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What is Pharaonic Dance?

© Shira

Every once in a while, the term Pharaonic dance comes up among the European and North American belly dance communities. You might see it mentioned as the style intended for a particular song appearing on an Eddie Kochak CD. Or maybe you'll overhear another dancer at an event stating that one of her specialties is Pharaonic dance.

So what is it, who performs it, and how does one do it?

In the above photo, Delilah Flynn of Seattle portrays Hathor, with a brass mirror in one hand and an ankh in the other.

A Definition

Technically, the name Pharaonic dance refers to "dance style performed in the time of the Egyptian pharaohs". When most dancers use the term, they are associating it with modern day beliefs about the culture of ancient Egypt, many of which have not been supported by research. In other words, most such performances are a 20th-century or 21st-century creation which grew out of the Orientalist art and literature movement of the 19th century and the early days of the modern dance movement.

Usually, Pharaonic dance is performed to New Age music, by a dancer or ensemble wearing clothing inspired by the paintings from tomb walls. Many such dances will include poses with the palms of the hands flat and parallel to the floor, sometimes with candles balanced on them. Such poses aren't supported by historical research, but because Western audiences have been conditioned by the posturing of early modern dance artists to expect these poses in Pharaonic dance, performers often include them to lead the audience into the right frame of mind.

Of course, the major problem with this approach is that it's a cliché. People do it because it's easy, but that doesn't mean it's the path to a captivating performance.

That's why some people who refer to their dance as "Pharaonic" take a different approach, and what they create may look entirely different from the above. These dancers have done their own independent research into examining artwork from ancient Egyptian sources. They have attempted to extrapolate what types of movement may have been depicted by such pictures. These dancers have provided the most exciting interpretations what the dance forms of ancient Egypt may have looked like.

A Historical Perspective

In the late 19th century and early 20th century, the archeological finds in Egypt captivated European and North American society. People were fascinated by the discoveries, and the world of ancient Egypt became fashionable.

Against the backdrop of this cultural fad, the early pioneers of modern dance drew inspiration from the Orient. Isadora Duncan, and later Ruth St. Denis, embraced Egypt as a theme, and used it as inspiration when creating their own distinctive dances. In its early days, modern dance relied heavily on European and American imagination of what ancient Greece and Egypt might have been like, without factual research to substantiate it.