1. Introduction -- 2. The invention of an ideal female national dancer in twentieth-century Iran -- 3. Mutribs and their dancers: the counter-ideal performers of new Iran -- 4. The cabaret dancer in her quotidian life -- 5. Dancing bodies in pre-revolutionary films and the 'enticing' reel cabaret dancer -- 6. The dancing body in the anti-obscenity discourse of religious press in pre-revolutionary Iran -- 7. Harikat-i mawzun: the post-revolutionary Iranian theatrical dance -- 8. Dance, body, space, and subjectivity on the twentieth-century Iranian stage.