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I first learned this older Vintage Orientale way of skirt swirling in the 1970s from my teachers who were dancers from the 1960s in New York. Our teachers taught us that this was a Turkish dance and that it was done to the Turkish 9/8 karsilama rhythm. It lends itself nicely to the 9/8 time signature since there is that extra beat at the end of each measure. Most people thought it was based on a traditional Turkish genre because this is what WE had been taught. Many of us even taught it as a dance that was based on Turkish styling. When I taught it, I was clear about what theatrical material I had added but I thought it had Turkish roots too. As soon as I realized that it was not Turkish based, I corrected myself and that was around 1994. The obligation of doing good research is that we must constantly revise our theories as we gather new information - even if this means that we must refute ourselves.

I did see some skirt swirling in the clubs in New York and in the DC clubs in the 1970s. In the early 1980s, there was a bit more skirt dancing added within the song but it was not done for the majority of the song. Of course, I can’t claim that I witnessed everything that was out there but in my corner of the dance world (mostly DC and NY) that is how it looked.. I really liked it and I wanted to see more of it and I tried to add more of it to my show. But my teachers corrected me because they were not doing it for any extended period within the song. It was just a colorful and flamboyant thing that we all did for part of the karsilama (which was usually the opening song or the finale song of a show). My theory is that other people were liking it simultaneously and that they too were wanting to add more to their shows throughout the country. I am hoping to learn more about these other artists. But it was Dalia Carella who developed this concept into a new dance in 1985. She did not do it in a cabaret costume and she took it to the United States on a grand scale. It was born from the cabaret roots but it took on a different personality and became a different dance all together. See below.

SKIRT DANCING IS NOT TURKISH

Every time I went to Turkey, I tried to find skirt dancing. I saw dancers, interviewed people and watched footage of Oriental dancers and Rromany dancers and did not see anything like the extended skirt work that we were doing in the US cabarets. I have researched Turkish dance extensively and after 16 trips to Turkey I can say that I have never seen an entire dance done with skirt swirling or gesturing. Nor did I see any extended skirt dancing within a song. The professional Oriental dance costumes now incorporate very little yardage in the skirts so there was nothing to swirl. But before, when the skirts had more fabric, I saw only a few flicks or swirls of the skirt but it was only minimal. I have seen some Rromany gestures that look like washing or wringing out the skirt or fluffing it to shake the water off. I have seen Turkish Oriental dancers in costume (who are sometimes Rrom) and Rromany women in their everyday clothes in the village who were dancing with these gestures. But this may take up 30 seconds at the most within a song (usually less). Note that I am making a distinction between “swirls” and “gestures” here.

There are numerous Ottoman accounts of the famous dancing boys of Turkey who were female impersonators. They performed all of the women’s dances and they were from many ethnic groups. The most famous ones were the Rrom. There is mention that while spinning, the skirts of the koceks opened and billowed around them. There is ample footage today of  koceks dancing and you can see that while spinning, they occasionally flick the skirts up with their hands to force the skirts to stay open and continue to billow. It is very likely that this is a carry over from the billowing skirts of the Ottoman dancing boys but this has not been proven academically.

SKIRT DANCING IS NOT A RROMANY DANCE

As far as the skirt dance being a Rromany dance, some Rromany cultures would never touch their skirts while dancing as touching the skirt is considered to be “mahrime” or taboo. Years ago, I had an interesting thing happen to me. My friend Sani Rifate of Voice of Roma is a Rrom from Kosovo. His people have lived there for over 700 years. They were influenced by Turkish culture but they are from a different lineage. His mother payed me a very high compliment when she told me that I danced like her grandmother. But she later told Sani that although she liked my dancing very much, he should take me aside and privately tell me not to touch my skirt since that is “Mahrime.” This taboo does not exist for the Turkish Rromany women when dancing, what is taboo in many Rromany cultures may not be taboo in others.

There are Rromany dances from other countries where flourishing and swirling the skirt IS a small part of what the women do. You can see this in some of the Rromany dances of India, Russia, Spain and Turkey (see above). It is not a dance “all by itself” in the Turkish, Russian, Indian or Spanish Rromany dance repertoires. Thus, we see that skirt dancing is NOT a Rromany dance on its own, but rather skirt flourishes are A PART OF other dances. These other dances constitute SOME BUT NOT ALL of the Rromany dances from these countries.

SKIRT DANCING CAME FROM AMERICAN DANCERS

As I mentioned before, in the 1960s and 1970s, the skirt dancing was present but fairly minimal. In the 1980s some of the cabaret dancers in America were expanding on their skirt vocabulary. We added a somewhat more elaborate section of skirt work and we did it for a slightly longer part of the song. But it was Dalia Carella who started a new trend in 1985. Her version fused some Latin dances (Flamenco from Spain, Afro Cuban and Puerto Rican) with Indian dance from India and some Turkish dance (see above). She called it “Dunyavi Gypsy Dance” and later “Dunyavi Roman Dance” and referred to it as a fusion folkloric genre. The flamenco, the Indian and the Turkish material were Rromany. Dalia also adapted some Turkish Rromany gestures that are not used with skirt and added the skirt to them. She contributed her own creative genius and that is how this Rromany laden version was born. She wore custom designed fusion Rromany/fantasy costumes with beautiful full skirts. It was Dalia who made it famous.

