The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1889-06-09
SCENES AT THE EXPOSITION.
Beautiful Women of Strange Nations
Performing Graceful Dances.


Paris Letter to the London World
In this part of the esplanade of the expo
sition there is an amusing population of
Arabs, Jews, negroes, Moors, some loafing,
others making jewelry or pottery or bas-
kets, others selling babouches, essence Of
roses and all the trumpery of the Oriental
bazars. The air is perfumed with incense
and tobacco and the vague odors of tine
east. Here is a Tunisian concert, where
company of very ugly Jewesses sing
through their noses-a miserable place,
not worth visiting. Here is an Algerian
ing corners Of this worlds fair. Imagine
bright patio, decorated with arcades and
panels OF tiles and arabesques of pale green
and blue tones, and forming a cosy cafe,
with stools and tables with gay polychrome
ceramic tops; to the eft a little kitchen,
where a negro makes Turkish coffee over
burning charcoal in the approved fashion,
along one side of the room low stage COW
cred with cushions, on which are seated jew
ish and Arab dancing women, negroes.
negresses and Arab musicians, all clad in
the most brilliant costumes after their own
hearts. The orchestra consists of tarabou-
kehs, or drums mads of earthen pots with
skin stretched over the orifice, Lutte or
eoud, big drum, tambourine and a
shrill hautbois, which an Arab plays with
cheeks furiously pulled out, producing
notes of a rhythm whose mor6idesse hyp-
notises.
The women, grave as idols, their fingers
stained with kohl or henna, accompany the
shrill air of the hautbois with nervous beat
ing of their taraboukehs. and from time to
time, as If to break the hypnotic spell, q
negro will shrek for a few seconds like a
steam whistle, causing his voice to uudulate
between two notes. Meanwhile, one of the
women dances, not rs people dance in So
ciety or even at the theater, but the dance
that represents the eternal anorous
theme on which each nation has
embroidered its own fancies, and
of which each nation except ours
has made its national dance. She is a girl
of IL or 10, with dark melancholy eyes,
regular features, blue-black hair looped in
braids over her cheeks; on her head she
wears sort of jeweled mitre, from which
hang chains of silver meeting beneath her
chin and joining massive silver arabesques
studded with rough stones and serving as
buckles for the green silver-spangled
drapery over her shoulders; her skirts
of pale red and brown hang loosely
down to the ground, showing only her bare
brown feet. Her dancing is mere cadenced
movement, with long undulations of the
body or little convulsive stampings of the
feet, accompanied by writhing and wav-
ing of the arms continued to the finger-tips,
by throwing back of the head, or by an
extension Of the hands forward in the
gesture of entreaty, the whole expressing,
with much modesty and quite literal
mimicry, tender drama of passion, of
defense against the invisible lover who
speaks to her by the voice of the hautbois,
of refusal that means consent. of consent
that still resists, long pantomime, during
which the supple and caressing body of the
girl moves incessantly, and expresses ex-
treme emotions, which end in a terrible
charivari of hautbois and drums only when
both dancer and musicians are exhausted
by fatigue.
At the other end Of the Esplanade DIES
Invalides, in the Javapese kampong, may
be seen a dance Of similarly exotic caarac-
ter This village is Inhabited by some
threescore Javanese workmen and their
wives, Tho make hats and other small
articles of commerce. In one corner of tn Q
village is a concert room of bamboo and
thatch, and a Javanese orchestra Of
drums, lutes and tympanums, formed,
some of bars of metal, and others
of brazen pots with lids composed of
two superpoSed hemispheres The orches-
ira occupies whole OF the back of the
stage, the men squasting cross-legged and
disc 1ursing strange bell-like mu'ic, while a
man and a woma perform mimic dance,
with writings and contortioas of the body
and limbs, less graceful than those of the
Arab dance, but still curiously fascinating
il their almost hieratic gravity.
There are also four young dancing girls
belonging to the king, who are types Of
Japanese beauty, and the greatest coquettes
in the exhibition. Their skins are brown,
their feet and legs up to the knee are dyel
saffron yellow, their bodies are clad with
richly embroidered stuffs, their couture is a
wonderful gold helmet wrought into
arabesques Of flowers and animals, and sur
mounted by a crescent OF black feathers;
their arms are loaded with bracelets.
their eyes heightened with an upturned
tail of blue palut, and in the center of
their brows are a blue circumhex accet t
and gold spangle. These girls are beauti-
full with the regular beauty of Indian idols,
but they chatter like magpies, make faces
at the public and scott at the dowdine and
puritanism of the Parisiennes. One Of these
little ladies, intervie wed yesterday through
the Intermediary Of an amiable Dutchman
who has lived for years in the Indies, de-
clared that she found Paris rather slow, the
Parisians austere and averse to luxury, and
the general aspect of things in Paris want
ing in gliding and umbrellas.