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Al-Ahram Weekly 13 - 19 April 2000 Issue No. 477 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 13 - 19 April 2000 Issue No. 477
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Books Features Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Not a corpse in sight
By David Blake
Ballet du Grand Théâtre de Genève; Between Dusk and Dawn; world première; choreography by Giorgio Mancini; music by Nader Abbassi; Cairo Opera House Main Hall, 1 April
Everyone's got to go. Death is the only unpardonable rudeness none of us can escape. You may sit resolutely behind your defences in Geneva or California, bastions of the affluent society, plasticised, aestheticised and stuck full of all the most expensive youthifiers known to science, but one day your fate will be determined by the terminator who will come -- maybe a rich guy with a gun who blows you to paradise for kicks 'cos he's bored.
Rayya and Sekina have long joined the folk tales of monsters and, like Lizzie Borden and her parental dispatching acts, or the deadly old darlings of Arsenic and Old Lace, are part black humour. The tale of the two Alexandrian sisters forms the ballet, Between Dusk and Dawn, premiered here by the Swiss company. How to go bonkers on a sleepless night -- it happens when your slicing up of 17 women for their jewelry catches up with you. But Rayya and Sekina, the couple of Gorgons who play the Reaper, are themselves victims of a cruel and uncaring society.
If you have to face society and all you have is nothing the slippery path to easy gain, no matter how brutal, is a temptation many do not resist. The true story took place more than 50 years ago. Conditions have changed, but even education and more cash have not removed the terminator -- only his methods have changed.
If you were unfortunate enough to meet the sisters during an evening stroll on the Corniche of Alexandria and were enticed into the frisky chatter of their cosy little salon, such apparently was their charm, you would soon be joining the other 17 stiffs down in the basement. Rayya, the chief Den Mother, must have been beautiful, so legend reports -- like Medusa, one look at her and down you went to the cellar.
The Geneva Ballet's method of dealing with this taxing tale is simple -- do nothing. And so they did. The setting was almost pitch dark, the dancers few, Rayya only, Sekina missing entirely, no narrative, no corpse. A rape, perhaps, takes place monochromatically to victimise Rayya. The rest is conjecture. As a ballet it is about as exciting as an amateur performance of Handel's Messiah in the dark, but one thing happened -- the musical score, commissioned by the Geneva Ballet, was composed by Nader Abbassi, born Heliopolis but now resident in Geneva.
Abbassi made music which did not steal but ran away with the show -- stole away with it to regions imagined but never visible.
The musical score opens somberly -- shadowed, long-drawn phrases of orchestral sound, throbbing and apprehensive, twist into melodies very original, never conventional but avoiding the scoops and intervals of the Viennese school. It resembles Szymanowski's orchestration, endlessly expressive in this particular composition of decay and suppuration but still physically beautiful.
Ballet du Grand Théâtre de Genève: Between Dusk and Dawn
Best to shut your eyes. Listen to the strange happenings of the sisters which Abbassi's music turned into renaissance creatures outside all conventions of life, like the Duchess of Malfi or Shakespeare's Iago. Rayya goes down fighting, proud, unrepentant, shouting the truths society avoids to mention. There will be more from Nader Abbassi because opera needs him, not the ballet.
The other three ballets of the Geneva company also used music of splendour. The first ballet, Step Texts, had Bach's unaccompanied cello music. The entire episode depicted is a strip down of classical ballet done by a ballerina and male figures endlessly melting and forming into groups, which finally ends in their total support of her, the Goddess of Movement. It never stops or rests but forms astounding pictures of the polyphony of Bach, never austere, a dance movement of strength, very helpful, a way into the future which leaves dancers in the air not crawling about on the floor.
No.2 was less splendid. A popish song for two, a cabaret with a nice well-behaved heart and no shadows.
The last work, Axioma 7, by Ohad Naharin was again to music by Bach. In their long, heavy leather aprons, the dancers, who form a vast sea-anenome shape, look like the final scene out of Wagner's Der Meistersinger. This line waves back and forth as if bent by the ocean swell. It is very pleasing to watch as Bach's musical patterns do the same. Everything is dancing, even the sea. Can it be that the ballet is actually evolving back to pure dance after its nostalgie de la boue. Who wants angst when we have so many bodies to show off in sunshine, dancing through the air. The Geneva Ballet shows -- they are ready for the change.
Piano recital, Moushira Eissa, Cairo Opera House Main Hall, 7 April
At this concert we had a picnic with the saints, player and composers who were united to enjoy themselves, and the weather was wonderful. This is the third concert Moushira Eissa has given -- three in a row. Each seems to be better than the one before -- unusual for pianists, who are very nervy people. She is nervy too, but her control and determination are remarkable. Her opening Bach, Prelude and Fugue in C minor, WTK Vol.1, was beautiful, powerful and sung with a strong, almost baritonal piano tone. Full, creamy and warm. She seems to flouresce in Bach, no restraint, not an academic quibble in sight, but directly to the point. The entire Book One of the WTK calls her.
The next choice, the Sonata Op.31, no 2 in D minor, suits her. The Tempest, they call it. How to be capricious. Sometimes Beethoven tired of syntax. Why always just the same rules for lovely sound? So he picks all the rules to pieces, creates a pile of tones and notes, and leaves the rest to the player. Eissa loves this -- she has played it before, in quite another way, with other results. Like Charkassky and Cortot, she likes change. The quiet notes of the opening of the Sonata are slit apart, and she was in her element, with a lot of stray wandering bits floating around in space from which she constructed her own richly stitched travel rug.
We were on our way, later, through Chopin's Sonata no 2 in B-flat minor, op 32, another teasing conundrum, meant for Chopin personally -- or can any other pianist be invited to share the feast. Chopin was supremely selfish. His playing must have been like no other's.
Even the famous Funebre can be a bore if all you are shown is a long double line of sad weepy faithful mourners. Eissa went Irish -- those who know how to do funerals and the dead make a party out of sheer respect and love for the departed. The funeral march, like the rest of the Sonata, danced along. Get happy-- you'll soon be joining her.
The last scherzo was a postscript to the funeral festivities -- almost pink music, rich dark pink. Old things in new colours: that is what the piano is for. So this concert was happy, honest and sincere, full of love it sailed along, replete with challenge and paradox. The notes speak to her and she to us. Thanks for the memory.
