Variations (5): Celebration and the move towards more a Baladi form of Baladi

One interesting aspect of Baladi dance is its celebratory aspect. Ordinary Egyptians get to participate in dancing and different dance formats usually in such occasions as weddings, engagements, graduations,....etc. In this sense on an everyday-to-day level, people engage with Baladi as a practice, usually to celebrate. Which is the more common and widespread form of presentation and representation of Baladi.
We have seen in the last few posts, how someone like Badia Masabni completely revolutionised Baladi by taking it out of its informal context and adding many elements to it, including costume, choreographic repertoire, setting, ...etc. At some point it was equally plausible to perceive of Baladi as a form of dance entertainment as much as musicals or Samba, that were performed in nightclubs and cabarets all over Egypt in, during and after WWI and WWII.
But what remained in the people's imaginere, the closest they ever came to a professional belly dancer, was most probably in a wedding.
And nearly all the legends of belly dance, made an appearance in one film or another as dancers in a wedding.

In the clip, we see the gradual move during the 1960s and 70s to depict Baladi as a more popular rather folkloric form of dance, rather than the exciting, cosmopolitan form of urban entertainment that Badia Masabni endeavoured to create at the turn of the century.
Slowly Baladi was relegated to the realm of  common street art, or public performance, and instead of going back to being an informal mode of public expression, it started acquiring specific aesthetics that had to do with folkloric and more "popular" practices. This inevitably brought in a bourgeois understanding of what folkloric is and what popular aesthetics entail. As the video shows, that setting in which Baladi was performed in, the elements that started to be introduced reinforced those conceptions and ideas about its position and its aesthetics, rather than revive its original meaning and significance.
The film is called Al-Zawg Al-A'azab (the single or celibate husband), it was produced in 1966, and it was directed by Hassan Al-Saify who was rather famous for his light comedies. In that scene we see Hind Rostom and Farid Shawky getting married while Mohammed Rushdy sings and Zeenat Alwy dances.
Rushdy is one the legends of popular and folkloric singing and he rose to fame around the same time that Baladi was starting to be associated with the popular and the kitsch. In this case the film can be seen as an example where the representation of Baladi is less about the virtuosity of the performer (i.e. Tahya Karioka or Samia Gamal for example) and more the singer, the setting, the music,...etc
Zeenat Alwy herself was among the giants of Belly Dance. She danced also at Badia's nightclub and was a friend of both Samia Gamal and Tahya Karioka. She, however, developed her own distinct style and incorporated many elements of the Ghawazee and stick dancing more common in Upper Egypt. What is first very striking about this sketch is the importance of the singer as well as the dancer. Rushdy possessed a big, unpolished voice, that had a bitter-sweet tone to it, and a very unique diction and phrasing that made him immediately stand out during his day. The music he sings comes to mind as highly percussive, we even see a group of women playing at the Mazaher (some sort of drums), which is what women usually used to play at wedding ceremonies, and for the first time a choir can be heard very clearly. As a matter of fact that choir seems to act like the transition from one part of the performance/song, it gives cues to the singer, the dancer and the audience. It almost adopts a theatrical setting but with informal elements in lieu of the more formalized stylized elements of theatre. Improvisation and ad hoc modes of performing remain to the be guiding force in this kind of representation.
Zeenat does something that her famous predecessors don't really do, she uses her torso a lot, she starts using her face to "act" out parts of the choreography, and she even flirts with the audience and the singer. Something that many belly dancers after her will push to extreme and that audience will start expecting from a belly dancer. While Tahya always maintained an enigmatic expression of mild condescension and Samia always had an engrossed, almost tortured expression while dancing, Zeenat, smiles, winks and shakes her head from side to side.
She activates her upper torso and face as an important aspect of the performance, and starts interacting with the audience in ways that go beyond the rigid setting of former films and visual representations of Baladi.
This highlights the informality of the practice and takes it more and more away from the stylized and rather formulaic mould that Badia and all her disciples integrated in their performance.
The choreography of Zeenat also is interesting,  she never cuts the space diagonally (the way Samia does, which shows that the influences that Zeenat imbibed were fundamentally different than Samia), she rather goes in circles, and does lateral shifts (very much in line of the Ghawazee). She alternates between simple torso movements and sporadic movement of her extremities, on hand and in pelvic shimmys that hold so much tension, and that follow the beat to the letter. Again something almost all belly dancers will do after her, is the near-perfect shimmys she creates in relations to the beat, and that would become a hallmark of what a good belly dancer is.
What is fascinating about the way the choreography is created, is that the alternation is seamlessly tied to the music. Rushdy's genre of singing, follows the formula of a single melodic line, with variations towards the end, then recitative, percussion and repeat.
If we carefully measure Zeenat's counts of movements, we will find it follows this same formula, almost perfectly.
The dancer's sense of rhythm and musicality were of course always important, but to internalize the structures and the architecture of the music and the beat to that extent, is something of an innovation. Especially of how important the rhythm has become.
For example, if we compare for example Naimaa Akef's dance to Zeenat, we will instantly notice the sheer precision by which Naimaa moves and the complete lack of the voluptuous turns and swirls that Zeenat brings to her dance.
Despite the fact that what Naimaa does is almost a reenactment of Ghawzee dancing and that Zeenat borrows a lot from the Ghawzee, Naimaa is all about the execution and the technique. While Zeenat, still a legend in her own right, is a precursor of the voluptuous, sensual, flirty belly dancer, who might possess a certain virtuosity, but the performance aspect would slowly take as much importance as technique and method.

