Dabke

Dabke is a Levantine folk dance. Dabke combines circle dance and line dancing and is widely performed at weddings and other joyous occasions. The line forms from right to left and leader of the dabke heads the line, alternating between facing the audience and the other dancers. In English, it can be transcribed as dabka, dabki, dabkeh.

The etymology of 'dabke' is uncertain, but it is thought to be derived from the Levantine Arabic word dabaka (Arabic: دبكة) meaning "stamping of the feet" or "to make a noise".

The dabkeh jumps may have originated in ancient Canaanite fertility rituals related to agriculture, chasing off evil spirits and protecting young plants. According to Lebanese historian Youssef Ibrahim Yazbec, the dabke descends from Phoenician dances thousands of years old.

Another theory is that dabke started out as a way of solidifying roofs made of mud. People would stomp on the rooftops of houses together to help compress the material to compact it to prevent cracks from forming. This eventually evolved into the dancing form of dabke that is known today.