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Article

French

ID: <

10.4000/clio.13722

>

·

DOI: <

10.4000/clio.13722

>

Where these data come from
Enlacing the ajnabi. A political history of couple dance in Tehran, 1920-1950

Abstract

Probing periodicals of various ideological persuasions, diplomatic sources and archival documents, this article investigates the emergence of European partner dancing in central Tehran in the first half of the twentieth century. Archival research reveals the existence of nationalist gender anxieties linked to the presence of Allied troops in Tehran’s urban space and their participation in Iranian social life, particularly through the act of dancing. Critically examining the social rhetoric surrounding the performance of gender embodied by these “modern” partner dances in Tehran underscores the confluence of the social dancing body, eroticism (shahvat), nakedness, prostitution and the notion of an “imitated” modernity. By contextualizing the reception of these dances in relation to ongoing transformations on the Iranian political stage we observe that each of these elements served to bolster a nationalist discourse about couples dancing constructed and viewed by contemporaries as a complicit agent of colonialism and imperialism threatening the spirit of both Iran and Islam.

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