Variations (4): Dancing Bodies, Foreign Bodies

One of the interesting phenomena of Baladi, that films preserved for us, is the presence of non-Egyptian belly dancers. It is a historical as well as an artistic fact. By the mid-1800s Egypt was forcibly integrated in the economy of the Colonial World (or the Age of Empire as Hobsbawm would describe it) and thousands of Europeans flooded into Egypt, creating a very diverse and cosmopolitan atmosphere. They came from all places: Greece, Italy, England, France, Austria and so on. They built their own hospitals, schools, monasteries, shops, some of which still exist till this day.
Of course one can argue that such demographic phenomenon owes its raison d'etre completely to capitalist infiltration of the colonial economy. Egypt was forced to give favorable treatment to European merchants, companies and businessmen, not only that they had their own courts and were not subject to local jurisdiction or trials.
That is definitely an ugly side to such shining cosmopolitanism. But at its best this atmosphere of different cultures, nationalities, affinities and sense of openness motivated some of the expatriates and foreigners to embrace the culture and arts of the time and create a new and "modernized" version of the existing local idioms and tradition.
This happened in film, in music and Baladi was not far off when it came to "foreign" contribution and participation.
In this film, Khaleek Ma3a Allah (literally Stay with God), directed by Helmy Rafla (who not surprisingly made his debut in film working with, Togo Mizrahi, the Jewish Italian pioneer filmmaker) in 1954, we see the glamorous and vivacious Kitty dancing to the music of the very traditional singer and composer Mohamed Kahlawy (later turned into a singer of religious and spiritual music).
Kitty was Greek and Jewish and started her life by performing in Alexandria, little is known about how she learnt to bellydance, or who were her teachers. But from the dancing we can see that she mastered a lot of the traditional, classical repertoire: she is dancing to a live singer, she maintains her center when the movement is initiated from the pelvis, she is not seduced by the intensity of the rhythm to break into hysterical choreography other bellydancers usually fall trap to, she is very controlled when she wants to (most of the time), reminding us of the subtlety of someone like Houryah Mohamed or Tahya Karioka.
Yet we can not help but see the sudden twirls and turns, even the inexplicable jumps that come out of nowhere, completely unlike the more traditional performers and their style.
 What is fascinating about Kitty is that she dances to one of the most traditional and "authentic" singers of the time. The music of Kahlawy, is strictly Egyptian in its format and sound. It employs the structure of the Mawwal, and the rhythm of local dances and music. That Kitty was not only able to dance to that, but also show a mastery of rhythm and movement is no small feat. Considering that she never entirely mastered the Arabic language (it is very clear from the obvious accent that she was famous for, and that everyone found so endearing back then) it is a great testament to her talent.
What is also interesting to see that she was able to use different styles of movements at the same time, without making them clash. So we see the soft undulations of the classic style, the lateral movement of the Gypsies and the Ghawazees, the more modern breaks of jumps and turns and swirls more reminiscent of someone like Samia Gamal for example.
Yet what is characteristically Kitty, is not only her mastery of different styles and traditions of movement, but the sheer exuberance she brings to her performance. She smiles, she laughs, she cajoles, she winks, Kitty brings a whole new dimension to the face. It is very hard not to notice her, or notice how her facial expression becomes part of the performance itself. If we compare that to Tahya for example, we would discover the almost shocking difference. Tahya always had this cryptic smile, making the audience feel that she knows some great mystery that they will never know and she holds them under her spell. Or Samia, who despite showing more range of emotions, her smile was never meant to be anything more than just a smile. A stylized facial expression that does not distract her or the audience from the dance. But with Kitty, her face is almost as important as her body is. She almost captivates everyone with her virtuosity as much as with her charm and alacrity.

Another fellow Greek dancer is Nadia Gamal. Who was also born in Alexandria sometime in the 1930s to a Greek father and an Italian and started dancing in Beirut at the start of her career. The similarity of her name to Samia Gamal, is not a coincidence, as it was Farid Al-Atrach who discovered her and gave her this name as contender to Samia.
In this dance from the film Izay Insak (literally How Can I forget you?) directed by Ahmed Badrakhan in 1956 we see her dancing also in a wedding, with the legendary singer Sabah, and the music composed, not surprisingly by Farid himself.
The music shows Farid's signiture complex orchestration and prominent use of strings (violins especially). What is unusual about this sketch, is it looks more like a song intermitten with dance, then a dance accompanying a song, like Kitty for example with Kahlway or Samia with Farid in their other films. The focus alternates between Sabah as a singer and Nadia as a dancer or performer. Maybe in a way showing the importance of Sabah not having to contest for attention from a fellow female performer, again unusual for its format, for example if we remember Akef and Fayza Ahmed, the focus did not really "alternate", they rather complemented each other.
The first thing one notices about Nadia's movement is how crowded it feels, there is a lot going on, there arms and shoulders, legs and pelvis, she never really gives anyone a proper chance to chart her movement through, she is doing everything all at once. Not only that, she is moving through the space as she does that. Not in the same way that Samia does, when she cuts diagonally through the space, holding a certain movement or gesture, no, Nadia moves everything along, while she traverses the space. A style of movement completely "foreign" to the more traditional way of dancing Baladi.
It almost feels hysterical. There is not the deliberate, controlled movement of someone like Tahaya or the intensity and control of Samia, there is almost a sense of "misunderstanding" the notion of what is virtuosity and how can one show it.
Something all foreign bellydancers will do later, is adopt this mistaken notion what is virtuosity and how can one show it while dancing.
What one feels while watching Nadia, is that the movement controls her and not the other way round. It is as if she is possessed by the movement and not that she possesses the movement. So we don't see isolation, which is a fundamental characteristic of a good bellydancer, there is not any subtlety, there is an impulsive, uncontrollable urge to capture the melody, the rhythm, the modulations, everything all at the same time, giving a sense that the person listening does not really understand the function of each of those elements independently and collectively.
When should one respond to the rhythm? When should a dancer take a cue from the melody? How to isolate? And so on.
Nadia does not show us that she understands how it all fits together, we see a very keen sense in performing the knowledge of Baladi, but not the actual practice itself.
Its as if someone speaking a new language and would all of sudden start conjugating everything at the same time, although there is no need for it.

