Nicholas Rowe, a dancer, choreographer, and teacher, has written a highly readable and beautifully illustrated cultural history of dancing in Palestine. The bulk of Raising Dust is an exploration of the dynamics of negotiation and contestation of identity and on the best ways to embody nationalism through dancing. Rowe participated in this process through holding dance workshops and living on the West Bank for eight years. He also conducted extensive interviews with dancers, choreographers, scholars, and journalists, and he consulted much of the relevant literature on Palestinian folklore. Rowe's book is a valuable contribution to the ethnography of dancing in Arab societies, especially given the shortage of published work on the subject. Through nuanced analyses of adaptations made to local dances in response to international influences and political change, Rowe contributes to theoretical discussions in dance studies on memory and authenticity, the relative weighting of innovation and tradition in folk dancing, dancing as it relates to nationalism and identity, and dancing and the collectivization of trauma. In addition, Rowe provides information that counteracts Western stereotypes of gender and sectarianism in the region.

One of the book's major strengths is that it imbeds developments in dance in the history and politics of each period. We see how dancing responded to change over time, was appropriated to fulfill nationalist and regional ideals, and how changing understandings of authenticity and nation have been realized in dancing.

Rowe begins with what we know about dancing in historic Palestine, which now includes the modern state of Israel, parts of Jordan, and the Palestinian Authority. Discussion of inscriptions on clay tablets that depict dancers or refer to dancing (15–23) is followed by travelers' descriptions of local dances in the early nineteenth century (27–53). In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, this region was of particular interest to Biblical scholars and travelers who sought to find remnants of early Christian civilization. Their writings reflect an orientalizing disdain for local culture. Their presence, however, encouraged farmers, recently disenfranchised by the Ottoman Land Code of 1858, to earn money by performing their local dances for foreign travelers (35–42). This process required adding performative adaptations to events that were traditionally participatory.

During the British Mandate (1923–1948), several imported visions of modernity vied for the allegiance of the region's urban elite. Those who looked to the West could perform ballroom dances in urban hotels (71–72). Simultaneously, many women of Jerusalem's elite performed belly dances at women-only parties (73). These were not indigenous but borrowed from Turkey, Egypt, and Lebanon. Both Western dancing and belly dancing provoked a reaction from those who held imported politicized interpretations of Islam. They responded by condemning folk dancing, especially funeral dances (75) that featured women.

After the creation of Israel in 1948, with the consequent expulsion of Palestinians from their homes, three separate movements appropriated Palestinian dances, especially the dabkeh (or dabka), to further their own nationalist aspirations and/or to assert their rights as Palestine's indigenous people. Israelis, not wanting to perform dances associated with their European oppressors and needing to legitimize their presence in Palestine, adapted local dances to develop a national “folklore” (81–91). Meanwhile, pan-Arab nationalists, like their counterparts in Europe, sought a basis for Arab identity in the traditional culture of rural peasants. As described by Salim Tamari (Reference Tamari2004):

Such attitudes were held by a largely Western-educated urban elite, who idealized rural heritage without necessarily sharing rural aesthetic sensibilities. Accordingly, Wadea Jarrar-Haddad and Marwan Jarar, Palestinian choreographer/teachers living in Lebanon and trained in Europe and by Soviet director Igor Moiseyev, borrowed from local dances to stage spectacular productions that incorporated Western aesthetics, most notably through the annual Ramallah Nights Festivals of the 1960s (93–109). These signaled “a transition in perceptions of folk dance in the West Bank, from a social rural practice to an urban performance art” (100). Like national folk performance groups elsewhere, they formed “parallel traditions” (Shay Reference Shay2002) that co-existed with local folk dances as well as ballroom dancing, ballet schools, and experiments with modern expressive dance. This discussion would have greater depth if Rowe had compared these developments with the professional dance ensembles described by Shay in his Choreographic Politics (2002).

The Six Day War (1967) led to major economic and political upheaval among Palestinian communities on the West Bank, another wave of displaced persons, and a corresponding intensification of Palestinian national consciousness, which, in turn, “stimulated a search for unifying symbols of collective identity through folkloric heritage” (111–126). Rowe writes that dabkeh was salvaged and revived once more, this time within the context of a Palestinian national identity. Research into Palestinian dances intensified. Amateur dance groups were formed through community centers, social clubs, and universities in the West Bank (113).

The remainder of Raising Dust documents in detail the attempts of Palestinian organizations and folk dance troupes to negotiate and embody their identities through dancing and folklore. Encouraged by social scientists at Birzeit University, students and faculty debated issues of authenticity vs. modernity and formed amateur dance groups. Choreographic innovations were incorporated and rejected. Questions of authority within a troupe were evaluated: Who made choreographic decisions? At the El-Funoun dance troupe, for example, choreographic decisions were shared among dancers, but other troupes relied on specific choreographers. (Videos of El-Funoun performances can be seen on Youtube.com.)

The period following the Oslo Peace Process (1993) brought increased international interest and funding to the West Bank with new opportunities for cultural exchange. International choreographers conducted dance workshops. Palestinian choreographers living overseas returned to add their ideas to the mix (167). Some dance groups toured in Europe and the United States. These influences forced further reassessment of the relative value of local tradition vs. imported modernism and postmodernism (127) and encouraged continued exploration of the ways in which collective identity could be expressed through movement (194).

