбена руговска игра) is a traditional Albanian sword dance named after the Rugova region in Kosovo.


Description

Rugova dance is considered a relic of the war dances (Albanian: valle luftarake), the remnants of pantomimic dances performed in the re-enactment or preparation of battles.
The dance is performed by two male dancers who fight a mock battle for the hand of a girl (a "maiden's dance"


It was made internationally famous by the Kosovo Albanian Rugova clans (hailing from Kelmend in Albania).
The dance is also found in mountainous Montenegro, where a tribe of shepherds settled in the 18th century.

source: wiki

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8shckj-fXY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5i4qS0brMw


2 paintings :
The Sword Dance (1890) by Paja Jovanović.
The Sword Dance (1885) by Jean-Léon Gérôme.

Attached Images

  

Sajen

Have posted this a while back, it's the war dance from Halmahera called Cakalele: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_...eature=emb_logo

Filmed from my wife in beginning of this year.

gp

into some romance...? but be warned...."not for the faint-hearted"


The knife dance is a Persian wedding ritual. The bridesmaids swipe the cake knife and the groom has to pay up to get the knife back.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZiGSNmKKsvY

gp

Sioux ghost and buffalo dance filmed by Thomas Edison in 1894
(only the first 20 secs one can clearly see some weapons

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQGW5a0q51w