Variations (3): Modernizing Dance II

The revolution started by Badia and that influenced all subsequent dancers, continued in many ways, as we have seen how Samia Gamal made her own share of innovation, not just on the choreographic level but the very performative persona of a dancer.
 What would be then interesting to see how other dancers took in those innovations and built on them and developed them further.
One of those icons who would be interesting to look at her career,  in the 50s and the 60s and who belongs to the pantheon of bellydance legends is Na3met Mokhtar (1932 - ). There is no information about whether she is still with us or not. But that is the case for most of film or dance icons.
Most biographies or information on her life, said that she was trained with Na3eema Abdo, who was another great impresario of bellydance, but rather on a less glamorous and less Westernized way like Badia.
Na3eema is the same dancer that trained Houriyah Mohamed and hence we can imagine her as more classical and traditional in her style and method of dancing.
Yet what is truly surprising is that Na3met, shows little of the influence of traditional training or style. She created a very specific way of movement that a lot of other dancers will try to emulate and even push in other directions.
Among her many classic performances, is the one in the film Ibn Hamido, which was produced in 1957 and is considered a classic of Egyptian Cinema. It was directed by Fatteen Abdel Wahab (1913-1972), who was a master f romantic and light comedies and who directed many other classics.
The film starred the bad boy of Egyptian Cinema then, Ahmed Ramzy, and the most famous comedian of all time Ismail Yassin and Marilyn Monroe of her time, Hind Rostom and many others.
In that scene, the two main characters of the film, Ahmed Ramzy and Ismail Yassin, are undercover agents that are trying to unravel a  drug smuggling business, and so they follow around one of the members of the ring, and naturally he hangs out at nightclubs! He whoever discovers who they really are, and while they are enamoured by the charms of the bellydancer, who takes the handkerchief of one of them (Ismail Yassin)  gives it to him, and he slips a piece of hash into, gives it back to her, and she in turn, returns the handkerchief with the hash "unnoticed".
This became a common motif in representing bellydancers in  film, as the evil seductress who works for a villain and who uses her to set a trap for his enemies or the police who is chasing him.

We see that she took to heart some of Samia's innovation, she is wearing high heels, she cuts the space a few times, although we can feel that she is "torn" between staying centered and moving across the space, in a way that almost gives a lost or hesitant feel to her performance.
In her movement we see none of the classical or no-classical basics that Houriyah and Tahia are famous for. Her movement is not subtle, or smooth, she is almost hysterical with her movement, creating a highly rhythmic manifestation of the beat. The incessant and very fast gyrations, very quick undulations, is more reminiscent of the Ghawazee style and brings to mind more of Na3eema 3akef style of movement.
A major difference though is that Na3eema had extraordinary control of her body and a perfect sense of rhythm, making her movement not only look seamless but also effortless, while we can sense that Na3met is struggling a bit to maintain this level of control and fluidity. Her dancing is not smooth and effortless. It actually looks like a lot of work.
Many people in her time considered her one of the best dancers and even Umm Kolthoum herself used to call her a "symphony". And she would become famous for her strong isolation of the torso and fire rapid gyrations that almost look they are anticipating the beat.
There is a lot of virtuosity that Na3met brings to her performance, she is very flexible, at some point she literally bend over backwards, and her control over her fast-paced movement (although not without a visible strain)  is an impressive feat.
But what remains interesting about her legacy, is not only the physical feat of doing 40 gyrations or shimmys per second, but also the element of seduction that she would become famous for.
In many of her films, she always played the role of the seductress, who lures her audience by, not only the technical virtuosity of her performance, but also by her powers of seduction, so there is also a certain facial expression, certain hints by the eyes, coded gestures by the fingers and the hands.
While Samia usually had a very consumed and tortured expression on her face or a very stylized smile that was not necessarily flirty or lurid , and Tahia a cryptic expression that never really gave away too much, Na3met uses her face, hair and even fingers, she flirts, she invites her audience to look at her not only an exceptional performer but as an attractive woman who can dance very well.
Something almost all bellydancers after her we will try to do, in a way undoing the legacy of someone like Samia or Na3eema who tried to create the persona of the serious performer and dancer, who can be pretty but can still be respected for her extraordinary artistry rather her beauty or power of seduction.

Variations (2): Modernizing Dance I

One of the enduring visual representations of Baladi, is the one captured through film and one particular choreographic format, is the one pioneered by Samia Gamal (1924 - 1994). Originally born in Upper Egypt she moved to Egypt with her family and began to dance with belly dance legendary impresario Badia Masabni by the late 30s. She initially started dancing under Tahya Karioka, who was the leading dancer of the time, but slowly broke away, from her style and vision as she was trained by Western teachers, particularly ballet and Latin American-inspired dances of the time. At the casino of Ms. Masabni, she imbibed all the Western influence of the time, and like Masabni herself, she outdid her mentor and patron in incorporating modern choreographic architecture to her dances, she is the first to have a "corps de ballet", to use high-heels while dancing and last but not least to actually introduce diagonal shifting of space in belly dance.
A lot of her success can be credited to the faith and support of ingenious talent of Farid al-Atrach (1915 -1974). In this clip, of the film Akher Kedba (The Last Lie), produced in 1950, it was Farid that developed and produced the film and composed the music as well. It was among the many film features that Farid made with Samia.
The clip shows a sketch, a belly dance sketch on a theatre stage, very similar to the ones that Samia used to dance in Masabni's famous night club, with costumes "imitating" traditional or folkloric styles of baladi performers and dancers, with only Samia's costumes looking very much like the costumes Masabni's developed for her performers at the turn of the century.
The idea of presenting sketches of belly dance at theatres and night clubs was one major development of belly dance by the turn of the 19th C. It literally was taken off the streets and "framed", like other entertainment sketches of the time: musicals, ballroom dances, Latin American dances, Jazz,...etc. And in a way that made belly dance open to absorb and assimilate elements of what we might consider "modern".
For starters, the double-framing of the dance, a sketch within a sketch, the belly dance as a theatrical sketch made within a film about something else. This in itself show the degree of the referentiality, viewing the dance with at least three different lenses.
Secondly, the basic format itself of the dance forever changed, instead of live playing of a small band of musicians, it has become orchestrated (which meant introducing elements of Western music and instrumentations), in many cases recorded music, and the many innovations of using corps de ballet or the unusual use of space, that Samia pioneered.
If we compare this sketch with the one of Karioka's we will immediately realize the differences: the undulations are much more pronounced, with falls and rises more dramatic, turning around and going off center is more common, and what immediately strikes us choreographic-wise, is the use of the arms. Samia Gamal took Masabni's lesson (a movement Masabni is said to have taken form Isadora Duncan) to heart and used the arms to frame her torso, or to isolate more easily, and to give a certain sense of elongation and vertical continuity to her movement,  while Karioka, more true to traditional belly dance, rarely raises the arms beyond shoulder level, and almost always keeps them parallel to her torso or minimally extended to the side.
The use of space might not be very clear in that particular film, but another earlier film, Afreeta Hanem (Ms. Genie) also with Farid al-Atrach, produced by Farid in 1949, shows Samia Gamal much more clear use of arms more reminiscent of Samba (a dance that Samia particularly liked) and a real venture into space, beyond the more concentric movement of traditional belly dance.

