Iraqi Dance Starter Kit

Estafania performs Iraqi dance at Jumping Camel's student show 'Shimmy Showcase' in 2023

If you have been immersed in the world of modern belly dance at all these days, you have probably encountered Iraqi dance - or at least what we have collectively decided to call Iraqi dance. You may have even learned the two things that apparently make a dance Iraqi in the eyes of the audience: hair tossing and intricate storytelling while pretending to stab yourself with two daggers.

Congratulations. You have now reached the entrance to the rabbit hole.

Some of us are luckier than others. I, once again, by the grace of the noodly appendages, have been granted a wish I've held near and dear to my heart for several years: a wonderful visiting instructor was able and willing to teach an introductory course on Iraqi dances this fall term!

Naturally, I signed up as soon as I heard about it. And, despite being very much in the minority, I proceeded to bombard her with questions about the deeper cultural context and history behind the subject. While my overflowing brain is still processing the wealth of information, I've managed to put together this super-short starter kit that might help you make an informed decision when an Iraqi Dances class appears on your school's roster.

So, with that little disclaimer out of the way, let's start with the word you're probably going to encounter most often:

Kawliya (also written Kawleeya, Kawli, or other variations.)

Here's the first thing to know: Kawliya isn't simply the name of an Iraqi dance. In Iraq, “Kawliya” is also a term used for the Roma community whose members have a long history of working as musicians, dancers and entertainers. “Raqs al-Kawliya”, or Kawliya dance, is a performance tradition. That matters because when we say “raqs al-Kawliya”, we're talking about a dance tradition associated with that specific community, not a generic synonym for “Iraqi dance.” Contemporary Iraqi dancer and researcher Assala Ibrahim makes this distinction particularly useful: she describes Kawliya dance as connected to the cultural heritage of the Kawliya community, while also emphasizing that Iraqi dance encompasses numerous other regional traditions.

The dance vocabulary you are likely to encounter includes dynamic footwork, turns, jumps, powerful hip movements, shimmies, expressive gestures and - yes - the spectacular head and hair movements that have made Kawliya instantly recognizable to belly dancers outside Iraq.

But here's where things get interesting: Kawliya isn't a single, rigid choreography with one mandatory rhythm. Kawliya performers have historically travelled and performed in different parts of Iraq, incorporating regional music and dance traditions into their work. In other words, the Iraqi dance rabbit hole is already considerably more complicated than “hair goes whoosh.”

Hair is part of the vocabulary. It is not the entire dictionary.

And one more thing worth knowing before you start throwing the word around: the Kawliya community has faced significant social discrimination in Iraq, and the term “Kawliya” can itself be used as a derogatory label. So let's treat the word as more than a convenient name for a dramatic dance style. There are actual people and a complicated social history attached to it.

Domari

Domari is the name of a language belonging to the Dom peoples of the Middle East. Dom communities are found across several countries, and Iraqi Dom are also commonly referred to as Kawliya/Kawliyah.

So, why does Domari appear in a list about Iraqi dance? Because we're dealing with a community whose members have a long history of working as musicians, dancers and entertainers in Iraq. But Domari is a language, Dom is a people, Kawliya is an Iraqi designation associated with the community, and Kawliya dance is a performance tradition. These words are related, but they are not interchangeable.

This is exactly where things can get messy in belly-dance-land. Internet terminology has a bad habit of throwing Dom, Roma, Kawliya, Domari and the unfortunately persistent “Gypsy” into one enormous linguistic blender. Please resist the urge. The history is considerably more interesting than that.

In other words: people first, terminology second, dancing third.

And now we can get back to the fun stuff!

Hachaa / Haja'a

Now for the one you've probably been waiting for: Hachaa (also written Haja'a, Hacha'a, Hacha or Hecha).

If you've encountered Iraqi dance through the belly dance world, this is probably the dagger dance you're thinking of. Raqs al-Hachaa is an expressive Iraqi dance tradition associated with the Hachaa musical and poetic tradition, and its vocabulary includes distinctive footwork, head and hair movements, shimmies, gestures and, yes, the famous daggers.

Here's the useful bit: the daggers are not the dance. Hachaa has its own musical and rhythmic identity, and the daggers are one element of the performance vocabulary. So, no, you can't simply add two daggers to any Iraqi song and declare yourself culturally accurate. Sorry, Dorothy. The rabbit hole has rules.

This is another place where Kawliya enters the picture: Hachaa has a particularly strong historical association with Iraq's Kawliya communities, which helps explain why the two are so often conflated. Think of them as overlapping parts of the same cultural landscape, rather than two names for the same thing.

In other words: Kawliya tells us something about people and cultural tradition. Hachaa tells us we're getting into a particular musical, poetic and dance tradition.

And yes, there are daggers.

Khishba / Zanboor / Kasour

Now let's talk about that sound. You know exactly what I’m talking about!

