Portugal, the 27th April, 2009
“Shows, workshops and television appearances with Hosny Watatak fromCairo – SO MUCH FUN!!!”
• Ufff….I am still holding my breath and taking all inside. Coming toPortugal with Hosny (the main percussionist of my orchestra in Cairo)to perform and teach was great!
• There were four television promotions where I could include him performing live with me and a series of classes and workshops where Icould see he´s professional in various fields, including teaching.
• A great performer is not always an equally great teacher. In fact, it´s rare to find both in the same person. Both tasks requite specific characteristics and talents. I was happily surprised to discover that Hosny understood what it means to teach and followed my lead in classes with the same attention and ability he shows on stage. The students loved him and the audiences too and, besides that, the deep and instinctive understanding between the two of us helps a lot toglue it all together and turn any situation – however chaotic it maybe! – into a fun moment of art and free creation. With him, I know Ihave a fertile, safe ground to work on. Not because I can predict it but because it´s always good and inventive.
• I enjoyed several ego massages during the treap as I saw , after four years of absence from Portugal, that my name remains as fresh and respected as ever.The hard work and the constant quality of all I do proven again and again have enduring results that I can still feel after a long time away from my country. Hosny was impressed to see how many people know me in television and outside. For him, this was something special and he acted like a child in a candy shop all the time we entered a studio and he saw people´s reaction to my presence.For me, it was pleasant but only a reflection of the path I´ve been tracing since I was 17 years old when I first started to study acting and pursue an artistic career.
• Fame and compliments come and go too easily for me to grab to them,though…I know how fast you can fall from your illusory throne so I concentrate on my work and never let my ego fly to high. I don´t want to miss my ground and the perspective of real life.
• WORKSHOPS:
The workshops were AMAZING and a surprise to me! I knew Hosny was a great performer but I had no clue if he could teach without my guidance or follow the demanding pace of my classes and workshops.Egyptian artists tend to see their art – dance, music, acting – in avery instinctive way. Most of them never set foot on an art´s school or even considered that there are techniques, theories and structures behind all their crafts. As an European, not only I ´ve spent all my childhood in a ballet institution as I got a PHD from the Superior School of Theatre and Cinema, meaning that I knew, from an early age,that you can study and teach art, yet not talent!
***Egyptian dancers and musicians, in particular, have a tremendous difficulty on teaching crafts that they learnt with no academic experience. It´s very common to see egyptian dancers trying to show steps to the students expecting them to just follow them and copy whatever they´re doing with no idea that they need, in fact, toEXPLAIN these same students how to do whatever they do so naturally and without effort or conscious.
***Hosny was a happy exception to this rule and he had a method of teaching of himself. He taught a few tabla lessons and followed my lead during some of the dance workshops perfectly understanding the method and logic of all the exercises I did with my students.
*** Having a great percussionist playing during my classes was such apleasure that I quit using the cds altogether and discovered, with no surprise, that a LOT of essential work can be done only in the rhythmic department.
***I was lucky to receive wonderful groups of students who came forthe right reason to the events. As it´s known, I hate envy and gossip oriented environments so common in Oriental Dance events. Students pay for my workshops to LEARN and SHARE joy, art, experiences and emotions through dance. Not to check on each other´s cloths and advantages.Through the years, I have collected a specific group of students who know what they´re coming to get from me and they arrive ready to work hard while having a great time!
• SHOWS!
***This was a hard one! Only me and Hosny on stage after testing several portuguese percussionists who could not follow him at all! Iconfess I was stressed and a bit scared because I was counting on a base of four percussionists and I ended with only one of them (and yet I ended with the best of them!). Being used to my small and bigorchestra of Cairo, I didn´t know how to dance on an empty stageanymore. Tasteless…it seemed that I had forgot how to dance altogether!
***Choosing songs to perform on a cd was another challenge as I´mspoiled to the point of saying any song´s title out loud and having it performed in a few seconds by my band. Like an oriental jukebox that you manage with great easiness and pleasure. Any song I like,anything…just saying it and having it immediately…what a luxury!So…returning to cds after such a long time of only dancing with my orchestra was a difficult challenge for me to face.
*** Where was my orchestra?!
*** Where was my egyptian audience?!
*** Where was that warm atmosphere that you can only feel in Egypt?!The air?! The energy that pulls you to dance embrancing you like apart of this country?!*** Where were the loud screaming and comments about me in the moment I enter the room to perform?!Oh, God…I missed Egypt so much…
*** Most people might think that dancing with a live orchestra is much harder than on cd but I disagree. If the orchestra is good, it becomesvery easy to perform with it. A cd is a dead complement and there´s no kind of interaction whatsoever between me and the recorded music. It´spredictable, static, boring and not challenging at all in the same wayan orchestra is. With an orchestra, you need to pay attention to each MOMENT, your concentration is totally focused in the NOW. Your musicians are following you and you´re following them both creating something fresh, alive and totally in the PRESENT.Dancing with a cd means having to compensate for all the musical and human background that´s not there. I doubted that I still rememberedhow to dance on cd but, thanks God, I did!