 The venture into space earned Samia, the infamous joke that Tahya Karioka made about her, that "she needs a football stadium to be able to dance", ridiculing Samia's efforts to break the center-based approach to belly dance.
Samia's decentering of belly dance and the incorporation of arms, shifted the focus from the pelvis to the the use of arms and legs. In a way it became less about the 'belly', and more about the entire body of the dancer. Making space an integral aspect of the dance and an element just as important as the music for example. In a way this comes in line with her effort of breaking belly dance from the mould of an intimate dance aimed for a small audience that gather informally in any public space to watch the performer, to a more elaborate dance that makes use of space in a way akin to theatrical representation, a form of representation that she is used to, since Samia started learning belly dance in that kind of setting, i.e. a cabaret, nightclub kind of setting.
This "modernizing" of setting, format and what body parts to use opened the door of other "styles" of belly dancing. Something some more traditional performers criticised Samia Gamal for. Since this opened the door for "Westerners" to be able to dance this style and not only that but to expand on this repertoire and include more elements from ballroom dancing and Latin American and Afro-Cuban dance.
For example, lot of contemporary performers of belly dance, are Brazilians, who include a lot of elements of Brazilian Samba in their routines, most of them citing Samia Gamal as the primary inspiration for this style of movement.
What is interesting is how Samia Gamal herself viewed her own position, as more of a dancer/performer, rather than strictly a "belly dancer" or "traditional dancer", in the more common nomenclature of dance.

Variations (1): Virtuosity vs. Politics of the Perfomer

There are many 'variations' in Baladi, one because of the improvisatory nature of the practice itself and the other because how little is codified about it. There are no central authorities or doctrinal authorities dictating how should Baladi look like or be. There is a certain accumulation of experiences that both performers and audience have, creating a certain expectation about the practice, but there are no designated institutions that "regulate" our understanding of what Baladi is or is not.
Most judgements are aesthetic judgements that have to do with the music or the performer's abilities and showmanship.
This malleability, literally, lent the practice open to adaptations and innovations by many different groups. And each added their own ideas about how it should be or how it should be practised.

In this video we see a lot of the "classical elements" of Baladi, but we also see a lot of innovations that one particular tradition developed, mainly the Ghawazees, who are traditionally believed to be Gypsies who came to Egypt around the 16thC and lived around famous urban centers and started to perform to public audiences, and earn money as entertainers.
The Ghawazee have very distinct elements in their dance and this what we see in the film Tamr Hanna, starring the ingenious dancer, Naeema Akef (1929 -1966), who is considered one of the giants of Baladi. The film was released in 1957 and was directed by her first husband Hussein Fawzy. It starred a host of Egyptian Cinema icons, the likes of Rushdy Abaza, Ahmed Ramzy and singer Fayza Ahmed. The story revolves around the lives of the Ghawazee and how the main character, a gypsy performer, is torn between pursuing a career and moving to Cairo or sticking to her people and her lover, Rushdy Abaza.

The video shows a setup of a band, a singer and a performer, in a public space, all gathered to watch Naeema Akef  dance. The performance starts with Fayza Ahmed singing a long Mawwal, which is a non-metrical melodic improvisation, considered a standard of Classical Arabic music in general and Egyptian specifically. It is usually a lament and in this case, the singer laments the extraordinary limits of her patience and endurance to be apart from her beloved.
The classical elements of Baladi are very clear: the musicians, the performer, the audience, the public space, however, what is very interesting is the aspects that ghawazee add to the dance, we typically see the rhythmic percussive element that is associated with Belly dance in general. In complete contrast to Tahia Karioka, the rhythm here becomes the compass for Naeema Akef's performance. You can almost count her turns and swirls to the beat. She executes it with remarkable precision. What is also very characteristic of the ghawazee are the finger cymbals that echo the rhythm and emphasize it. In a way giving a function to the arms and hands that would normally by static and vertical.
The movement is lateral, we can see that she moves to the side, parallel tot the floor, traditionally she would stamp her feet to the side with the rhythm, but we don't really get to see that here.
And the music alternates between melodic modulations and sudden very strong percussions. Towards the middle, there is even a part where she dances to rhythmic percussion that is associated with ecstatic ceremonies and she turns the same way that mystical dancers would, showing the influence Naeema Akef's background rather than the ghawazee per se.
What Naeema brings is a long history of doing circus and acrobats, as she was originally trained as circus performer by her father. She used to dance in mawaled (feasts of saints), (which might explain the use of ecstatic beats and turns) and eventually made her way to Cairo and started dancing in famous clubs and cabarets. We can easily trace the intense physicality that acrobats bring to her performance, the tension and release of her movements are incredibly precise, and her movement is unusually smooth and has a lot of agility. She is not afraid to use the space and she shows a unique coordination between different parts of her body, as if she is almost being moved by strings.

