Different Dance in South Africa:
African Dancing “Zulu / Tribal Dancing”
African dances tend to explain the lives and feelings of an African individual, a couple or an entire community. The African dances are classified on the basis of gender and deeply reinforce certain community structures like age, status, context and kinship. In African dance, men usually expend jumps and leaps while women dancers perform crooked knee positions and bent body postures. The most recognized dancing method is a group of dancers dancing in a circle with a drummer in the middle.
Zulu Warrior Dance
Warrior dances are performed at various cultural events and occasions. The warrior dance movements are a fusion of warfare movements such as stabbing with the artistic movement of the body, according to the drum beats. The dance steps also consist of ‘turn with phrase endings’ and various other aggressive body movements.
Classical Indian Dancing “Kathak”:
Kathak is a North Indian classical dance, meaning storyteller that is dated back to 1550 B.C. The Kathak that is witnessed today evolved from a group of male dancers called the Kathakas. Kathak was showered with emotional values, variety of movements and intricate footwork, which exemplifies the modern day characteristics of Khatak. Traditionally danced by both men and women, what distinguish Kathak from other dance forms are its spontaneity, freedom from uniformity and the room for innovation and improvisations. A Kathak dancer is not required to adhere to fixed steps and stages as well. He or she can change the sequence of stages to suit his or her aptitude and style of dancing.
Belly Dancing:
Originally this art form was not intended for entertainment but as a form of exercise passed down from mother to daughter for the sole purpose of strengthening the womb for fertility, conception, pregnancy and childbirth. It is known that Arabic women begin teaching the movements of “Belly dance” to their daughters at a very young age. Although dance was performed at festivities such as weddings, private gatherings and fertility rites it is not entirely known whether it was Belly Dance per say.
