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.