Dancer Doll from India

It's not every day the MOTH brings home something that knocks everything else off its pride-of-place display spot. But that's what happened this weekend when he dug this clay doll out of the bottom of a Goodwill bin. Her arm was missing, so he dove in hopes of finding it, and, amazingly it was there. He brought her home, a bit worse for the wear, and reattached her arm while I was off studying.

I had not seen one of these before although I did find some less realistic versions of her quite easily on the Net. Apparently, she's pretty common -- I wonder if she's the original bobble head doll!

The design is wickedly clever and simple -- each section of the doll hangs onto a bit of notched wire at the top of the piece below it, allowing the skirt, torso and head to nod in an imitation of classical dance moves. (The MOTH calls her the "oh no you ditnt" doll).

 In my humble opinion -- ours is way more refined than most of the gaudy souvenir dolls on the web. Scuffed and scratched to be sure, but we love her already. A couple of websites said this kind of doll is doing the Kuchipudi dance, from Andhra Pradesh. Which got me curious -- here's the Wikipedia page on classical Indian dance in case you're curious too.