'Penguin Dance' ends in family fight at wedding

A wedding in Saudi Arabia quickly snowballed into a scuffle between the families of the groom and his bride after relatives and friends of the groom infuriated their opponents by performing the famous ‘penguin dance’, a newspaper said on Sunday.

Relatives and guests began to pour into the massive wedding hall in the eastern Saudi town of Dammam when a heated argument erupted before it led to a scuffle between the relatives of the groom and his bride.

Friends and other guests intervened and managed to end the fight that threatened to disrupt the wedding and prevent the marriage of the couple, Sabq daily said.

“The fight began when relatives of the groom started to perform the penguin dance.

“The bride’s family protested against the dance on the grounds it is alien to Saudi traditions and demanded them to stop,” it said.

The Penguin dance has swept into conservative Saudi Arabia since a YouTube film showing the dance at a wedding in Albania invaded many countries last year.

Some believe the dance had originated in Finland while others say it is a Romanian dance.

The Saudi-owned Al Arabiya TV channel recently broadcast a programme showing that dance had become widespread among Saudi men. It ran a YouTube film showing a group of Saudi men performing the dance in their traditional dishdasha and head cover.

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