Ausar
Joined: 05 Mar 2004
Posts: 468
Location: The wrong side of the tracks
|
| Posted: Sun Jun 06, 2004 9:50 am Post subject: Films in modern Egypt based on pharaonic stories |
|
|
Walid Aouni's dance of the ancient spirits
Leila Johnston Middle East Times staff
<http://www.metimes.com/2K/main_metpix/t.gif>
<http://www.metimes.com/2K/issue2000-23/issue_metpix/walid_aounis_dance.jpg>
<http://www.metimes.com/2K/main_metpix/t.gif>
CAIRO OPERA DANCE THEATER'S PERFORMANCE OF THE MUMMY
<http://www.metimes.com/2K/main_metpix/t.gif>
Lebanese choreographer Walid Aouni's dance theater evoked some of Egypt's sleeping spirits in Gomhuriya Theater on June 2.
The performance of four separate acts was based on the films of Shady Abdel Salam, opening with The Desert of Shady Abdel Salam. Here, mischievous desert demons and afareet rubbed shoulders with Bedouin and the elemental forces to an eerie piece of music by Peter Gabriel. The elegance of classical Arabiic music, which is improvised within conventional modes, lent clarity to the desert dance, which became abstract at times. The dance performed to the evocative kanoon, the haunting ney and the rababa brought us back to Egypt.
In this opening diversion of modern dance repertorium the courtship duo was the highlight, danced to the wild and wonderful gypsy rhythms and violins of Eastern Europe.
After the initial informal abstraction, the performers embraced the classical symmetry and forms of the ancient world. Three short tales unfolded, moving from the desert to the Nile valley of the pharaohs, referring also to the era of the khedives. These dances, beginning with Tutankhamun's Chair, were more theatrical. This dance reflects the Abdel Salam film in which a young boy, on a visit to the Egyptian Museum with his parents, stops in front of King Tutankhamun's chair and begins to imagine the history of the boy-king. A screen at the back of the stage displays the protecting eye of Horus and tarboosh-wearing soldiers sit on pharaonic-style chairs while a bespectacled Shady Abdel Salam, displaying his fascination for pharaonic history, pores over a young boy in modern dress asleep in a golden chair. The passage of time is shown as the sun sets on the screen, and the insistent rhythm of the shakaleel, a pharaonic percussion instrument shaken up and down by the seated soldiers, gives intensity and rhythm to the piece.
With the coming of dawn, the boy-king Tutankhamun walks onto the stage and the boy sleeping on Tutankhamun's Chair wakes up and bows to the king. The impostor is blind, a reference to latter-day Egyptian rulers. After making a majestic entrance, the rightful king takes his place on the throne and receives his crook and gold mask before Shady Abdel Salam places him in a museum glass case. The rhythm of the shakaleel continues.
After the interval, choreographer Aouni presented Abdel Salam's interpretation of The Eloquent Peasant, a story of injustice in which the peasant's donkey nibbles at corn belonging to an official as he is on his way to market to sell his goods. Pharaonic priests or judges sit in the chairs of the soldiers and play the shakaleel once more to great effect. The spiteful official confiscates the donkey and the goods. The story, which has survived on papyrus from the time of the Old Kingdom, tells how the peasant presents his case to the judges with such eloquence of speech that he is eventually summoned by the pharaoh himself who wishes to hear the beautiful speech.
The dance movements here were slow and expressive, based on pharaonic poses, even suggestive of Islamic zikr at times. Justice is done in this tale when the pharaoh amply compensates the peasant. It exemplifies the triumph of ma'at, which is the ancient concept of justice, symbolized by a feather.
Nubian singer and musician Ahmed Salam's intermittent accompaniment was apt and very moving. His mournful Nubian songs and drumming on the mazhar seemed to spring out of the ancient land to echo in our own time.
Lastly came The Mummy. This piece is Abdel Salam's comment on what he saw as the wholesale pillage of pharaonic artifacts by Europeans aided by Egyptian pashas and avaricious villagers living near the Theban tombs.
Death is personified by the white-faced Nancy Toncy, an accomplished dancer whose movements and appearance menace the stage.
Ahmed Salam's music again links past and present as the jackal-headed god Anubis embalms the mummy and places the eye of Horus on his chest, which is later to be stolen. Again, classical symmetry and pharaonic gestures characterize the dance movements in this dark and atmospheric piece. The veiled dancers' section is mysterious and impressive, the dancers playing small hand cymbals, another pharaonic instrument.
The performance ends with a melancholy song from Salam, whose exceptional voice and traditional music was perhaps the reason why he earned the loudest and longest applause.
Director and choreographer Aouni, who in 1993 founded the Cairo Opera Dance Theater, mentions the difficulty of trying to recreate the spirit of Pharaonic Egypt, but tonight's performance, like the films of Abdel Salam, are an earnest attempt. Perhaps if Aouni digs deeper into Egyptian culture he may find others like the singer Ahmed Salam, and base his dance theater entirely on Egyptian traditions, leaving western dance techniques aside.
UP TO THE CULTURE & ENTERTAINMENT INDEX
http://www.metimes.com/2K/issue2000-23/cultent/walid_aounis_dance.htm
"The Eloquent Peasant" Directed by Shadi Abdel Salam (1970, 20 min., subtitled) The story of a peasant who delivers goods by donkey to a local market, passes through the Grand Steward's estate, and is detained and has his donkey confiscated by a subordinate official. |
|