Akef is unique because in a way, she introduced the notion of the virtuosity of the performer, something that singled her out and created this notion in people's minds that Baladi dancing can be a virtuosic act, more about the skill and genius of the performer and less about the gender politics of the female dancer entertaining and or seducing an audience.
She is still remembered till today as a dancer (raqesah) in the athletic and gymnastic sense, rather a dancer (raqqasah) who entertains and uses her body as a way to attract attention and stimulate the fantasies of the spectators.

Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naima_Akef
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mawwal
http://www.maqamworld.com/forms.html\
http://www.elcinema.com/work/wk1746298/details_all

Unusual Presentations: Parody

Perhaps nothing more can captures the defining characteristics of a certain phenomenon more than parodying it. A parody singles those key elements and re-enacts them either with exaggeration or in a condensed manner to emphasize the idiosyncrasies of said style.
And this is what Fayrouz (1943- ) ingeniously does in her parody sketch of the three leading ladies of belly dance in her time, in her famous film 'Dahab' (1953) script by Abo El Seoud El Ebiary (1910-1969) and directed by Anwar Wagdy (1904-1955). The film that comes almost a decade or more after Tahia Carioca  and Samia Gamal started their careers and reached a certain degree of acknowledgement and recognition for their styles is an interesting example of how each of them were perceived by audience and their contemporaries while both were still at the peak of their careers (with exception of Badia Masabni who was well passed her glory years). In the sketch, which even imitates the setup of Badia Masabni's famous nightclub and her trademark line of dancers, Fayrouz invites the viewer to play to her on the darbuka while she imitates the bravuras of those three famous dancers. She attempts to copy the style and signature moves of each and every single dancer. She even has them pinned down to the very costumes that they used to wear. Fayrouz starts off with Tahia Carioca mimicking her famous facial expressions then moves to imitate her dancing. It becomes evident to us the classical nature of Carioca's dancing, its minimalism, and its reliance on the center as the pivoting point for her  movement, moving towards it, or away from it, or even falling off center. Fayrouz then moves to Samia Gamal, again mimicking her tortured facial expressions and even passes a sarcastic comment on Samia Gamal's marriage to an American businessman. Although we notice that she repeats some of the movement she made before, she re-enacts some of Samia Gamal's key movements, her use of her legs to cut through space, and turning her shoulder sideways, sometimes even throwing her torso forward while looking over her shoulder.
The last segment of the sketch, she declares that she "will dance like Badia in the past", she doesn't comment on any personal tics of Badia, on the contrary she sings saying how "when her finger cymbals clicked, minds went crazy". Despite the fact that we don't have surviving records of Badia dancing (except the chance recording we mentioned before), the movement Fayrouz re-enacts is distinctly different than both Tahia and Samia. First of all the finger cymbals are central to her movement and serve as virtually another layer of movement by themselves, as they guide her arms, and give them direction, which in turn really looks like she is conducting the line of dancers as if she is a maestro. Her movement also is more reminiscent of Ghawazi dance, even the dress, disregarding its see-through quality, is also reminiscent of this particular style of dancing. However, there is no way to verify whether Badia herself favoured one style of dancing over the other or whether she was more of a Ghawazi dancer or any other style.

Tracing Genealogies (3): Presentations of Baladi

ِAs we have seen from the last post, how by the mid-1940s, Baladi was heading towards a revolution in terms of choreography and representation. By that time the culture of cabarets and nightclubs presenting Baladi as a form of entertainment (a colonial syndrome by all measures) necessitated a certain "update" in its look and appearance.
It goes without saying that the lion's share of all these innovations that endure to this day, are because of Badia Masbani and her nightclub.
But also by the 1940s, cinema has become a standard form of entertainment, and managed to be mainstreamed to a great extent. Egypt had a thriving filmmaking industry, that almost rivalled Europe. As a matter of fact several of the big production of the late 1930s and 1940s were nominated for Oscar in the Best Foreign Picture category.
Baladi as well found its way through new visual medium, and almost all the major films produced in that decade has a scene for belly-dance in a usual context of a nightclub or a cabaret or belly-dance in a more "common" setting.
The video posted, shows a very interesting and early example of what Baladi is and in what context is it usually performed. It is a 1946 production, called 'Laabet el Set' (the lady's trick) it was written by Badee3 Kheiry and developed by Naguib el Rehany and was directed by Waly el Din Sameh, it starts comedic giants like Naguib el Rehany, Mary Moneib, Bishara Wakeem and so on.. It is considered a classic of Egyptian cinema.
It has a star-studded cast, with Tahia Karioka (1919 – 1999), considered a legend of Belly Dance,and who also started her career by dancing in Badia's nightclub. Tahia was a scary performer who mastered almost all the dance styles that were taught to her, being Western or Classical. And it is how she got her name, Karioka is allegedly a Brazilian dance that she perfected (when I looked up the word, it actually refers to the inhabitants of the city of Rio de Janeiro, their dialect is called Carioca). She soon took over and became the star of the troupe and received offers to act in film and eventually became an actress in her own right as well as being a legendary bellydancer.
In that scene a rich man is coveting the affections of Tahia Karioka and she is asked to dance to lure him, and as can be seen she concedes to dance but reluctantly and not as seductively or flamboyantly as dancing to impress would usually entail.
The setup reveals, that the dancing is done at home, the singer is almost as important as the dancer, making the dancer more of a physical manifestation of the music rather than a different representation of the music. In a sense the dancer is another instrument. That view lingered for a very long time, and is still one way of doing belly dance, that a singer, usually trained in the traditional and folkloric music of Egypt, would set the key of the choreography of the dancer. Adjusting his/her singing to the dancer's interpretation, playing already to the improvisational nature of Arabic singing and music and the improvisational nature of Baladi dance.
The intimate setting of the dance, a family, at home, entertaining guests, points out to the 'celebratory' aspect of Baladi. We see by the end of the song, the entire family standing up to join Tahia in the dance, emphasizing the fact that it is a 'communal' experience, everyone is either playing an instrument, clapping along or even joining to dance at some point.
The dance itself is very minimal. Tahia Karioka is considered one of the Neo-Classical dancers, who used the traditional choreographic aspects of Baladi.  Interestingly enough legend said that she was inspired by Hooryah Mohammed. There is little that I could find in terms of information on what kind of relationship that they had (some say bitter rivalry), but as we saw in the last post, there is a lot of Horya's approach to belly dancing that Karioka took from her and stuck to. The centerd position, strong isolation technique, resolute pelvic sways and gyrations without going off-center. The very subtle movement, that is sometimes unusually slow and sparse as to be almost hypnotic in a way.
Even as her style evolved she still stuck to the use the pelvis as the center of movement with fall and rise technique being the transitional motif.
The arms are almost used as a way to frame the dancer or to frame the lower extremities of the body, its the pelvis (and sometimes the legs) where the movement happens. And Tahia shows that very well. Her arms are always isloating her torso, or literally framing her pelvis or creating a static verticality that forces the spectator to trace the center of movement, since the movement itself is created around and from the center.