The khishba, also called zanboor or kasour, is a small, narrow wooden drum found in several Iraqi musical traditions. Made from wood and played with both hands, it can produce an extraordinarily fast, buzzing or machine-gun-like roll.

And if you're wondering why zanboor sounds suspiciously like a flying insect, you're not imagining things. Zanboor means wasp or hornet, a rather excellent description of the sound this little drum can make.

You will also encounter the word khashaba in connection with this instrument - but hold that thought. That's our next rabbit hole.

Khashaba

Now that we know our khishba from our Khashaba, let's move on to the latter.

I am aware of the narrative that Khashaba was created by Black labourers or sailors using pieces of wood - it is widely repeated, and there is scholarship connecting Khashaba with Afro-Iraqi cultural heritage, but I would not present the Abbasid-era origin story as settled fact in a tiny introductory post.

Khashaba is a distinctive musical and performance tradition associated particularly with Basra and southern Iraq, although different parts of the Basra region have developed their own variations. It combines singing with percussion, clapping and dance, and has its own characteristic rhythmic patterns. It is not simply the name of a rhythm - or the name of the drum. It is an entire performance tradition.

And if you're wondering where our little khishba fits into all this: percussion is central to the tradition, with different drums and rhythmic instruments contributing to its distinctive sound.

Chobi / Jobi

Time to leave the solo dancer behind for a moment.

Chobi (also written Jobi or Choubi) is a traditional Iraqi group dance, usually performed in a line or semicircle with dancers linked together and moving in coordinated steps. It is particularly associated with weddings and other celebrations, and different regions of Iraq have their own variations.

The emphasis here is on collective movement: synchronized footwork, stamping, jumping and the interaction between the dancers and the leader of the line. You may also notice that Iraqi speakers often refer to playing Chobi rather than dancing it - laʿb al-jūbī, ‘playing Chobi.’ Some performers specifically explain that they call it a lʿiba (‘game’) rather than a raqs.

So if Kawliya gave you hair and Hachaa gave you daggers, Chobi gives you a whole bunch of people moving as one.

Sounds familiar? That's because another communal dance tradition from the same general part of the world shares many of these features: dabke.

I'm not suggesting that Chobi is Iraqi dabke - it's not. But if you've danced dabke, you may recognize something immediately: the emphasis isn't on one star dancer performing for everyone else. The group is the dance.

And that, Dorothy, is worth remembering when we start talking about Iraqi dance. Not everything is designed for a solo performer in the middle of the room dramatically throwing her hair at the audience. Sometimes the entire room is supposed to join in.

Iraqi dance isn't a single aesthetic package imported into belly dance classes. There are social dances, communal dances, regional traditions, professional performance traditions, musical traditions - and they don't all operate by the same rules.

…and suddenly “Iraqi dance” is looking rather less like one particular YouTube tutorial.

Future Homework

Now, dear Dorothy, before this “starter kit” quietly turns into a three-volume reference work, here are a few more terms for your homework:

Hewa - a southern Iraqi tradition with strong connections to Basra and Afro-Iraqi musical culture.

Amarah - another southern Iraqi dance tradition worth knowing if you're going beyond the usual belly dance vocabulary.

Maqam Iraqi - a major Iraqi musical tradition, related yet distinct from Arabic maqam, with a vast repertoire of songs, melodic modes and improvisational vocal forms. It was inscribed on UNESCO's Representative List of Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2008.

And then there are the iqa'at - the rhythmic cycles that underpin Iraqi music and dance (Jurjina, Hacha'a, Masmoudi Saghir/Khnafi, and Wahda Seer'a, among others). And yes, Hacha'a is both a rhythm and a dance tradition, because apparently one word wasn't allowed to have just one job.

You're in the rabbit warren. Hope you weren’t expecting any less of me! 

Just before I sign off into the crisp autumnal darkness, I'd like to leave you with a video essay to watch. It's a 16½-minute piece by Mariam Al-Hussona, based on her PhD thesis, and I cannot stress enough how important it is to watch the video and read the author's commentary beneath the embedded player.

Here I am going completely unhinged and refusing to mince words: watch it. Read it. Read all the way to the reference list. Follow the links. Yes, some of them no longer work. You're an adult. Find a way around that. Google is not decorative.

Inform yourself before you make another culture your personal buffet, picking and choosing whatever looks appealing to put on stage for your own ego boost.

And, please, let's stop the cycle of learning cultural context from people who are largely removed from that cultural context. Your belly dance instructor may be absolutely brilliant at teaching you what's currently hot and fashionable on a nightclub stage. That does not necessarily make them a source for the socio-political background of an art form that is, by its very nature, embedded in social and political history.

Be an informed consumer.

Your dance education should not end with learning how to move your hips. Nor should it begin and end with whatever your instructor happened to learn from their instructor, who learned it from their instructor, who heard it from somebody on Facebook in 2014.

Mapping (An)Archive of Iraqi Dance at the Margins. 

Want to continue the conversation? Get in touch: askauntiehelen@gmail.com