Politics and Dance in Egypt.

For me, living and performing in Egypt for the last years has always been about ART, DISCOVERIES, STRUGGLES, VICTORIES, SHOCKS and POLITICS. It was never possible to separate my Dance Work from the context I´ve been living in.

Unless you are a cave resident/owner - only coming out to gather food and greet the sun for five minutes a day - it becomes impossible to be indifferent to this environment as it affects you directly on so many levels.

Now- more than ever - POLITICS are on the hot stop and DANCE has to mingle with it:

 no way out of this connection.

Daily life, political events, stage, dance, human connections: ALL are intimately related.

While I performed at a Cairo private party with my orchestra - a few nights ago - I could not help but notice how the current political state of Egypt affects everybody - their thoughts and their daily behavior - including egyptian musicians and audiences. 

My men - musicians - were not their usual selves and were talking, for the first time, about quitting the job/art some of them have for decades. They were exhausted, desperate and deeply sad.  If they were not respected as artists and human beings before, now they are totally put in a corner as the lowest garbage of egyptian society. As religious extremism was growing, I predicted THIS would happen; I just didn´t think it would happen so soon.

The audiences themselves - the ones I could use as a faithful barometer of my Dance, Feeling and Talent - seemed distant, almost afraid to enjoy my show and they surely made a point of making me feel a MARGINAL when, after the performance, I gathered with them in a garden for dinner. Shaking my hands and speaking with me as a normal person to another became a rare event.

Furthermore...

A couple of days ago, an horrible video produced in the United States trashing the Prophet Mohamed stirred newly brewed hate in Lybia and Egypt and caused the death of the Libyan embassador as well as other embassy´s employees. 

Yesterday and today in the afternoon, I  passed by the demonstrations against the American Embassy in Garden City (Cairo) and felt the hate, fear and WAR in the air (hope my perceptions were totally wrong). Of course I think whoever created this awful video is part of an evil plan to DIVIDE people and launch them into a RELIGIOUS WAR, one more in the long History of disasters and cruelties caused in the name of God.

Instead of UNITING for a TRUE REVOLUTION where we can all leave in peace as equals, where we have DEMOCRACIES and GOVERNMENTS that serve the people ( not themselves and their pals!), there´s an OBVIOUS plan to SEPARATE people and turn them against each other - THIS WILL BE THE ONLY WAY TO WEAKEN THEM SO THAT NO TRUE POSITIVE CHANGE TAKES PLACE  in the Middle East and in the World.

I wish more and more of us NOTICED this plan and boycotted it with a peaceful yet FIRM *heart towards the LIFE we all deserve for each other. We are HUMAN brothers and sisters and we can only be divided, if we allow it.