The history of dancing with swords is enigmatic. While there are documented historical accounts of men engaging in martial dance with weaponry, little was left to history about women dancing with swords, probably because patriarchal societies did not find women dancing publicly publicaly acceptable. Dancing publicly was an art form strictly for doxies in their eyes. No one can say with certainty in which culture women dancing with swords originated, but most scholars agree that it was either Egyptian or Arabian. Jean Leon Gerome, French painter whose historical paintings are of the Orientalism style, visited North Africa in the mid 1800s and was so inspired by the life he saw there that he documented his travels in a series of paintings he did late 1800s. It is his "La Dans du Sabre un Cafe" (Dance with Sabre in a Cafe) that scholars attribute the cultural origin of sword dance, or Raks al Sayf as it is called in Egypt. Dance with Sabre in Cafe depicts a woman amidst a den of men doing what appears to be a dance with a sword atop her head and one in her hand.
I have plundered many a library in pursuit of the origin of women dancing with sword, but have uncovered little. One Middle Eastern dance scholar attributes the origin of this art form to a feminine tradition of antiquity wherein women when gathered together would dance for entertainment and camaraderie and would place swords atop their heads to show that men might "hold a sword over their heads" but "could not control their hips." Another scholar posits that often times women would dance in such a manner to mock the martial arts practices of men preparing for war to show that while men make war, women make fun. These theories may indeed be rooted in fact, but phalocentric reign would not allow the truth to find its place in historical documents.
When it comes to the story of Sophia Fairesword and how she began dancing with swords atop her head, this is the tale you will hear:
Sophia, the dautgher of a Calabrian fishmonger, was doomed to a life of working the family fish market as her father betrothed her to the apprentice fishmonger. One night while strolling along the waterfront she was abducted by a rouges gallery of merchant seamen and carried away on their vessel The Queen Luise. Shortly after leaving port, The Queen Luise was commandeered by Ottoman Empire Corsair brothers traveling the Mediterranean, Aruj and Khayrad'din originally from the Greek isle of Lesbos, who had come to plunder Calabria. Being that Sophia was a mere trifle in the grand scheme of things, they did not see need to return her home and while not exactly a prisoner, Sophia was captive on a ship belonging to The Barbarossas, known to Anglophiles as Red Beards. You see,
barba is beard in Italian, and
rossa is red, so Barbarossas was the name the Italians gave to the two pirates. Aboard the ship were entertainers from the Ottoman courts, and it was there that Sophia learned to dance and balance objects on her head - a favorite act in the courts. The Barbarossas continued to the Barbary Coast and when they reached the shore of Tunisia, Sophia was offered her freedom. However, upon realizing that the only way back to Italy was aboard a fishing schooner, the reality of being the wife of a fishmonger overwhelmed her, and she declined liberty opting instead for a life of being an entertainer aboard the pirate ship Dauphin's Revenge. While in Tunisia, Algeirs, and Morocco, Sophia forged friendships with the women of those countries and spent many a night at the women's encampment as it was
haraam, forbidden, for men and women to mingle, and though there was a language barrier, she was able to communicate through dance. It was at one of these gatherings that Sophia saw a woman put a sword atop her head and dance while the other women laughed and clapped, and it was then and there that Sophia, who was very accustomed to using a knife to filet fish, decided that instead of using a blade to cut and wound, she would put a blade atop her own head to put a smile on the faces of everyone she danced for. To this very day Sophia Fairesword the Dancing Pirate can still be seen performing with sword atop her head in the sunlight on the shore of an ocean or under the moonlight on a dock lined with seafaring vessels, and if one listens very closely, in the crashing waves, in the soft breeze, you can hear her whisper, "play with dangerous toys."
