ALGERIAN NAILATES
THE OULED NAIL
By Halima
Ouled Nail (pronounced will-ed ni-eel) is one of the largest Berber tribes in Algeria and their name means "Children of Nail".
They are most commonly known in the western world for their dancing women. Unlike other Arab tribes who guard their daughters, the Ouled Nail mother will encourage her daughter from a young age in the art of love making and dance. Their goal is to amass a large dowry and marry as soon as possible. Once a sufficient dowry has been obtained they have no trouble finding a suitable marriage partner in their own tribe. This has been an honorable means within their tribe to insure the material well-being of themselves and their families. The men of the tribe harbor no repulsion about marrying a girl who has earned her dowry. However, once she is married she is locked up tighter than any of her tribal sisters and never dances publicly again.
Costumes until the lst half of the 1900's were wonderful. Sporting face tattoos, heavily kohled eyes with their oily hair worn in braids looped and held up on each side of the head by large earrings with the typical diadem sitting on top of their coiffure. When they earned enough money they purchased ostrich feathers for their tiara. They wore ruffled dresses or a loose garment called meliah, belted at the waist with fibula pins attached on each side of the dress near the collar bone. The pins hold the dress or shawl in place. They are heavily adorned with gold and silver jewelry. They often wear a huge bracelet with studs and spikes an inch or more in length to protect them.
After several dances sometimes a dancer would disappear behind a screen and then return completely nude except for the headdress and jewelry to continue her performance. The women often dance in pairs. They would line up and when one dancer was tired of dancing she would be replaced so that there were always two girls dancing together. Dance movements would include shoulder shimmies, undulations, snake arms and twisting hip movements. They often used a silk scarf which flutters or is pulled behind the head or against the cheek. Arm positioning is usually held up at about shoulder level framing the upper body. Simple hand movements include delicate finger flutters. The hips move from under the waist and tilting forward or in a twisting or arch movement from side to side. The dance is usually done in two parts, the first part being the "polite" dance where they performed the more refined gliding movements. The second dance is the when they return nude and display their skills learned by rotating breasts, intricate belly rolls and quivering thighs.
I believe this excerpt sums it up nicely.
The Ouled Nail of 1928
National Geographic Magazine, February 1928
From the open doorway of a Moorish café light pours out into the dark. Inside, a group of Arabs in costly silk and woolen garments or in rags gaze eagerly toward the end of the long room, where on a raised platform, a gaudily attired woman dances to the strains of weird instruments.
The Ouled Nail glitters with gold and silver. Her face is whitened and rouged; her lips carmined, her eyebrows blackened her cheeks and chin adorned with spangles. In her ears are gold and or silver earrings, hoops several inches in diameter; across her forehead and about her throat are bands of gold coins of many nations. Around her neck are necklaces of coins or beads from which large ornaments dangle. Massive bracelets and anklets, some six inches broad, some hinged, studded with colored stones adorn her bare arms and angles. Her feet are naked and her toes, like her fingers, are stained with henna.
No words can do justice to her costume. Her head is swathed in a lovely rainbow-hued, long fringed silk shawl which streams down her back. In a corner of it her hair is tied, except for plaits with colored ribbons hanging down her cheeks.
Over an innermost gauze garment are two or three silk vests of palest pinks or green, or yellows, and above these a beautiful rose-tinted brocaded silk jacket covered with transparent silver tissue and heavily embroidered with silver bullion. Her waist is swathed with a gold-tissue pink silk sash, and over it gold embroidered red leather belt. She wears wide rousers of pale blue silk hanging baggily over the slender ankles.
Her dancing! She moves on her toes, but barely raises them from the platform. In her hands she holds a silk handkerchief behind her head or waves it occasionally in the air. But feet, hands, legs, and arms, do not enter much into the dance; she performs chiefly with the muscles of her neck, breast, abdomen, and hips.
All her violent motions keep time with the strange music of pipe and flageolet and tom-tom, while five or six other dancers, as gaudily dressed clap their hands or utter little cries at intervals.
An Arab musician with a long cylindrical drum slung under his arm, springs up from his chair and dances wildly toward her, beating his instrument with fingers and palm as hi hops in pursuit, while she glides pat him and escapes with a lissome movement.