*** Hosny also had a hard job for himself. He had to perform three different tabla solos with no percussion background supporting him. We did in the shows as well as on live television.Playing with no ground, that´s what he did as well as I did feeling that I was dancing in the air, no ground to step on. He had to playbases and details, double acting as main “tabla” and “dohola” at the same time (the bigger “tabla” providing the bases to the tabla).Thanks God for his performing skills and great charisma on stage! WEDID IT and, according to the audiences, WE DID GREAT!
• TELEVISION APPEARANCES:
This was quite a treat for Hosny, despite the fact that he has an extensive experience in all sorts of studio and television recordings.I made a point on giving him his well deserved spotlight in each t.v.appearance because, in fact, I was so proud and happy to bring him with me to Portugal where, maybe for the first time, a percussionist of his standard set foot.Television has developed in a very strange way in my country. Almost five years ago, when I still lived in Portugal and worked there, I shoot a famous t.v. series as an actress and was being interviewed and dancing on various talk and entertainment shows every month so itb ecame a very familiar environment for me. I was taken as an artist with given credits in the market and my interviews were meticulously prepared by producers and presenters who would not dare to ask me about a subject they didn´t know about. This time around, I faced a totally different reality: a commercial, fast food style televisionwhere the real stars of the shows are celebrity gossip and common people tragic, melodramatic lives with kids beating up grandmas,mothers killing their children, odd gentlemen with freaky addictions and depressive secrets. Television shows have become authentic “freakshows” and there´s nothing I can do about it!
I was invited to promote my events in four famous t.v. programs and in only one of them I was able to find producers and presenters who had done their homework and could actually distinguish me from the penguin trainers who would be interviewed after me.
Hosny was astonished to find out how much people know me in Portugal and the way I am respected as a dancer and a teacher. Too many people trying to reach me, cameras, lights, timings and all the focus on meat first and then at us when I convinced the producers that I ´d better perform with my percussionist…
He looked like a nervous, overwhelmed and fascinated child in a candyshop but he pulled off very well all kinds of work he needed to adapt to. Our live shows, television live performances improvised on the spot, tabla lessons that he taught totally by himself speaking not a word of Portuguese and very little english and my workshops where he collaborated playing for us in different exercises and purposes.For the first time, he saw me teaching and how much fun and hard work I share with the students. The dance of his country - that egyptians tend to take for granted as something that basically everybody can do with no special training or talent - was being taught in a way that proves egyptian mentality totally wrong. From a certain standard point, not everybody can do it. No way…While driving on our way home, he commented with me how impressed he was by the artistic level of the workshops and the serious approach all the students showed towards the dance and the music itself.He was delighted – as any artist who feels taken in consideration and respected does - and so was I to discover that he was humble and professional more than enough to follow my lead in every single stepof the way.
• TOURS for HOSNY!
***Besides working, we also had a few days to relax and, as typical honoured Portuguese, we fed Hosny to a point that his wife would not recognize him on his way back to Cairo.He was not used to have, at least, three finely served meals where real food was served and accompanied by equally fine wine, bread,cheese and olives, “presunto” and salad. No matter what happened, I suspect that even in the case of an earthquake, Portuguese gather to eat at specific times and take their time doing it.My uncles, father and other male relatives – who joined us for afamily-friend´s day at our home – had the time of their lives givingHosny a taste of all the liqueurs, wines and beers they knew about.For the surprise of us all, he seemed to handle it pretty well,confirming the truth that muslims condemn alcoholic drinks but they often consume them, sometimes even more than westerners who are seen as barbarians with no self-control or morals.Another not so pleasant surprise was my paternal uncle´s recentlyd iscovered talent for “dance attempts”. As soon as Hosny grabbed the tabla and played for the family and the friends scattered all aroundour garden, my uncle tied his t-shirt up to his navel and put Shakira for the corner with his monkey style jumps and what I like to call“over expressive” post-post-modern dance style. Some of us laugh their hearts out, others felt ashamed for my uncle´s lost dignity and I just stared at him and felt amazed to realize how surprising people can beand how much they need to release themselves from the stupid rules societies inserts in their over charged brains. My uncle could be a liberation leader!
***I tried to convince Hosny to join me in my daily running routines(yes, I am a bit crazy!) – 1 hour straight running through little hills and valleys – and, indeed, he had the courage to take the first step but not the fourth. Age and many years of a sedentary life style with no care for his health and lots of cigars, alcohol and other addictions – as it happens to most musicians and artists in Egypt –have taken over him.
*** We could also take him to lunch at the beach – mixing the sea landscape, scent and taste is one of the portuguese experiences you shouldn´t miss – and fed him some of our typical sweets besides showing him some of the historic places in Lisbon.For the sake of the truth, everything starts and ends in food when it comes to Portugal!
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