20 Dec Dance Moves

We’re fortunate to have acquired rare copies of two pioneering studies of Malay dance forms by Mohd Anis Md Nor. In Zapin: Folk Dance of the Malay World (Oxford University Press, 1993) he offers a detailed examination of the zapin dance form, as it evolved from a village tradition performed at communal gatherings to a more stylised national dance, including its use in early Malay cinema. And then Randai Dance of Minangkabau Sumatra (University of Malaya Press, 1986) traces the origins of the Indonesian randai dance form and its introduction to Malaya in the 1930s. Taken together with Joseph Victor Gonzales’s Dancing the Malaysian (SIRD, 2011), which offers the voice of an active dancer/choreographer/educator who interrogates the meanings of identity and nation that dance portrays, these are engaging reflections on the dynamics of a vital cultural form.