Tunisian Dances
A characteristic of Tunisian dance is the horizontal forward and back movement of the hips (reminiscent of the Twist). The costume of the dancers consists of a Melia, a draped garment, which is held together by two silver fibulas (the ancestor of the safety pin). The Melia belongs to the family of the most elementary kinds of clothing, in which straight swaths of cloth without tailoring or seams is draped around the body, as for example the Roman Toga, the Indian Sari or the Indonesian Sarong. An especially challenging dance element is the balancing of a ceramic pot on the head, while the hips move in complicated rhythmical patterns.