Serpent of the Nile: Women and Dance in the Arab World: Amazon.ca: Wendy Buonaventura: Books

Product Description

From Publishers Weekly

A study of the history of the Middle Eastern solo woman's dance.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

'A delight to browse through and just as interesting to read...sumptuously illustrated.' Time Out 'A lively and lavishly illustrated excursion into the history of the solo woman's dance.' The New York Times Book Review

See all Product Description

Tag this product

(What's this?)

Think of a tag as a keyword or label you consider is strongly related to this product.
Tags will help all customers organize and find favorite items.

Customer Reviews

9 Reviews

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

Average Customer Review

3.9 out of 5 stars (9 customer reviews)

Share your thoughts with other customers:

Create your own review

Most helpful customer reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Inspirational, but Flawed, July 26 2001

By

Teresa Noelle Roberts (Mansfield, MA USA) - See all my reviews

Wendy Buonaventura obviously loves raks baladi ("country" or folkloric belly dance) with a passion. As sometimes happens with authors passionate about a subject, she unfortunately treats her opinions as facts upon occasion. As a dancer, I love the glorious Orientalist pictures, early 20th-century photos and fascinatingly slanted accounts from Western travellers, and I love her feelings for the dance. It's a beautiful book to peruse, and you can get some marvelous ideas for theatrical costuming from it. But like the Orientalists she reviews, Buonaventura presents an exotic and monolithic Middle East, where Egypt represents this entire diverse region and where nothing changes over time. She also perpetuates the popular myth that this is a *women's* dance, whereas in truth both sexes dance at private functions, and in both Egypt and Turkey, men historically performed as well. (Western tourists just weren't interested!) Read this for its lovely artwork and, if you're a dancer, for a feel-good spiritual connection with earlier dancers--but if you're interested in the subject of dance history, do some further research. And if you are involved in the Society for Creative Anachronism, PLEASE don't use this book for costume documentation. Egyptian clothing pre-1600 was very, very different.

Help other customers find the most helpful reviews

Was this review helpful to you? Yes No

Report abuse

2.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful book, but needs to be read with scepticism..., Jan 5 2006

By

A Dancer (Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Serpent of the Nile: Women and Dance in the Arab World (Paperback)

The best points of this book are undoubtedly the lavish illustrations. The book is full of paintings, photographs, etc depicting dancers from the Middle Eastern region. A beautiful book to flip through.

I credit the author for writing a book like this, one of the few on the subject, but this book has many serious flaws that can't be overlooked.

Many of the statements she makes in this book are not backed up with a source or reference, and some of those statements have been disputed by other readers as inaccurate. A check on other dance-related websites for reviews and discussions on the topic can reveal this.

As well, there are areas in this book where the author injects her personal opinion about the cabaret style of bellydance, the style most familiar to western audiences. The opinions she presented were one-sided and quite negative. I view this as rather unethical, since a reader unfamiliar with the dance could take her opinions as fact.

If you're looking for some general information about the history of Middle Eastern dance, and are prepared to take this book with a large grain of salt, go ahead and enjoy. If you're looking for a serious history, with well researched and solid information, do your homework on this book, and then keep looking.

Help other customers find the most helpful reviews

Was this review helpful to you? Yes No

Report abuse

2.0 out of 5 stars great pictures but..., Aug 29 2000

By A Customer

The quality and quantity of pictures in this book is wonderful and there is also some good information but unfortunately all the information is not very accurate and there are even many things that are not true. As a book this is nice to watch but as this book has become "a bible of belly dance" when other more accurate documents have been hard to find I can't rate this higher because readers tend to believe everything that is written here.

Help other customers find the most helpful reviews

Was this review helpful to you? Yes No

Report abuse

Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review

› See all 9 customer reviews on Amazon.ca

Want to see more reviews on this item?

› Go to Amazon.com to see all 15 reviews 3.9 out of 5 stars

Most recent customer reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars Or, Belly Dancing for Dummies! A Good Resource and Accessory
"Serpent of the Nile" is a wonderful book for anyone with an interest in Middle Eastern Dance, which is currently gaining tremendous popularity in the West. Read more

Published on July 25 2000 by Divia Thani

5.0 out of 5 stars beautiful pictures!
A great book to keep for your library. It's going to be tempting to take some of the pages out of this book and frame them! Interesting content, also.

Published on Jan 25 2000