Folk Dances of Levantine Arab Origin We Know/Are Working on at TNFD
Levantine Arab may be my own coinage, but either The Levant or Arab is too generic, and political borders don’t work to describe the people and culture that created the dances. The term Levant has broad and narrow definitions, but the quickie definition is the stretch of land in western Asia bordering the Eastern Mediterranean Sea plus Cyprus. The area is also known as the historical region of “Greater Syria.” In addition to Cyprus, present-day countries include Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the Palestinian territories and the small portion of Turkey southwest of the middle Euphrates, aka Hatay Province.
In international folk dancing (IFD) repertoires, there aren’t many dances from this area. Lebanon has a few entries while Turkey proper (broad definition of Levant) is a large part of IFD dances. What we are really left with is the contentious historic area of Syria-Palestine, within which currently is a state called “Israel.” Many (most?) IFD groups would list some of these dances as being from “Israel,” but that is not only misleading but culturally inaccurate. The main genre of dances—possibly the only for IFD—is the Dabka. Please read the excellent article about dabke/debke on Folkdance Footnotes.