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.