Praise Singing, Proxemics, and the Feelingful Iconization of State Relations in Omani ‘āzī

I present an analysis of the feelingful performance of state relations in the Sultanate of Oman by tracking the proxemics of Arab men’s dance and sung poetry practices in state festivals. The spatial performance of the ‘āzī, a processional choral ode, shifted from complete or “shoulder-to-shoulder” circles to semi-circles to “face-to-face” lines of performers over the past fifty years. I argue that this shift in Omani dance proxemics feelingfully iconizes state centralization and relations of distributional governance over the same period, offering kinesthetic spatializations and visual images of this broader social phenomenon of political contact in synecdoche.