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Al-Ahram Weekly 15 - 21 July 1999 Issue No. 438 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 15 - 21 July 1999 Issue No. 438
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Profile Features Travel Living Sports Time Out Chronicles People Cartoons Letters The hundred-drum show
By David BlakeKorea National Dance Company; The Kingdom of Dawn; Cairo Opera House Main Hall, 6 July
With such a gleaming name, it had to be butterflies, but where is the Kingdom of Dawn? We all know where it is, but not how to get to it; out somewhere, over the lip of the earth -- cybernetic and haunting, staying aloft with a travelling moon coming up on the left of the Korean dancers who look lustrous. Everything shines and sways with unearthly grace.
It was a pity that, in spite of good intentions, this performance was seen by so few Cairenes. The first performance being hermetically sealed against ordinary public viewers, the one show that was left was not enough.
It was curious, divided into two separate pieces, almost geminitic. The first half, a glimpse of a lost age of stately splendour and courtly behaviour, was followed by an almost frightening change -- raw action, thrusting energy and outright brutality. War and peace, heaven and hell, then and now.
The beginning was a complete hallucination -- all phenomena are illusory, say the ancient wisdoms of the East.
What we saw was more than mere ballet or people's behaviour. It was deeply imaginative and illustrative of the mood, the path through life to peace and enlightenment, but without any of the formalities of preaching which most religions indulge in.
And to increase the pressure of the message we began at the end, and went back through life towards the beginning, which is called life. The music which opened the event set the tone. Long waving lengths of sound, coloured greenish and pale, but alive. Then, a long line of white-clad figures, priest-like, moved across the stage which had been beautifully cleared of all impedimenta so that for once it looked vast and imposing.
Dancers came and went, lean and dressed splendidly in imposing costumes. The colours were refreshing like the people and the music. The movements were executed with a perfect slow-motion understanding of the eternity which is represented by the raising of an arm extended into space.
And everyone on stage gently undulated. Undulation was the choreography, illustrative of some vast ocean beneath them, the oceanic currents of the Pacific. The sound was hush-hush. The threads of place and connection had snapped, this was a new rhythm, neither Mediterranean nor Atlantic. The white figures were like cranes, quite bird-like in their mime as they genuflected before one another. It seemed real. This huge stage was furnished by their presence, yet it was too grand for life, more like an ancient ritual of death, awesome.
Voices sang, and the audience had before it a vision too real to deny yet too exalted to believe in. A voyage to nowhere, the Kingdom of the Dawn. Yet this was the beginning of the show performing at the end. We would soon have the beginning to see. A new activity brings the undulations to an end. Four demons in masks wheel onto the stage, four great things like packing-cases or pianos. The greenish tones have gone with the music. Each packing-case turns out to be a drum, which the demons proceed to bash. Gone is the hush-hush of the opening. The demons wear long caps like inquisitors.
A goddess in green comes on stage, is exalted onto a sort of pedestal and sings a beautiful song. She sways but does not undulate. The stage has altered. It is now more or less furnished with drums -- small and large, and almost an optical trick has been performed on the audience, because we are finally confronted with nothing but drums. The once freedom of space is turned into an over furnished emporium of drums, which are beginning to sound like the drums of war. The drums go bronze, and we are seeing a transformation. The first part of the event -- delicate washes of colour and the music and motions -- belongs with women.
The last half of the performance belongs with men, and rather scarifying and salutary it is. It has become the hundred-drum show. All the drums begin to sound and the stage is full of men bashing drums, making a terrifying sound of life triumphant, the grand macabre. The noise of drums increases into a sort of apocalypse of sound.
The pace of the drum beats increases to express train level. The energy discharged by the shivering, pounding drums is an immense vibration. The large audience loves it, and applauds wildly. It is raw life in sound: a god of pure elation is at hand. Nothing to do but move about and be happy. The foundations of the opera house tremble to their bass. There will be new forces at work in the land of the living. Pity all this was done for one night only.
