Al-Ahram Weekly 17 - 23 June 1999 Issue No. 434
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875

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Beware the wolves of Troy

By David Blake

Eva Prokoponko as the Black Swan photo: Sherif Sonbol

Swan Lake; Cairo Opera Ballet Company; conductor Mostafa Nagui; Cairo Opera House Main Hall, 10 June

No, they did not, thanks to Abdel-Moneim Kamel, who stands firmly atop the ramparts of the destiny of the Cairo classical ballet, like a Hector.

The Opera has mounted yet another of Kamel's strange Cartesian linear constructions of a classic ballet. From the beginning it is evident that his handprint is on the work. Like it or not, it's a real-life line print in a shaky world.

And so the legend of Swan Lake sets forth -- but slowly. Everything done on stage is in slow motion, or so it appears, because of the vastness of the dancers' gestures. All this in spite of Mostafa Nagui's masterful tempi, at times too loud and too quick, but the ancient score can support it. Nagui has much grandeur to offer throughout the evening, but he's a little short on romance.

It's Racine all the way to Tchaikovski. With a stop here and there, to glance at Boldini for the visuals. Was there ever such a Swan Lake as this one? It could really be called Flamingo Lake. It's full of anything but conventional swans. The birds outnumber and outdance everyone else.

From the opening the corps de ballet are the usual very tall perfectly-matched girls of the company. Their footwork is fine, they jump athletically, and keep exact time. Their faces, however, their heads and arms, shoulders and epaulment are their own thing. They have always been like this, from the day the company was formed. It looks as though not even Abdel-Moneim Kamel's draconian disciplines can halt these Egyptian bacchantes.

So there are the swans, and they make the lake real. It can get positively hectic as they crowd downstage, gossiping and twittering, a flock of birds that has just landed from some great height. They have a certain touch of glamour about them -- white, poetic creatures swirling and swooping through their famous dance routines. Forget the obedient perfectly-drawn forms of well-mannered swans, who make up the background to most productions. These birds have authority and warmth.

The colours of the production suit them -- pale but never faded, warmly embossed colours, cream, not white. The great and small swans all wear the three-quarter length dress which suits dancers perfectly. Every dress in the show is stitched, pressed and fitted to perfection. No stray ends are left. When such creatures are to be seen on stage it is best to enjoy them, which the audience did.

The first act landings and departures of these birds cause most of the excitement. Then the prince enters in the person of Dimitry Shabalov, Cairo's young male danseur noble. Tall and muscular, he looks formidable, which is a comfort in a male ballet dancer -- suggesting he will not drop the ballerinas. Dimitry does not. His strong back, legs and arms are a good guarantee of safety.

He is careful never to take risks with turns, tempos or lengths of jumps. This holds him up a bit, but makes for smoothness. He muffs nothing, and never embarrasses the ballerina.

Thus far, he is no actor. After the little scherzo with which Tchaikovski leads up to the dramatic peak of the act, with the flight of the swans overhead and the famous tune saturating the orchestra, he barely looks up, makes no musical sign of anything remarkable having occurred. The flight of swans has passed -- he grabs his weapon, and dashes out. It is certainly not pleasant for swans. He is off to do a bit of killing. There will be some blood stains on the snowy breasts by morning.

Act Two offers more and more swans. They assemble, preen and posture, fly and sparkle -- a mass of white Brussels-lace skirts, all part of the grand setting of this production.

At this point, the white queen makes her appearance. Alexandra Volkhoskaya is a beautifully formed dancer, tall and lean, with very fine Russian legs and feet. Her technique covers the role. At all times she is light, white and supple, with a pleasing personality. The entire impression she makes is soft and yielding.

There is nothing in her performance of steel to suggest the ballerina. Some sort of authority would surely have been permissible. Probably the producers want youth, delicacy and not a trace of the diva bird, which nevertheless goes with the role. Her appearance is not exactly fragile. It's like a prince. She seems uninvolved. But the two dancers manage to suggest romance under difficult conditions. The queen has the serpent Rothbart to whom she is in some degree indebted, and he has his mother.

The Queen Mother moves through the show in a splendid dull gold garment, shaped like a seashell. She looks as if she is cruising through the reefs of the Red Sea, one of those ornate fishes which if you touch them turn you to stone.

Act Three, the Black Swan Act, involves the limp Prince with another woman -- dangerous, dusky and wicked. The prince, of course, falls for her, loses his head. The white one languishes in the middle of the swan lake, probably freezing to death.

