Dance, body, space, and subjectivity on the twentieth-century Iranian stage

This chapter examines the ways the three different dancing subjects of twentieth-century Iran—the raqqas, or cabaret dancer; the national dancer (raqsandah); and the “performer” (namayishgar) of rhythmic movements—have been constructed onstage. ¹ It explores the ways in which, according to the biopolitics of the stage and the discursive construction of performance, the onstage (female) performer in each genre constitutes a differing dancing self through choice of movement, costume, music, sensory appeal, appearance, behavior, as well as gender performativity and relations. This phenomenological analysis examines the theatrical process through which the female dancing self of the pre-revolutionary cabaret scene—one associated with enticing shahvat and the “evil-inciting self” (nafs-i ammarah)—was sublimated to correspond with a respectable “contented self” (nafs-i mutma’innah) to conform to her role on the post-revolutionary theatrical stage.