UAE Traditional Dance; National Anthem

Events in the UAE can be full of, what we might call in the States, pomp and circumstance. With that, many events include a performance of the UAE traditional dance. This is performed by Emirati men. The dance itself is mellow. Even a bit zen to observe. The dance includes singing, almost a chanting.

You can google this on your own and find some videos from different events.  Some sites include information about the dance, and the history behind it. Instead of copying and pasting a bunch of text, here are some links about the history of this dance if you are interested in some details:
http://www.majddubai.com/english/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=149&Itemid=157

http://gulfnews.com/music-and-dance-feature-in-heritage-1.592716

While I was at a dhow sailboat race in May, there was a group of men performing this dance. This was the first time I had personally seen it with drummers in the middle, which definitely added to the festivity. (This was at Heritage Village, which has a large viewing platform. On the upper platform they set up very nice chairs, and VIPs sit up there.)

Here are some glimpses of the men and their dance. (In the first photo, you can see the platform/viewing area with the special seating in the background.)

Some live action ... the numbers of participants and the formality or informality of the dance and song seems to vary from event to event.

Since then, I found some videos online.

This first link is a bit of a UAE promotional video. A large group of men doing the dance and singing. This is a faster paced one. And the young men in this video are doing various quick moves with fake guns ... all part of the traditions and history.  Some of the video shows a camel race, which is a kick. (Still on my UAE bucket list, to go see.) The little boxes on the camels' backs are robot jockeys. (The robots are a newer thing here ...)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHN7RT8Ndzc

This is a smaller group, just the dancer/singers; I believe this was part of a welcome for a cruise ship that docked.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLJW16aSd5A

While I'm going a bit crazy with videos here, I found a couple of others that I think are really cool.  There is one that I have seen played before several events at the Institute of Applied Technology. It's a video where the sound is the UAE national anthem, and video of people and sites that represent the UAE very nice. If you stop at the end of the video (and don't wait through the end credits that are in Arabic), it's about 4 minutes. I think it's pretty cool.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fpj1248svE

Now, one more that I found, but it's 26 minutes long, so you may or may not want to invest the time ... if you do, it talks about all of the United Arab Emirates, with some great information and beautiful video of the entire country.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0d3UqSVRbQ

Hope you've enjoyed the cultural diversion :-)