This is where the party pieces are danced. All the principles do dangerous pas de deux, and the black queen does her notorious 32 fouettés -- or should. This queen did not. Eva Prokoponko managed with less than 32, but still twisted herself into the prince's heart. General chaos ensues, but not before the Spanish Dance had been done by Sahar Helmi and her black and emerald cavaliers.

Act Four is always a mess. It has a thousand different implications. Usually the prince carries off the swan queen. But that's not what happens in this particular show. Instead, a thick fog arises, dims the scene, and swans fly in from all directions. Rothbart, the serpent, falls down a stage trap-door, the fog clears and everyone walks off stage as if nothing had happened.

We had come to the end of the Lake. The house was packed with a cheering audience. The dance was spot on. Nobody really cared about the ending of Swan Lake. They only had ears for the orchestra, who had done so well by Tchaikovski's untarnishable music.

Cairo Symphony Orchestra; Master Works of the 20th Century; soloist, Moushira Issa (piano); conductor, Mostafa Nagui; Cairo Opera House Main Hall, 12 June

Tchaikovski wrote the B flat Minor concerto in 1875, one year before he composed Swan Lake. He gave it to one of the greatest musicians who has ever lived, Hans Von Bulow, who first performed it on a tour of America and thus set it on its career as a mega-monster of the international piano circuit. It's a battlepiece, whoever plays it. Its huge demands have to be met and dealt with; blow by blow, it hands out to the player punches meant to kill. It's a fiend, but then, so are the other piano concertos of Tchaikovski. He seems to have loved the instrument as a terminator. Witnesses to Von Bulow's performance are many. He had small hands. Shaw said the awesome memory of Von Bulow had holes in it. Others, that there was never such a player for such a piece. In our time, Richter played it, but did not seem to love it.

Anyway, the B flat Minor belongs to the 20th century. It helped form it, developing mega-stars of the piano, who really have become the bane of pianodom. Every concert-goer has memories of its performances, blood-stained or not. It used to be called the Big Bang after the First World War, when it virtually became a Saturday night party piece. You need not be kind to it, because it's here to stay, whatever you might say.

There is nothing more boring than listening to a young lion of the keys thrusting his macho around, totally note perfect, but lacking any sort of vision of or sympathy with the piece. Because, apart from the explosives, it has a special quality. It's late. It is an elegy coming from a rapidly collapsing world. Something is departing. Whatever it is, music would be the poorer without it. Then 1914-1917 came, leaving the B flat Minor in more or less the position we find it in today.

Moushira Issa is a young lioness. She enjoys this, but she also loves the B flat Minor for itself -- the stress and strain, and its strange solicitous desire to please. It's an old silent movie with the great star gestures which Tchaikovski himself knew all about: "Love me or leave me/I must be yours alone" -- almost funny, pathetic but also movingly upsetting.

It is this side of the music Mostafa Nagui and Moushira Issa brought out so clearly, and they brought it very close to tears.

All this fuss and fury -- me in the mirror, don't I look great, watch me descend the staircase in that difficult bit just before the end of the first movement. Tchaikovski is raw and self-revealing in this concerto. It's not the technical steam-up that matters, it's the grand enveloping style of the close-ups and the embraces.

The lioness found all this. She made a lapse or two, but everything was swept up because of her understanding and sympathy with the heroic stance of the composer. He's really a warm Hamlet and a tender Lear. Issa found this in each movement. She's becoming a probing player: it's not what she does, but how she does it. She's going for what's behind the notes. As Mahler said, this is the real sound of music, which has no name.

She managed most of the horrible hurdles. The octaves -- so necessary -- were there, the melodies which she loved she cherished with a swing of the head. She's never sentimental and never bends phrases just that bit too far. She was severe in all the quiet parts.

It was the grand lashing swirl to the almost harrowing personal tunes she gave so tenderly which made her performance memorable -- Tchaikovski in depth, and she loves him. One can't ask for more in the 1990s. Mostafa Nagui never caricatured fast tempi. He was always conducive to l'amour. Beautiful sounds and feelings.

Shostakovitch's Ninth Symphony, which came at the end of this concert, is a kind of send up. The world is a mock up, part military band, part fair ground. The huge orchestra slithers high up into stratospheric fun images, then plumps to dinosaur-footed rude brass noises.

The flutes and woodwinds carry much of the music, which is never solid or heavy-handed. Tunes shoot up and out to no avail. You've had your fun, now pay for it. But the pay-off never comes. The symphony sort of dries up suddenly. Who's sending up whom? Alban Berg is remembered, but he had a message -- nobility, however soiled, is better than nothing. This Ninth Symphony is disturbing. Whatever became of Yugoslavia?

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