The song is a traditional song, and as common in most Arabic singing it laments the longing of a lover to his beloved and his ardent desire to be reunited with his beloved that is playfully spurning him to increase his affection. The choreographic phrases with the most interesting movement is the one where the singer expresses his interest desire to 'see' his beloved or asks his beloved to reciprocate his affections. Melodically and lyrically speaking these are the parts with the most improvisational content, where both singer and dancer would repeat with slight variations over and over again.
There is the less rhythmic 'coloraturas' that are now very strongly associated with Belly dance. If we notice, it is only the change of melody that gives accent to the dance and the rhythm is only there to ground the music and the singing not to define the movement.

Tracing Genelogies (2): Presentations of Baladi

One of those early pioneers is Houriyah Mohamed, who was born in 1918 according to some websites, and who became a star in Badia's nightclub. She then went to make a series of films, one of the most famous of them, ironically enough, is called Sharia Mohamed Ali (Mohamed Ali Street) (produced 1944), which is the street where all the local belly dance troupes and musicians used to live and perform. She made a very successful duet with singer Abdel Ghany al-Sayid (1912-1962) who was renowned for his sweet, melodic voice.

In this video, Abdel Gany Al-Sayyid sings one of the his classics, Wula ya Wula (very hard to translate, 'wula', is mostly a derogatory term of boy, it can be translated as "lad", and since in Arabic most love songs use the masculine conjugations to address the female beloved, in this song instead of saying "O lass", it is "O lad"!). The song is composed by renowned composer Mahmoud al-Sherif (1918-1990), who was a master of incorporating local and folkloric motifs into his composition, creating a profoundly distinctive 'Egyptian' sound, very reminiscent of what Sayyid Darwish (1892-1923) did (coincidentally both would end up composing music that would be later used as a national anthem, one for Egypt [Sayyid Darwish] and one for Libya [Mahmoud al-Sharif]).

The song is clear 'Ghazel', not the form of Medieval Persian poetry, but the genre of poetry that deals with remebering the beloved or exalting her virtues. In that particular incident, its rather what is termed 'Ghazel Sareeh' (Clear Ghazel), because the singer is not only exalting the moral or personal virtues of his beloved, but her physical qualities as well! It is a kind of singing that is common with belly dance, where a singer would start listing the beautiful physical attribute of his beloved, and the belly dancer would start to dance highlighting or "embodying" this attribute (i.e. 'O you with the beautiful eyes' the dancer would then start winking or batting her eye lashes,....etc).

Wula ya wula, is one of the more famous songs of that particular genre. And in the song we notice how closely connected is the dancer to the singer's declarations of amorousness and she 'physically' responds to the lyrics, trying to mirror the words in her choreography.

The setting of the song, unsurprisingly is in a nightclub, and the dance is a sketch, a scene from a village, there are even palm trees in the background!, with a full "local" dress-up" for the singer and the dancer. There is even a 'corp' of dancers who for some reason are dancing North African style of belly dance, where there is a lot of falling off center, which is very unusual for its time. It is either this or they are just very bad dancers.

Houriya Mohammed follows a lot of what Baida, taught her, the costume is the one Badia created, the position of the arms, although still a bit classical, but a lot of their positioning is Badia's influence, the entrances and denouement are also "theatrical". Yet despite all these 'innovations' a lot of Houriya's movements are resolutely 'classical'.

She moves a little bit in the space, she uses her arms a little bit more, but she remains strictly within the centre-based approach to dancing. Her movement is very subtle and soft, almost imperceptible at some point. We can see that she uses the snake undulations, where her lower torso and waist go into the famous "S" shaped movement that is the hallmark of classical bellydance. Her pelvic gyrations are very smooth, very much unlike the spastic, rhythmic gyrations of later dancers.

What is absolutely remarkable about Houriya Mohamed's style of dancing is how subtle it is, and the amount of control she practices over her movement. It is almost seamless with the music and the beat. It is very well linked together and so effortless, it looks easy to execute, which I think is part of the genius of someone like Houriya Mohamed. It is to do such complex and un-osentantatious movement and convince us that it looks simple and easy.

Tracing Genealogies (1): Presentations of Baladi

One way to try to understand Baladi dance is to see the way it has been represented. Or in that sense, how its development was preserved, since there is no possible means of notation of the choreography but through learning and physically memorizing the movements. One key method of preserving the historicity of the practice itself, was visual representations in Cinema and film.

Fortunately enough, cinema as a visual medium, started becoming an industry in Egypt over a century ago, so we have a very long tradition of 'representing' not only our understanding and perception of what Baladi is, but also how it itself as a practice evolved through the many contributions of its star performs and its contact with other dance practices throughout time (ballet, ballroom dance,....etc).

