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Al-Ahram Weekly 28 Jan. - 3 Feb. 1999 Issue No. 414 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 28 Jan. - 3 Feb. 1999 Issue No. 414
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Focus Economy Opinion Culture Features Living Travel Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Way beyond hysterics
By David BlakeCinderella, Cairo Opera Ballet Company, Cairo Opera Orchestra. Conductor: Ivan Filev. Choreographer and director: Abdel-Moneim Kamel. Cairo Opera House, Main Hall, 21 January
Cinderella is not an exhumation but an ordinary mortal. Unlike the fairies she doesn't have wings. A pity this, since wings help, particularly if you are the central object in a very classical ballet.
Cinderella! She's Mary Pickford in the movies, any little old girl with sausage blonde curls and a pert behind.
Not, though, in this reincarnation. Abdel-Moneim Kamel has made her over into an exulted, hard-edged classical showpiece which makes Sleeping Beauty seem an indecent romp. This show is positively scarifying and its formality belongs at Versailles, and one half expects the Sun King to hobble on centre stage in red platform shoes à la Bab Al-Louq.
Classical abstraction in the dance world has to be faced -- it is historic and will never die so long as theatre lives. People love it, not least because it is dangerous to do. It requires brave, tough and dedicated souls, all of which the big public adores. And so do composers, directors and Abdel-Moneim Kamel.
The Cairo Opera House, with its large, generous atmosphere has now become a centre for displays of this type of dance. One day soon an effort should be made to try something more contemporary but for now, on our way to the final classical explosion of The Sleeping Beauty, we must do with Cinderella.
Abdel-Moneim Kamel has worked with draconian insistence to make a company suitable for these resplendent displays of dance. And his work has paid off. The Cairo Opera Ballet is an active, bustling group that can offer variety, humour, tragedy, comedy and, most importantly, splendour.
Having the last word is an odd position for any group of dancers to find themselves in these days. Splendour, after all, is out. Even mud-spattered and blood-stained it no longer works. Sex, politics, gang war, murder, all are popular but splendour? Well, not quite. Cairo dance audiences seem to bend lovingly to its Bach-like formalities. It does offer a sense of repose and security.
So we come now to the latest production of Cinderella in Cairo. The company offered three changes of cast in the main roles, an often excellent orchestra, and its most precious possession, a corps de ballet which is a delight to watch. It is slowly building a male section of young local dancers who fit with the corps to form a really handsome theatre troupe.
All this, naturally, takes work, patience, flare and money. The Cairo ballet receives more than its fair share of brickbats but it is best to remember that what it does, it does in an institution which presents (except for the high summer lay off) a seven-nights a week show in sometimes three theatres on the same evening for a full year. This is a rich display under any conditions.
Cinderella often shows a lack of wings, a failure to fly due, in this performance, to Prokofiev. It is his fault, not the dancers', that there is no flow. The opening music of the work in a darkened theatre is atmospheric -- noble, seedy, tarnished, but like a forest of grand old trees, awesome. For Prokofiev this is home ground and the story relishes it. So does Kamel's choreography. Slowly narrative, all the dancers act. Alexandra, in the main role, is curious. She is beautiful, a light dancer, but has a weird card to play. Meticulous and withdrawn, what will come next?
The patterns of the first act move rapidly into the second, which is the heart of the work. Prokofiev's efforts apparently dwindled, and so did his interest. The first act resembles his Romeo and Juliet. Act II of Cinderella resembles nothing. Not even the leitmotifs of the characters are clear or developed. It is almost nursery stuff. What should have been done with Cinderella's arrival at the ball, carriage-conveyed, remains a mystery. All we get is worn-out rhythms which have been used before. It moves on to the end with Cinderella and her prince attended by four male dancers as the seasons, the entire corps and the well-danced godfather of Sergei Bolonski. And they manipulated this tired score into a magic show.
Abdel-Moneim Kamel's almost deranged love of the formally classic turned this show into a dance display rather than an off-night for Prokofiev, as he turned the cold light of abstraction relentlessly on to the situation in hand. It progressed coolly as the dancers, like gem-studded flowers, waved in an airless conservatory. The dancers fade as individuals into the coldly palpitating halls. It is never warmly physical but slowly, inevitably, it is a work of art. The weird insect-like rituals of the dancers' bodies are used as sculptures. This sort of classic dance takes the dancer to the ultimate length of the body's extension, as Isadora Duncan once dreamed. A great, slowly expanding arch movement of the arms of a single dancer is given to the entire corps de ballet. At the same time and on the beat of the same music it becomes resplendent.