One of the most valuable contributions of Rowe's research is his detailed documentation and examination of the lively discourse surrounding Palestinian identity and dancing. This includes serious disagreements over memory, the nature of authenticity and visions of modernity, issues of authority, and questions of gender. As Rowe repeatedly stresses, “Presumptions that ‘authentic’ local culture could only be found in a rural environment and that this culture had been static for millennia” (114) colored travelers' and local scholars' perceptions of the dances they saw:

Yet imported ideas of what constitutes modernity sometimes worked against local aesthetics. Dancers and choreographers were often faced with a dichotomy between modernism and traditionalism: “For many of the local cultural activists that I talked to, it appeared that, despite their reasoned adaptations, they were expected to define themselves as agents of either a foreign hegemony or a local intransigence” (156). Moreover, the ostentatious festivals that adapted local dances to a Westernized theatrical aesthetic established cultural expectations that subsequent folkdance troupes had to negotiate (106). At the same time, a political Islam, also imported, attempted to impose an entirely different concept of modernity—one that does not include dancing, especially the dancing of women in public. There was considerable diversity among dance troupes, as choreographic and performance choices reflected the views of the performers and their audiences. Again, I think the value of this work would have been enhanced had Rowe couched his discussion within the perspective of analogous studies, such as Holton's Performing Folklore (Reference Holton2005) or Wulff's Dancing at the Crossroads (Reference Wulff2007), in which folk dancing was redefined and recreated in response to changing understandings of national identity.

Also valuable for dance scholarship is material Rowe includes that counteracts Western stereotypes of Arab women and of sectarianism in the region. It is clear from travelers' descriptions that women participated in rural public dance performances in Palestine at least as early as the nineteenth century (29, 41), that women dancers were often unveiled (39, 41, 43), and that women and men sometimes performed together (52, 53, 62–64). Ironically in recent years, gender norms have been redefined to reduce women's participation (122–123). This is in reaction to a perceived Western hegemony, on the one hand, and a response to pressure from politicized versions of Islam, on the other. I have observed this tendency elsewhere in the region. In rural Yemen where I worked, for example, economic change and global influences have reduced women's participation in local economies, thus diminishing their mobility and their voice. Mixed gender dancing, once common in rural Yemen, has become rare in the twenty-first century (Adra Reference Adra, Strong and Wilder2009, 240–242). Although Rowe does not specifically discuss this, the data call for a rethinking of such labels as “modernity” and “conservatism.” Modernity is not always woman-friendly. There are places where women had more voice in the past than they do now.

News media frequently blame problems in the Middle East on sectarianism, yet travelers in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries report that Muslims and Christians participated together in weddings and other celebrations (29). More recently, disagreements on issues of dancing and nationalism, as described by Rowe, do not appear to have a sectarian basis, but are due instead to different visions of modernity.

The recurring theme of Raising Dust is cultural salvage, after James Clifford's “Of Other Peoples: Beyond the ‘Salvage Paradigm’” (Reference Clifford and Foster1987). Rowe takes to task Biblical scholars who visited (and continue to visit) Palestine searching for remnants of an idealized past. Based on similar idealizations of cultural heritage as pure and static, Israelis, pan-Arab Nationalists, and Palestinian nationalists all appropriated local dances and adapted them according to their respective ideologies (81–126). This is an important point, and there is much room for discussion on definitions of authenticity, the relative value of heritage, and the various meanings of modernity. As Rowe suggests,

But Rowe's unquestioned acceptance of Clifford's paradigm is problematic and adds unnecessary theoretical flaws to this otherwise excellent work.

In both his 1987 article and The Predicament of Culture (1988), Clifford conflates art with anthropology and travel with ethnography. Clifford is a historian with no formal training in anthropology, yet he freely discounts anthropologists' work he apparently has not read carefully, and takes credit for critiques that have been ongoing in anthropology for at least forty years. Thus, in his “Of Other Peoples: Beyond the ‘Salvage Paradigm,’” he implicates anthropology for the serious errors of curators who, unfortunately, did not consult museum anthropologists.

Rowe is apparently unaware that Clifford is not qualified to speak for anthropology, so when Clifford labels Franz Boas, A. L. Kroeber, and Bronislaw Malinowski as “salvage ethnographers,” Rowe follows suit (206, note 2). A careless footnote would not be highly problematic, but Rowe goes on to label orientalists, such as Philip Baldensperger and Hans Spoer, “anthropologists.” No one should expect anthropological sophistication from yesteryear's tourists or Biblical scholars looking for proof of theological claims. In contrast, the only two scholars whose writing on Palestine Rowe appreciates as sensitive and nuanced, Hilma Grandquist and Abdulla Lutfiyya, did have formal training in anthropology. Rowe is not the only scholar to take Clifford's facile dismissal of anthropology at face value, but I expect more from an otherwise careful researcher and analyst.

Finally, I very much appreciate Rowe's detailed descriptions of the choreographic adaptations that were considered necessary to “modernize” local dances and/or render them more suitable to evening-length productions (105, 140–148). Such details are not often found in ethnographic descriptions of dancing. In conclusion, Raising Dust contributes to the anthropology of dancing and to discussions of authenticity, modernism, and authority in dancing, as well as to the corpus of research on the relationships of dancing to identity, nationalism, politics, and the influences of globalism. It is a readable account that would be suitable for undergraduate and graduate classes.