One significant force that completely revolutionized the perception, representation and the way Belly Dance is practiced till this day is the artist and impresario Badia Masabni (1892-1974). Who was from Lebanese origin and came to Cairo in the early 1920s and opened the first cabaret and night club that represented Baladi as we know it today. 

Nearly every single famous belly dancer from the 20thC danced at her casino and night club at some point in time. Such was her influence that we can easily compare her influence to that of Martha Graham on Modern Dance. She, like Graham, completely changed the way dancers approach their practice and the very format of its representation.

For example, the costumes most belly dancers wear now, are only pale imitations of the innovations she first created. Her nightclub was the artistic hub for the luminaries in the performing arts and music fields. The best composers, singers, comedians, dancers all performed in her night club and everyone coveted her patronage to be able to perform on her stage.

What is very interesting about Badia and her school, is that most belly dancers who danced in her troupe, were also trained in ballet, ballroom dancing, Latin American dances,.....etc. And how each one of them chose to respond to this training and those styles of movements produced an incredibly diverse group of dancers who each became a pioneer in her own way.

In one of the few surviving records of Badia actually, a lady called Jalilah managed to upload an almost three minutes of a recording of Badia dancing with her corps at her famous night club in 1934 (she managed to acquire the film material from an Egyptian film professor). Apparently the recording was meant to serve as some kind of advertisement for the night club. Although the recording is only a few minutes we can still discern a few observations that came to define Badia's contribution to how belly dance came to be defined and received by audience, at least in film and media. First, of all  the idea of a "corps of dancers", a direct borrowing from her experience doing music hall, revue and vaudeville for years. Belly dance is chiefly a solo dance, where once dancer establishes her own relationship to the audience and to the music. Even in contexts where there are more than one dancer, they either take turns at dancing or two dancers create some kind of call and response and call kind of dance, where one dances one motif and the other would join for emphasis or pick a particular pattern and repeat it at specific intervals, serving more as percussion. The clear attempt at creating a simple choreography for a group dance that moves across space and although the dancers seem out of sync, lacking the discipline of more uniform dance, we can see that a series of basic movements are repeated by everyone. What is interesting about what Badia was trying to create is a preset choreography for an improvisation-based way of dance, that has a certain lexicon of movement but that is never predetermined before the actual moment of performance. In that sense to create a choreography with a line, that moves to a certain cue of music and that does not allow for much space for individual interpretation is nothing short of a revolution in belly dance. The other noticeable feature is the idea of center stage and accompanying dancers. As a matter of fact the idea of stage itself. The notion of a designated space for performance that is elevated from the audience and that keep the audience at a particular distance from the performer is  Western invention that was slowly taking hold in Egypt's performing culture and traditions. The genius of Badia is that she did not shun Western innovations but rather tried to integrate them with existing local or regional forms and formats of performance. Sometimes a bit clumsily like in that recording, but the idea of using a stage, creating a group dance and then moving across the space to "reach" the audience, as would be in a more conventional setting for belly dance, is only a testament to Badia's desire to reinvent a medium in a way that appeals to both traditional and non-traditional audience.

In a more even rare coincidence the famous TV host and presenter Laila Rostom, interviewed Badia Masabni in her show 'Stars on Earth', in 1966. Well in her seventies by then, the 'dean of belly dance', a bit senile and eccentric sheds a bit of light on her journey to becoming  the single most profound influence on belly dance and performance in the 20th C. From the disjointed fragments of her life, we get to understand that she grew up in Latin America, spoke Spanish as her first language, and started her interest in performing by participating in school plays back then. What is fascinating is that she actually learnt Arabic almost as a second language, that she had a keen interest in fusing different styles of dance (she lists in them in the interview: foreign, Turksih, Tunisian, Moroccan,...etc) and that she found that traditional Classical Arabic music did not "encourage people to move as much", and that's why she introduced an orchestra along with traditional Arabic music ensemble. We can then understand why some of her disciples and dancers also opted to continue this fusion (Samia Gamal as a prime example of that) between Western style music and dance and some others not, like Tahia Carioca, whom she describes as "the most Oriental of all the dancers".
The footage also shows her attempts at singing and performing, along with virtuoso Oud player Farid Ghosn (1912-1985) and while little remains of the brilliance and showmanship that characterise her legendary career, her play with finger cymbals shows an enduring agility and a keen sense of rhythm even for a woman who is pushing 75.

On 'Baladi-dance' and Ownership(s)

I have asked a group of researchers, dnacers, choreographers, anthropologists to respond to my introductory post and some of them generously agreed to share their thoughts and insights. Below is the response of Adham Hafez, dancer, choreographer and composer.

The first thing that comes to my mind when I watch a baladi-dance solo (because usually it is performed as a solo), is what do people think this is about? I will start by my own answer and then I will continue with the rest of the text:
I think it is about being present to explosive physical extremes. I think it is about being generous, reciprocal, sensual (and not necessarily sexual or erotic), and complex.  It is also – mainly- about alternative modes of ownership.

Belly-dance, which I prefer to call here 'baladi-dance' because it refers more to an aesthetic, an emblematic complex term and set of relations rather than it does refer to a practice localized in one body-part, choreographically speaking. Baladi (or Balady) could mean so mean things; kitsch, popular art, something national, and literally means 'my country'. With such complexity of a term, the performance practice itself is of equal complexity if not more.

Many times one would be asked "what is Egyptian in your contemporary choreographic work?" The answer always was: "Everything that you can't see." I would extend this answer to 'baladi' also; everything that you can't see is what is Egyptian about it.

What baladi-dance offers in terms of 'Egyptianess' is quite the invisible. It is the ownership of a body lexicon that allows so many innuendos and subtle choreographies to take place. It is the negative space that creates enough distance to mitigate ownerships and histories. It is an aesthetic that is about communication more than anything, and hence the necessity for the very old artifact (on our side of the world) and quite the 'contemporary'  tool: the reciprocal gaze of the performer/audience. It is the admittance of a cultural heritage without the political romance that comes with it. It is the writhing body of a woman (or in several cases that of a man) without a mere hint of pole-dancing and striptease. It is the woman celebrating her body without a feminist institution.

