 |
Al-Ahram Weekly 8 - 14 April 1999 Issue No. 424 
|
||
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
 |
 |
|
|
Al-Ahram Weekly 8 - 14 April 1999 Issue No. 424
|
||
| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
|
|
|
Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Focus Profile Features Travel Living Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Entomic piracy
By David BlakeWhen ballets battle it is always fun. They fall into their positions like attacking armies, take sides, threaten to end it all and then, with heroic panache, begin all over again. So it has been and will forever be. And, unlike opera, most everyone loves the ballet, especially the young, if only because the classics are more competitive than any other form of dance. Who can jump the highest, look the most beautiful?
No one can really do without dancers. And in this respect Cairo Opera is especially privileged, possessed as it is of completely splendid dancers, both for the classics and for the most post-modern of dance theatre. Dancers, like birds, are best in motion. Their energy is riveting and they adore the work. Fortunately, ever since it opened its doors, Cairo Opera has proved a wily banker of the dance, drawing on an account that includes every physical type, from servants to princes, and including the habitants of those domestic hells that are grist to the mill of dance theatre. During the last weeks we had an opportunity of seeing the range of dance the Cairo Opera can produce from its own resources. Hot on each other's toes came first the classic Corsaire on 18 March at the Main Hall then, on 25 March, Walid Aouni's latest show, Scarecrow, at the Gomhouriya. This was his new work, after observational study with the field marshal of dance theatre Pina Bausch.
First, that weary old wreck Corsaire, almost as far out of the firing range of dance theatre as it is possible to get. Abdel-Moneim Kamel's cellular therapy has done a good job, producing a gleaming, colourful show short on plot but rich on everything else. Musically, Corsaire was always a bargain remnant, bits of Adam, Pugni, Delibes and the ghost of Bellini. The Cairo Opera Orchestra, under Ivan Filev, do another job of aesthetic surgery, making the old thing skit along at great speed and with a smile. Everything that ought to be said of Abdel-Moneim Kamel's ability as a resurrector and revivifier has been said. He has given the opera performances of an international standard and must be saluted.
Le Corsaire: bottom and top left; Scarecrow: top right photo: Sherif Sonbol
The show begins with a really good ship wreck, in which all the survivors, beach girls and sailors on the move, fight for their honour with a group of rich emirs. And there are slaves, slaves everywhere.
Later, in the dream palace of the emir, come a bevy of ballerinas who each appear to be holding a hoop of electrical lights, like a halo of candles. The stage is filled with figures and swaying lights. It is the big mistake of the night, pure kitsch, with no place in the rest of the ballet.
The ballet closes with the routing of the randy emirs, and they all sail away in good ship Corsaire. No one cares a damn about the plot, but they do care about the dance and the dancers, who have gone through the entire piece in a whirl of splendid clothes, colours and excellent choreography. Erminia Kamel is moonlit throughout, and keeps up the terrific speeds of the finale. Sahar Helmi, as slave, looks more like a sultana. Surely it is time for her to go up the social scale a bit and be a princess, even a bad tempered one.
The men are great. Dimitri, as chief pirate, is a rock of strength, and in the long role never falters. Ali, his good friend, was Nour Saad. He is a treasure of height and strength and wonderfully stretched, producing almost laconically easy leaps. He can dominate the entire stage without effort. All the dancers leap -- the grandes jetées are exceptionally well done. Everyone on stage is shooting into the air and soon, hopefully, they will be shooting into the great Forêt de la Grisine of the Sleeping Beauty, Abdel-Monein Kamel's next adventure.
Walid Aouni's adventure of the Scarecrow also takes to the air. Aouni always chooses marvellous dancers. From start to finish, the entire company are doing irregular but exciting movements. Everyone performs as if demented.
Their concentration is phenomenal to watch. They are given things -- witty, smutty, sarcastic -- that are bitingly critical to perform. They succeed on all levels.
No company could better perform such a complex work as Scarecrow. It is long, no interval, and no pauses. But what is it about?
It is about insects. This choreographer has made elegies out of the last days of the elephant and the whale -- now, with this ballet, it is about insects, creatures that shack up anywhere. It is about the loneliness of the housefly, or of the human thing who once lived in the same house. People collapse into a hopeless darting. They move with endless rapidity, these creatures of the last era of living matter. Everyone knows where to find such people but don't look now because the mirror too is cracked. The stage is bare but for a tall scarecrow and masses of clothes hanging on racks into which they all change, one after the other, draping yards of rags and useless glitter to no avail. Still no identity. Only the arch torturer, the motor vehicle is lacking. Maybe they have cannibalised themselves.
This space, the stage, is no street or house, nor even a cupboard. It is a slit gouged out of something else, funny and tiresome. We get sick of these creatures and their movements, their self-indulgence and complacency. They fiddle with everything. Men get tangled up in their own flies, women heave around. They are ridiculous, yet never resemble the theatre of the absurd. Though they are non-people they have beauty, and their bodies and movements break out into magnificent arcs of dance from time to time.
Aouni's movements can be horribly difficult. They chill with their instinctive desire to hurt. But his dancers go through every contortion with ease, suddenly flying into majestic arcs of movement, though there is nothing around them worth desiring. Questions posed are never answers.
Like the creatures, we are born in the dark and go out in the dark, and the scarecrow is just a lot of stuffed straw hanging in space. Can one walk in eternity? The ballet suggests that one might. There is no comfort. Animals, flies on the wall, creatures. In the end there is nothing left but music. Aouni bends music of any sort to suit his own purpose. This weird, disturbing and beautifully performed work ends with a hugely magnified lento orchestration playing softly, the opening of the third act of Wagner's Tristan. On top of it are layers of New Guinea vocal sounds and bits of almost anything from the streets, hanging above the immense pedal notes of Tristan's delirious wanderings that finally engulf the lot.
To have at the opera, one on top of the other, these two distant pillars of the dance, classical and dance theatre, is something for which we should be grateful. In these two works, Corsaire and Scarecrow form a part of what the opera should be proud of. Maybe two heads are better than one, but only if the two are not lopped off at the same time.
