Dancing With Death

Manawatu Times, Volume 59, Issue 272, 20 November 1934, Page 4

Dancing With Death

PYTHONS AS GIRL’S PARTNERS Arimund Banu is a lovely Mohammedan dancer at Blackpool, Lancashire, who has two dancing partners, lithe, graceful and handsome. But no ono wants to dance with thorn, because they aro pythons, each eight feet long. The girl has danced with snakes since she was 14. “1 first find the snake in wood near Belgrade,” she said recently in her pretty broken English. “It was a. party and just for fun 1 take him and dance with him like I do now. Everybody say he suit my style! “I take him next to cabaret in Belgrade where 1 dance—but I nearly get thrown out.”

Arimund Banu, an exquisitely shaped Serbian from Bcrnjeyo, whoso danse orientals has the boneless grace and exotic charm of the East, is dancing at Blackpool. She twines the huge pythons round her neck, sings to them, smiles at them, fqrallos their Jittle heads and their long, sinuous. bodies where the massive muscles ripple. “They not poison,” the girl said, “they kill by crushing. Yes, sometimes they crush me on the stage and then I faint and am carried off. But I am never frightened of them. Why should I be? Sometimes I dance with Cobras! They are bad. But my pythons are good to dance with.”