Simple Cinderella has become la grande mademoiselle by the finish. The clock strikes twelve at the top of a steeply inclined staircase when, in a dangerous but riveting moment, she is caught and held aloft in space by her white prince. He carries her far above his head, down the staircase, and gently deposits her on earth. They dance a movement of slow aerial beats. She seems to disintegrate in his arms and is gone. Demetri, her partner, was a cavalier of great strength and assurance. These two never relaxed their display of what can be achieved in an opera house -- severe exultation and re-creation in an oft abused medium. This was art as dance with Euclid thrown in.
Cairo Symphony Orchestra, Bizet's Overture to Carmen; Adel-Afifi's Kalilah and Demnah Suite for Orchestra; Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 6 in B-Minor Op. 74. Cairo Opera House, Main Hall, 23 January
After Bizet and Carmen came Adel Afifi's Suite for Orchestra. It is a very long piece in five sections.
Afifi is a man who has made the jump from a high position in the police force to classical music. He is remarkable since the jump was more or less done in a single leap. From the heights of established authority into the jungle of 20th-century classical music. He is, therefore, mixing with shady types, wild and possibly dangerous, aggressive and decadent.
Everyone knows what has been going on in music since 1900. But from drug popping to shoot-ups on Sunset Boulevard -- Adel Afifi takes it all, just as a man of experience should do. Kalilah and Demnah tells of kings and foxes, sad birds and irreverent and anti-social monkeys all out on the lose. Everything seems to end at a royal garden party.
The music is tuneful, brisk, marshal and easy listening over its long distance run. Some of the romantic interludes could become pop hits.
The chief event of the concert, however, was Said Awad's handling of Tchaikovsky's sixth symphony. He has a way with this composer. Whatever you've heard before you won't have heard what Awad does with this symphony.
The sixth is "big" maestro territory. It is no holds barred. Maestros are of two sorts according to Richard Strauss: there are the ones who stand up and make sounds and those who stand up and make nothing. Strauss was one of the greatest composers and maestros who ever lived and his comments make sense.
Said Awad makes gestures. He seems a gentle person, loving, kind and helpful to the orchestra, which plays well for him. There are no diamond rings and fat cigars, no different coloured Mercedes for each performance. He is of the other type; he is sincere and dignified and the sixth symphony is a wallop of everything.
It is deep but shallow, personal, autobiographical and universal, soft-scented yet hard-faced, cynical and pathetic. The orchestral web is enormous, colours flame and then disappear in icy mists. It is all Russia, bottled then found on Malibu beach. The Los Angeles Police Department is not far behind. Drunk or sober, you're off into the surf to the bottom of the deep blue sea. And so what does Said Awad do with all this? He sees it as a sort of sermon, Peter's last will and testament of the damned.
From the first movement he sets the tone -- dark, autumnal, calm, retro, hurt but not bitter. In the second section it is all memory, philosophy gently accepting everything. Deep sighs with no carpet biting. In the end there is even the semblance of a smile -- sometimes human bodies do have smiles on the upper parts of them.
In the third movement there are drums and marches, muffled and weary. Someone may have once been in love with a soldier. This is not autobiography but autopsy. All this music, an oceanful, is laid out before the listener by Awad faithfully, with love and no attempt at understanding. But no one, neither God or the fiend, ever knew the creator of this work. Neither does Said Awad, and he is honest. This is his version of a personal Armageddon. Really, it sounded beautiful, new and strange. All the fury had gone and we were left with a Prospero-like version of salvation with no preaching to make it vulgar.
The sounds of this music were forever moving downwards, going in blocks of ever-receding soft noise, gently changing key, dropping lower and lower over ever-widening horizon. Then, finally, down again into deeps like bars of soft jelly. This music grows lighter but deeper. Quietly, we finally subside on the bottom of something, an ocean, a cloud -- and that's it. And we must revere Said Awad since he shows his trust and humility before a recalcitrant, treacherous giant. Diamonds and cigars are far away. This was a moral revelation.
