3-066-002 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Sketches from Palestine: gipsy-boy dancers, 1874. Engraving from '...sketches in water colours, hastily drawn on the spot by Lieut. Conder, R. E., from which he hopes...to work out a series of finished drawings, to be exhibited for the benefit of the Palestine Exploration Fund...'The gipsy dancers are amongst the most curious institutions of the country...They are all boys or young men, allowed to appear in public. They are accompanied by a sort of clown, whose grotesque and awkward imitation of their movements answers closely to the part played by the European circus-clown. Castanets are fastened to the fingers of the dancers, who, with a curious clawing action resembling that of a mesmerist, often advance close to the audience. Long skirts of various colours are worn, and float like a ballet-dancer's in the wind when they are turning round. The usual motion is a voluptuous movement of the body. To a European the performance is repulsive to the last degree. It is noticed only as a relic of the paganism which is by no means extinct among the lower classes of native population in Syria'. From "Illustrated London News", 1874.