I was also developing my own style too. I started with the cabaret skirt swirling concept and added swirling ideas that I had observed from Russian dance and some of the flamenco I had seen while living in Spain. I added the few Turkish things that I could find, plus my own ideas and some theatrical styling that was not Middle Eastern or Rromany. I was making my own costumes and was trying to reproduce the look of the dancing boys in Turkey (who dressed as women). I still use skirt dancing in fusion performances where I am combining Turkish Oriental and contemporary Turkish Rromany with old Ottoman accounts of dancers doing floor work and playing zills or wooden spoons. I continue to add my own signature skirt swirls. I have also added fusion or fantasy costumes to my closet.

Skirt dancing has become so much associated with Turkish Rromany dance that when people invite me to teach Turkish Rromany dance workshops, the sponsors often automatically assume that this includes skirt dancing. I have learned to explain to the sponsors in advance what skirt dancing is and is not. Once they know the full story, they can then decide if this is what they really want or not. Quite often, they want me to teach some skirt work because it is so popular and it is dynamic on stage even though it is not a traditional genre. People keep insisting on calling it Turkish even after I have said hundreds of times that we used to think it was Turkish but then we learned that it is not.

As an aside, let me point out that often it is the Americans and Europeans who take an idea and develop it into a new creation. Americans did this with veil dancing. Some of the veil work that we do is far more sophisticated and elaborate than any you have ever seen in the Middle East. Their style of veil work is different from ours (although the Turkish version is more similar to ours than the Egyptian version). One noteworthy inheritance of the Vintage Orientale dance is the veil’s important role within our shows. It is much more important than in Middle Eastern countries. Americans and many Europeans may dance with a veil for a long song in a very slow tempo, where as in Turkey and the Arabic countries the veil work takes up a smaller amount of time and the music is at a slow, medium or even a faster tempo. My point is that Americans and Europeans are influencing the overall world of Middle Eastern dance. In this same way, skirt dancing became very popular in the late 1980s and early 1990s, other dancers started adding their own ideas to it. I know that Anaheed and Mesmera do really great skirt dancing and they are California dancers. It would be very interesting to learn more about them and also about the other dancers who have added skirt dancing into their repertoire. I would love to know where they got their inspiration from and how they have integrated this into their dance.

Thus we can see how American dancers created this skirt dancing genre by fusing five things. We elaborated on the Vintage Orientale use of the skirt flourishes. We fused authentic Rromany skirt flourishing into this. We used material that was not Rromany and was not Middle Eastern. We added Non-Middle Eastern stage craft. And we added our own creative input. The end result is the exciting theatrical performance pieces we see many people doing today. You will not see it in the Middle East. It is not exclusively Rromany. It is not exclusively or authentically Turkish. It is not exclusively Vintage Orientale. It IS a newer dance form that has become very popular on American, European and Tribal stages. Is it a traditional dance? No. Is it an authentic dance? Well, perhaps by now it is if you believe that something that has been around for 22 years can be classified as “authentic.”  But there is no Middle Eastern country where you can go and see this dance as part of their family of dances. That does not mean that people should not do it. It just means that the people who do this dance should have an accurate understanding of where it did and did not come from.

SKIRT DANCING - HELPFUL HINTS

I would suggest that the skirt, in this context is used as a prop and I have a few suggestions....

1. I heartily encourage dancers to be very careful not to expose too much leg when dancing with the skirt. On a raised stage, you can easily accidentally “flash” the audience and this can be distracting and offensive. It is a good idea to wear “chalvar” (also known as pantaloons or harem pants). If you do not wear chalvar, then keep the swirls low or dance as far away from the audience as possible (on a concert stage this would be upstage but take care that you are not so far back that you are out of the stage lights).

2. For the sake of good theater craft, I suggest that a solo performer should not dance to an entire song with skirt material. Rather, she should use the skirt for perhaps one verse or one chorus or at the very most, one verse and one chorus. I have seen some interesting staging of entire troupe numbers where the women did elaborate choreographed configurations with brightly colored full skirts. These bigger productions were very effective and the dancers were able to maintain the interest of the audience for an entire song. The pageantry of the large group carried and kept the eye of the audience. I do not believe that one dancer will be able to keep the attention of the audience for a full song with skirt dancing alone. As a solo artist, I suggest that you begin the song by dancing and then as the song builds with intensity, you can add a skirt section. This way, as the skirt is introduced, it creates a silhouette that is larger than your body. You can end the song with this larger than life visual effect. If you start with the grandeur of the skirt and then abandon it to dance, you run the risk of appearing smaller and it may by anticlimactic for the audience. However, if you let go of the skirt and your dancing is sufficiently powerful and dynamic, you can still look larger than life through to the end of the song.

3. Always grab your skirt firmly with hands held in a pretty fashion, not with balled up fists.

4. Consider the advantages of a ruffle or ruffles as this will create a beautiful delayed line. These can be gathered and/or cut on the bias to add more fullness and flow. The ruffle can be in the same or contrasting colors.

5. You may want to add decorative trim on the hem of the skirt and/or on the edge(s) of the ruffles. This can be very eye catching on stage but remember that these additions will affect the weight and flow of the skirt so you may need to swirl the skirt a bit more forcefully to achieve just the right effect.

6. There should be a minimum of three half circles of fabric but as many as nine or ten half circles can be used. The more yardage you use, the more you will want to put darts in the waistband so that the skirt is not too bulky at the waist. You can also add yardage at the bottom by putting in gussets.

IN CONCLUSION