Cairo Magazine - Entertainment: the old bump and grind

For more information, including prices and schedules for classes, contact Mena House Oberoi at 383/3222-3444 or visit www.raqiahasan.net

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Over seven hundred belly dancers will descend on Cairo next week to participate in the Ahlan Wa Sahlan Festival at the Mena House Oberoi from 27 June to 3 July. The event has become a pilgrimage to the motherland for dancers from around the world eager to study with the greatest names in Oriental dance. It brings together the best Egyptian teachers and performers, including Dina, Mahmoud Reda and Farida Fahmi. Now in its sixth year, the event has attracted participants from over thirty countries, including Azerbaijan, China and Latvia.

One of the highlights of the festival will be the chance to see Egypt’s top dancers perform in a single place. While the schedule of performances had not yet been determined at press time, organizers stressed that the opening and closing night performances would involve all the stars.

Participants can choose from twelve daily sessions, with student performances every evening, culminating in the final gala and crowning of Miss Oriental Dance.

The festival’s biggest draw is the opportunity to study with teachers that would otherwise be difficult to find, such as Khairiyya Mazin from Luxor, one of the few teachers of the rarely-performed ghawazi dance from Upper Egypt. “Before the festival existed, if you wanted to learn the ghawazi dance, you had to go yourself to Luxor and try and find Khairiyya and then convince a taxi driver to take you to her house. It wasn’t easy. To bring her to us is a real gift,” said Sahra, a performer and teacher from California who has regularly participated in the festival.

Festival organizer Raqia Hassan has been performing and teaching for twenty years, beginning her career as a member of the Reda Dance Troupe. Attending a number of conferences and festivals in North America and Europe, she felt somewhat envious, and decided to bring the dance world to Cairo in 1999. It was not an easy task, taking years of careful planning and maneuvering around red tape. “Everything we do here we have to seek permission,” said Hassan.

Egyptian dancers have survived waves of religious fundamentalism in a socially conservative climate. “It has always been a challenge to dance in Egypt,” said Mahmoud Reda, founder of the Reda Dance Troupe. “There exists a very strange love/hate relationship with the dance. Everyone wants to have a dancer at a wedding, but they will not accept their daughter becoming a professional dancer.”

Dancers in Egypt are in fact government employees who must be licensed by the Ministry of Culture in order to perform. Like most professional Egyptian dancers, Reda and Hassan spend a lot of time abroad teaching. The interest in Oriental dance on the international scene is growing at a phenomenal rate, with teachers scrambling to keep up with the demand for new instructional DVDs. Whether in Tokyo or Buenos Aires, students are keen to perfect the undulations of the camel step and smooth out their shimmie. During Reda’s last trip to Argentina, 620 dancers participated in his master class.

“I love performing in Egypt,” said Sahra. “It is a warm and wonderful atmosphere, and you feel like the Egyptians are dancing alongside of you emotionally.”

In one of her last moments of quiet before the festival begins, Hassan reflected on her hopes for the event. “Maybe when the Ministry [of Culture] sees the large number of people who are coming to Egypt because of their love for the dance, we will soon be able to open studios and an institute to preserve our heritage.”