Ethiopia Dances for Joy!

Dance instructor Tamalyn Dallal's latest ethnographic program aimed at students of dance and culture (see review of Zanzibar: Dance, Trance & Devotion in VL-1/12) travels to Ethiopia to document native costumes, customs, and dances. While teaching Middle Eastern dance at a circus school in the city-state of Addis Ababa, Dallal films their routines. Using simple props such as balls, hats, and ropes, the students defy gravity in solo and double configurations. Dallal also visits the Hager Fikir Theatre Dance Company, whose dancers perform pieces representing nine different regions, including the northeastern desert area of Afar, home to the world's highest temperatures (the performance here features intimidating props such as long knives and automatic weapons). The traditional accompanying music incorporates flute, drums, and stringed instruments such as the lyre-like krar. From Addis Ababa, Dallal heads north to Tigrinya, a pilgrimage destination, and west to Harar, where the elaborate preparations for Easter ("Fasika") are in progress. In the former capital city of Gonder, she observes an Amharic dance in which participants imitate ecstatic chickens with rapid head, neck, and chest movements. Most of the people Dallal encounters are Christian or Muslim, except in Gonder where she stops at the Beta Israel village of Wolleka. Ethiopia Dances for Joy! is not a conventional documentary, but Dallal does provide plenty of context here both through voiceover narration and onscreen text, making this an engaging cultural travel guide. Recommended. (K. Fennessy)