This paper is a phenomenological study of one of Simin Behbahani's better known poems, “Raqqaseh,” which is about the nightly ritualized dance of a dancing girl in a tavern. It will argue that the tavern in this poem could be viewed as a cultural container for socially dangerous representations and impulses, like the metaphoric sexualized body of the dancing girl. The tavern could also be viewed as a semiotic register for the symbolic representation of the dominant normative social discourse. By viewing the dance as performance, the communicative association of the symbolic significance of the dancing girl's body and the tavern and its audience will also be discussed. This paper will argue that the reader too is implicated in the performative function of the text.