a long piece of silk, a long time

[ Follow-ups ] [ Post Follow-up ] [ The Henna Page Discussion Forum ] [ FAQ ]

Posted by Catherine Cartwright Jones on January 16, 2000 at 01:07:09:

I've recently found an art piece of a lady doing a dance, with hennaed
hands and feet ... she's depicted dancing elegantly with a long silk
scarf (maybe 18" x 90"?) . The scarf is drawn almost in a
"jump-rope-over-the-head" position and the lady is sort of skipping
and swaying. The rest of her clothing is very, very beautiful. It's
a Byzantine piece, about c. 1000, from Cappadocia, Turkey. Is there
a name for a dance done with a long silk scarf? Is it still done?

There are soooo many pictures of women musicians and dancers with
henna, from 1400 BCE forward, it amazes me! Ishtar and Astarte were
protectresses of these ladies, and both of them are depicted as
hennaed in at least one artifact..... Ladies in the
courtesan - entertainment (dancers, singers, musicians, sex workers)
industry are the most likely in art (1400 BCE to 1970) to be depicted
as hennaed, and most likely in poetry to be described as hennaed,
tattooed, and harquused in all countries that did henna .... though
perhaps wives hennaed equally but are simply underrepresented in art
and poetry.

Poem about a Tamil dancing girl from c. 300 or so, Oreruravanar ...
she surely would have been hennaed, judging from paingings of the
period :

"Her arms have the beauty of a gently moving bamboo.
Her eyes are full of peace.
She is faraway,
her place not easy to reach.

My heart is frantic
with haste,
a plowman with a single ox
on a land all wet
and ready for seed."

After all these centuries of ladies who had a very precarious
difficult life, and brought to it some tremendous survival skills and
sometimes brilliant intelligence and artistry, it was sad, in all the
research, to notice that a recent health study of the dancing girl
industry in Lahore, Pakistan, found 80% of the girls tested positive
for AIDS.....

Follow-ups:


Post a Follow-up

Name:
E-Mail:

Subject:

Comments:

Optional Link URL:
Link Title:
Optional Image URL:

[ Follow-ups ] [ Post Follow-up ] [ The Henna Page Discussion Forum ] [ FAQ ]