Intimate embraces with Ajnabi (strangers): a political history of partner dancing in Tehran, 1920-1950

Through a reading of periodicals of various religious and ideological persuasions, alongside diplomatic sources and archival documents, this article investigates the emergence of European partner dancing in central Tehran in the first half of the twentieth century, at the same time demonstrating how nationalist gender anxieties arose with the arrival of Allied troops in Tehran’s urban space and social life. Critically examining the social rhetoric surrounding the performance of gender embodied in these “modern” partnered dance practices, against the backdrop of Iran’s political transformation, the article analyses the connections made between the social dancing body and the notion of (imitated) modernity, eroticism (shahvat), nakedness, and prostitution, which contemporary commentators often framed as complicit agents of colonialism and imperialism threatening the spirit of both Iran and Islam.