Dancing in Eritrea

Tigrigna dancing is part of the traditional Eritrean dance that involves two main patterns of dance, its first one is known as the quad, which the dancers form a circle and make slowly of circumambulate or move around in an endless circulate motion to the song of the music. Then, they later ceased the circular musical flow and dance I a pairs of 3s facing each other for a period while before resuming the circular motion in a file again, during this period, they make their feet to the beat of the music and bob their shoulders in a rhythmic style. The female dancers usually make move of their shoulder more than the male counterparts, at the end of the musical tempo increases and also, the drum beat quickens to give signal to the musical crescendo, the dancers round off their dancing by facing each other in pairs and threes and then move their shoulder faster which can also involve in jumping and bending their knees and going down to the floor to sit in a squatting position while bobbing their shoulders and moving their head sideways to the strong beats of the drum.

source of picture: www.asmera.nl 

The second pattern of dance comprise of two groups (which is a group of male and a group of female) line up and face each other, the dance also includes a skipping step to the music, as time goes on the two groups will change places, dancing across the floor and passing each in the process. Other Eritrean traditional dance involve those by the Kunama which involves the raising of the beads strung legs in sync with the lyre of the music, those, by the Saho which involve jumping each leg in song with the sounds, as well as those Nara, Tigre, Afar, Aashaid, Billen and Hidareb.