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.
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