Dancing between art and politics

Dance is an ancient art that has been witnessed by different civilizations. It was practiced by humans on various occasions. The god “Bes” is the god of dance in the Pharaonic civilization. The coffins of the Pharaohs carried pictures of dancing figures, as if expressing the joy of meeting in the other world, or a desire to create a joyful atmosphere in the world of the dead, within the rituals of the ancient “funeral dance.”

Dance associated with religious occasions was present in the temples of Sumer and Mesopotamia, and was witnessed by the civilizations of Persia, India, Central Asia, the temples of the Greek gods, and the ancient civilizations of the Americas. There are those who say that dance was originally a kind of prayer to the ancient gods, as evidenced by the rain dances offered to the gods of fertility, and the dances of the shamanic religion that are performed to bring the wrath of the gods upon enemies, or to implore the victory of the "spirits" and other purposes. Some primitive tribes of forest dwellers in Latin America, Africa, and others still practice some religious rituals and rites in dance movements.

The Holy Quran tells us that dancing rituals were practiced during the Hajj season to Mecca before Islam, “And their prayer at the House was nothing but whistling and clapping of hands.” The books of the Prophet’s biography tell us that the people of Yathrib welcomed the Prophet of Islam, peace be upon him, with dancing and singing, as an expression of their joy at his arrival. Dancing still holds a symbolic religious status among Islamic Sufi groups, and there are different types of this Sufi dance that reshapes the movements of the body to a purely spiritual rhythm.

Many politicians have practiced dancing throughout the political history of nations and peoples. Politicians have jumped from sinking ships to semi-saving ones. Politicians have practiced the monkey dance, jumping from one branch to another, from one tree to another. In 2011, political dancing was a clear feature when the “Arab Spring” struck regimes in the region. At that time, these politicians reserved a place for themselves on the ships that sailed through the turbulent waves of the spring. Then, when the wind blew again, they jumped to other ships, with the grace of circus performers or ballet dancers.

If politics is a dance, then the late Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh believed that politics and governance in Yemen were a special dance, similar to the “dance of death” of slaughtered birds, “dancing on the heads of snakes,” as he put it. It is a frightening dance, because the one dancing here has two tasks: the first is to practice the dance, and the second is to pay attention to the head of the snake, as he looks at the audience with one eye and places the other on the heads of those deadly reptiles. President Saleh excelled at this “dance of death” for decades, and was skilled at it, but perhaps he forgot that snakes, as they prepare for their deadly bite, also practice a kind of dance, and this is what happened when he was fatally bitten by one of the snakes.

Saleh was not the only one who was dancing. Dancing, as he mentioned, is also a characteristic of snakes, which are good at changing their movements while dancing, just as they are good at changing their skin. Victoria Clark wrote a book about Saleh, quoting the Yemeni president’s phrase “dancing on the heads of snakes.” The title of her book was: “Dancing on the Heads of the Snakes.” She recorded her observations about a political experience in a country where one of its ministers believed that the best way to deal with the Houthis in Yemen was to “strike with an iron fist,” before they entered Sana’a. This minister later assumed one of the most important positions in Yemen for the Houthis, namely, the mayor of the capital, Sana’a.

Politics, then, is the field most associated with dance, not only because of the relationships that linked famous dancers to politicians and major leaders, nor because of the employment of dancers for political purposes, nor because some of them work in the field of espionage, but also because dance and politics share many similarities that have been written about a lot, as both fields aim to win over and direct the audience, through body movements, as in dance, or tongue movements, as in politics. Just as dance is an art, politics is also an art, and art depends primarily on talent, then comes training and education to hone the talent that entertains the audience, as in dance, or deceives it, as in politics.

*Quoted from Al-Quds Al-Arabi