The Omani state’s imperial expansion along the East African littoral in the nineteenth century secured Arab political and military dominance over the western edges of the Indian Ocean’s vast networks of trade in weapons, spices, and the enslaved. This expansion was conducted by Omani political and mercantile elites, who, from their coastal palaces, balanced South Asian investment capital, enslaved labor on new clove plantations, and Indian Ocean merchant networks with their own naval and military might. This paper traces this imperial expansion through the steps of a particular dance form—the Omani razḥa—which, I argue, was a crucial tool in the expansion of Omani hegemony. I show that the razḥa was the premier dance and social technology that accompanied Omani Arab sailors and soldiers as they cut a bloody wake down the Swahili coast, and, in the eyes of African locals, became a symbol of the Arab empire. Through documentary and ethnographic evidence, I argue that the Omani razḥa served as a model for several Swahili dance forms along the East African coast throughout the nineteenth century precisely due to its centrality to Omani political practice. As many scholars of East Africa have noted, East African societies have long adopted and reframed the images, sounds, and regalia of dominant groups, especially within competitive dance contexts. By putting dance at the center of historical and ethnomusicological analysis, I show how dance, especially but not exclusively war dances, can operate as a social practice of domination in the context of imperial expansion.