It is enough to say that the dancer, arms outstretched, with a passionate air, singing and accompanying herself with castanets, stands in one place and performs movements of the body that even passion takes care to hide in the shadow of the night. But, by degrees, we learned to endure them, and for want of better, began to fancy some of them pretty, to imagine their voices agreeable, their movements graceful, though indecent, and their music not absolutely intolerable. Their song is monotonous, slow, singularly primitive and absolutely foreign to musical ideas in our countries, yet it has an indefinable charm. This dance was a slow rhythmical gliding, swinging the swords and torches in time. It was a beautiful sight.
Hours pass and it is difficult to tear oneself away.
This is the way the motions of the dancing girls of Asia affect the senses. There is no variety or vivacity, and seldom is there a variation through any sudden movement, but the rhythmic wheeling exhales a delightful torpor upon the soul, like an almost hynotic intoxication. One is reminded of things growing, of the natural world rather than the human. The following is an account of an event that I went to during a visit to the United Arab Emirates. In 1982, when my parents lived in Abu Dhabi, Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan al Nahyan's daughter got married.