Baladi dance then is the constant reminder of what it is to generate physical discourse, and to experience ownership culturally. The dance is that of 'my country', and without hints of nationalism it reeks of cultural ownership, culture here as a denationalized anthropological experience; something that 'we' own and have accumulated over decades, centuries or maybe longer and we could now recognize it through certain sets of relations when it takes place. Something that 'we'- and we is a group of people that are bound by the stretches of land they inhabited and stories they have shared and accumulated, rather than by their language or alphabet (that changed quite a few times), or their religious practices or their flags. The ownership of 'baladi' here (and a slice of culture generally) rids heritage of the need of national belonging, and replaces it with a certain act of cultural belonging, as amorphous in its very essence as culture is in its nature. What Baladi-dance then succeeds in achieving triumphantly is indeed this abstract sense of belonging, almost 'depoliticizied', something that operates on/through/within a subtle terrain of taste, aesthetics, cultural accessibility and communication.

What is also very inspiring about Baladi-dance then is how it stands now within a palette of many 'contemporary' practices of dance and performing in Egypt (to be locally specific). The confusion about the ownership of time that Egyptian contemporary dance problematizes is met with effortless presence (rather than answers) in Baladi-dance. And, if the questions that Egyptian contemporary dance raise are more within the paradigm of: who owns this? Is this ours? Have we reappropriated it the way we have done electricity? Is this a universal practice or do we have to learn 'foreign languages' for it? The questions that Baladi-dance invoke then are more within the paradigm of: this is 'ours', we don't need to ask many questions about the country of origin/ the name of the country of origin at the time, this is not nationalist in a reductive way of understanding politics and nations yet this is 'ours' culturally speaking in a very direct and basic way of understanding and exercising culture.

This genre of dance, so-commonly called 'belly-dance' and in worst case scenarios coined 'oriental dance', moves culture, and moves with culture, dealing with the issue of ownership from physical discourses, and through generous presence hints at invisibilities that are necessary in shaping how 'the other' understands her/his fellow 'other' when it comes to artistic practices.

And, perhaps as a final note, it's worth mentioning that the question of the 'ownership of the score' in Baladi-dance always remained 'effortlessly present' and equally mystifying the way the practice operated within its cultural lineage vis-à-vis how its people inhabit or own it. Baladi- solos were always known by the names of their dancers, and almost never by the name of the choreographer. The ownership resided in the body/dance of she-who-delivers and those who witness, and nothing else beyond this immediacy speaks loud enough when she is dancing.

A Propos Translatablity of Baladi

I have asked a group of researchers, dnacers, choreographers, anthropologists to respond to my introductory post and some of them generously agreed to share their thoughts and insights. Below is the response of Mohammed Abbas Zaki, anthropologist, Phd student at the London School of Economic.

The problem with translatability and the cross-cultural exchange of traditions or traditional practices is reaching a consensus or agreement upon the subject matter of said translation. For example, one might study the historical development of particular variations of belly dance and the way in which those variations have arisen out of and contributed towards various narratives about tradition/culture/gender/class and so forth but as soon as one attempts to shift this practice from one cultural framework to another the process of translation itself becomes part of the newly formed tradition.

I guess in order to analyze the transmission of culturally-specific forms of dance (or any performance practice for that matter) we must separate the dance into its elements (as Ismail did in his email) maybe specific techniques, particular performer/audience relationships, performance settings and so on. Each of those elements will indubitably undergo a process of transformation as well as translation but I guess we are then left wondering if this should affect the ‘success’ of this translation. Is it that the essence of the dance has been lost in translation, as Ismail suggested, or has it simply been transformed organically in the same way that one could argue every single performance alters forms of the dance. In a sense I guess I’m arguing that translation isn’t impossible but only if we account for, accept and embrace the organic development that this process would indubitably produce.

I guess one of the things I immediately think of when I think of the translation of belly dance is the purpose of such a translation. I, for example, have seen many belly dance performances at random Middle Eastern restaurants in Europe and what completely hampers the translation of the dance in those instances isn’t necessarily the movements or techniques (both of which are usually almost flawless) but the uncomfortable consumption of ‘exotic cultures’ that this exercise engenders. I do think, however, that this is a separate issue from translation. 

Approach Baladi

How does one approach an informal tradition? How does one work with a form of 'low-art? Is it possible to integrate a practice of popular entertainment into a contemporary framework without forfeiting criticality and conceptual correctness?
These questions and many more pervades the mentalscape of any artists or art maker who ventures into the world of traditional or popular forms of art practices and tries to find in-routes into the contemporary field to represent them or even try to incorporate them.
Baladi dance is one form of traditional popular form, that is mainly relegated to the realm of low-art and mass-entertainment, where there is no question of its entertaining value but there are a lot of questions raised when tries to approach it beyond its usual framework of representation.
At the outset this project my intention was problematize the notion of one tradition being an innate and not-able-to-be-transmitted, specifically in the context of choreographic transmission.
Baladi dance then operate on two levels:
1) National/Cultural: One has to be aware of the historical trajectory of how and where Baladi dance developed as well as the cultural practices that surround it, i.e. the music, the gender polarity of performing, the costume,....etc
2) The choreographic content: the specificity of the moving body, the Baladi body; how does it move? To what does it move? Can this movement be replicated?
The movement strategy in itself, the improvisatory drive of the choreography beyond recurrent motifs and specific sequences.

Initial discussions with Pere were mainly concerned the position of high and low art within contemporary practices and the communicability of one of those specific forms across different bodies and frames of representation.
I remember Pere saying that low forms of art, are ones that elicit an instant bodily reaction (horror, arousal, laughter,...etc) when that does not engage a mental involvement with the work.
And to me it would be very interesting to generate a certain context of debate/conversation among all of you, around the way in which you think Baladi dance operates and whether it can be truly 'transmitted' or is it doomed to be 'lost in translation'.