Nile Festival Opening Gala and yet another class with my dearest Mahmoud Reda”

Cairo, the 17th June, 2009

“Nile Festival Opening Gala and yet another class with my dearest Mahmoud Reda”

*** I will be forever a marginal, always following my heart and what I feel it´s right, despite all surrounding pressures and influences. I am away from all the madness, envy and corrupted environment where I happen to work in. This chosen distance has a price, as with everything else in life. Dirty business, conveniences and backstabbing do not mix – in my own conception – with ART so…I keep myself at the shore watching vampires sucking each other´s blood and ambitions.
I am a “quality seeker” so I make a strong point at surrounding myself with good quality people, work and co-workers, even furniture and food, friends, my man and the air I breath. I long to be surrounded by all kinds of beauty and settle for nothing less than the best (fruit of a lot of extremely unpleasant experiences in my life! Thanks God for them!).

*** I attended the Nile Festival Opening Gala, once more, by the hand of my dear friend Mahmoud Reda who received a well deserved “Happy Birthday” surprise for the 50th year of “Reda Troupe” existence. At the impressive age of 80 years old (may God keep him healthy and happy for a long time), Mahmoud keeps “Reda Troupe” alive with the on going choreographies he keeps creating and teaching all over the world and through the guidance he generously delivers to professional dancers who are inspired from his knowledge and noble heart.

*** As usual, the biggest pleasure of the night was – as far as I´m concerned – the company of my best friend – Mahmoud – and all the jokes we cracked throughout the evening. There was the “outside” world made of dancers, artists, students and lots of EGOS floating around the crowded room. And then there was a small, highly restricted world in which only me and my friend lived and there we could understand each other, even during the longest of the silences.
I am a naughty girl, that´s for sure. Mahmoud has that wonderful, rare quality to understand that “child” within me and he´s also a child himself so…we end up being two children in our own sacred playground. It´s just marvellous.

*** “Do you remember when we were teaching in Brighton and decided to walk back to our hotel after my shows in the event´s gala?!” – I inquired Mahmoud.
“Yes, I do.” – He replied with that simple happiness expression that only children – like us – can have on their faces.
“We sang the whole way to the hotel and danced on the empty, rainy streets like crazy people…it was amazing!” – I continued trying to recover a bit of those unforgettable moments with my dear friend…

Now the GALA:

*** There were three dancers performing during the night: Nancy (egyptian), Nour (Russian) and Camelia (egyptian).
I missed Nancy performance but I don´t think I´ve lost something amazing. If she remained faithful to herself, there was a lot of excessive skin showing and very little dance (I´m not interested, thank you).

*** I caught on Nour´s show and was not surprised to find a well prepared, clean, professional and polished show that is usual from this dancer who has performed for a long time in Egypt. Being a passionate dancer myself, I always feel like Nour is professional and lovely but quite close to a monk. Her clothes and props are old fashioned – not in a good way – and extremely “proper” (meaning “boring”) to a point that you miss the sensuality and spices that are an essential part of Oriental Dance. She´s correct, efficient and intelligent (not enough or even desirable, as far as I´m concerned). Her orchestra is very well orchestrated and you can feel the respect and love she has for her job but there´s something so visceral missing there…her guts, her wild essence – maybe she´s not wild at all… - her “womanly” scent and flair, any kind of sauciness that reminds you´re not watching a church choir concert “a capella” but an Oriental Dancer..

*** Now Camelia was a good surprise and a refreshing change from most dancers I´ve been watching lately. I had seen Camelia perform several times before she stopped dancing in public (I guess she changed her mind!), around four years ago, and at that time I wasn’t performing in Cairo yet and she was far away from my favourite dancers. I often found her cheap, exaggerated in her way of dealing with the audience, arrogant, ugly (way too many plastic surgeries leaving her looking like Michael Jackson´s sister) and with a bad habit of rubbing her sweat body against people in the audience (I was one of her victims and I can honestly say that wasn’t sexy at all!).

The Camelia I found now was also exaggerated and cheap on many occasions, even out of rhythm and loosing herself away from the music in times when she totally lost control of what she was doing on stage but…a great BUT…I enjoyed watching her and kept waiting for the next crazy thing she would deliver in a minute.
Her show was entertaining, original, crazy and full of personality (her personality!) and unique. She didn´t act, as most dancers seem to do in Cairo, or pretended did what she thought people would love her to do. Instead, she did what was residing in her guts, mixed lots of “crazy marketing tools” in it, added a bit of shocking movements towards the cameras rolling in front of her and had an exquisite repertoire for the night. I just LOVED all the songs she – or someone else – chose for her to dance in this show. Good taste, knowledge and a refined perspective of what Oriental Dance is.
Most of all, and going against most people´s opinions on her show, I admired her courageous attitude and the way she let herself go through the music…being yourself and bringing out on the spotlight your craziest self seems like an easy thing to do when you´re just watching but not for the artist on stage. She managed to be totally HERSELF and I loved her for that.

*** What did I miss (?):
There was a Saiidi band after Camelia but I had to leave and coulnd´t watch it so…no comments on this one.

*** CLASS WITH MAHMOUD REDA:


*** Another opportunity to share moments of dance and laughs with my friend and a room full of students from all over the world.
We worked on a song from a “Reda Troupe” movie ( “Ya warda, ya baladi”) and had a blast teaching it to the crowd. One of the things I dislike in choreography is the mental discipline and the repetitions necessary to memorize and then remember each step without changing any of it. I want to reach the maturity point of the choreography work, that point when everything in the choreography is so familiar to your body that you don´t have to think about it anymore…you just enjoy and let your body do its work…the time between that initial phase of memorizing and the time of simply enjoying can be excruciatingly long for someone impatient like me.

*** One more time, I observed how most students follow the choreography without learning anything. It´s sad and frustrating and there was nothing I could do. This is a common flaw in these major workshops: students follow and copy the scratch of the choreography but they´re not learning FOR REAL anything of it.

*** I had to run from the class to another dancing gig for which I had been picked by the managers according to my looks and to my “stunning bewitching eyes” (in the words of one of the enchanted managers). Before they even saw me dancing - auditioning for the job – they had already decided they wanted me for it. I was asked to present myself – to the rage of the other ignored dancers also to be auditioned – and all they did was stare at me and comment how beautiful I am. The fact that I might dance as a circus monkey was not in consideration at all…I got their point from the beginning and couldn´t stop myself from laughing at this ridiculous, rotten system. I won the job (no kidding?!) but it was a sour victory because I knew my looks – and not my dancing skills – got me there! Life´s not fair, even when it´s for your own benefit.