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Al-Ahram Weekly 4 - 10 May 2000 Issue No. 480 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 4 - 10 May 2000 Issue No. 480
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Special Features Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Laura Laurella:
Pirouette
A passion, fulfilled
Profile by Fayza Hassan
"Why didn't you come to see the film?" the clear voice inquired on the phone when I called two days ago. "You would not have needed to ask me any questions." "I don't want to ask questions; I just want to chat with you," I replied.
From the way Laura Laurella sounded, I knew that it would not be very difficult to make her agree to a meeting. There was too much cheerfulness and kindness in her tone for her to deny my request in the end. I had been led to believe that she was timid and withdrawn with strangers, but there was no mistaking the warmth in our brief exchange.
In fact, the following afternoon, I was ringing the doorbell of her apartment, in an old but stately and well-preserved building on a quiet street in Zamalek. She opened the door promptly, with none of the hesitancy so characteristic of women living alone, and moved her walker out of the way to let us in. She had mentioned having broken her hip-bone, but, noticing that she had chosen high-heeled pumps to wear with her elegant white suit, I could see that she was well on her way to complete recovery. "Is that very wise?" I asked, pointing to the shoes. I had the feeling that we had known each other all our lives, and that I did not need to stand on ceremony with her.
Negligently discarding the walker in a corner, she firmly led the way to a large sunny room, explaining that she had more trouble walking in house slippers than in heels. Her limp was barely noticeable. It is only later that I learned her operation took place less than two weeks ago.
The room we were ushered into was in perfect harmony with its owner, emitting surges of positive energy. She pushed the shutters of the balcony open and the afternoon sun poured in, a rare phenomenon in Cairo's apartments these days. It would be pleasant to sit at the solid wooden table covered with pamphlets and photographs, and talk about her career which has spanned almost half a century, as one of Cairo's most famous ballet teachers.
She had said that she did not want her picture taken, that she was alone and probably could not even offer us a cup of coffee, but now she was yielding to the demands of our photographer, trying on scarves of different colours and looking away from the camera as instructed, her piercing eyes dancing with suppressed laughter. One did not have to be very observant to detect the instincts of a star in all her movements. Did she really use a stick to chastise her unruly class, as former pupils recount? She shakes her head. "It was more like a wand," she chuckles, "but I did spank the chatterers with my bare hand, especially when we were preparing the end-of-year recital. On those days, many left my studio with the trace of my five fingers imprinted on their behinds." More seriously, she adds: "My students are from well-to-do families. They don't aspire to become professionals; it is unheard of in such a milieu. Their parents enrol them in ballet classes as a way of acquiring the graceful posture necessary to young ladies of their standing. It is therefore not surprising that they are not always prepared to give ballet the attention and time that I demand of them."
She has had several very gifted students over the years, however. Some of her foreign pupils went on to study ballet in Europe, but she was not very absorbed in their success. "Foreigners don't stay on," she explains. "I was interested in the girls who started with me when they were tiny, five or six years old, and whose progress I could follow from year to year." She shows me the picture of an absolutely ravishing ballerina, Dina, one of her latest discoveries. Dina is now a university student and no longer has any time for ballet. "When she came to see the film, she cried and cried," says Laurella. "I told her I would give her the key to the studio and she could resume her training any time she wanted, but apparently she really can't. I am sad for her, especially that she loved the film so much. She appeared in it, you know." Laurella is lost in thought, still holding the photograph in her hand. "Why did you not come to see the film?" she asks me accusingly. "It was lovely. They showed it three times, and you would have been able to see my Dina."
The film I missed is a documentary by director Marianne Khoury on Laurella's family and life. It was presented recently at the Italian Cultural Centre, which reminds me that she is actually Italian, although she seems to favour speaking French. "I am only Italian on paper," she explains. Laurella's paternal grandmother was French and her father spoke French with his wife, an Italian whose family had been established in Egypt for generations. It was therefore normal that they would send their only daughter to a French school, first a religious establishment, then to the exclusive Cours Morin in Zamalek. Later, Laurella shows me one of her treasures, the manuscript of Pierre Laurella's biography. This was the ancestor who started the family's love affair with the Orient by settling in Beirut and marrying the daughter of one of Bonaparte's aides-de-camp. It is in her father's handwriting, complete with a family tree and personal papers. Pierre Laurella's sons came to Egypt and the family has been well entrenched here ever since.
"I remember," says Laurella, "in 1956 many foreigners left, but we did not feel that we needed to follow the movement. We loved Egypt and had known no other home." By this time, she had established her ballet school in Zamalek and, with plenty of Egyptian students, she barely noticed any change.
Although she speaks no Arabic at all, Laurella admits that she has never been able to contemplate the possibility of leaving Egypt. Once, when she was in her late twenties, she read an advertisement in an American magazine calling for applications from European ballet teachers to teach at a school in Minneapolis. She had applied -- mainly for fun, and curious to see if she could get a job overseas with her credentials -- but, when she was accepted, she decided on the spur of the moment that she ought at least to give it a try. "Opportunities missed, etc., you know..." she reminisces; "but I realised that it was a mistake the moment I set foot on the ship." She had never left her parents before and she knew how heartbroken they were at her departure. So was she, and during the short period of her stay, she called them on the phone every day. It was soon after the war. She disliked New York, where she had the occasion to witness the squalor of the slums, but most of all, she hated Minneapolis. In Egypt, even with little or no money, the family kept its social position, the large and sunny apartment on the verdant island of Zamalek, and their cosmopolitan friends. In Minneapolis, with her meagre salary, she could only afford to have her meals in cheap diners and cafeterias, seated alongside workers and truckers who often stuck their elbows in her face in their earnest attempts to come to terms with a recalcitrant steak. At home, table manners were exquisite, and Laurella felt perfectly miserable thinking of her parents' old-world grace. Four months later she was back in Egypt, grateful to have had the foresight not to close her ballet studio permanently.
Not that she had led always a perfectly sheltered life -- far from it. After an uneventful childhood, the war had erupted. Her father, a director at the National Bank -- not a fascist, but an Italian nevertheless -- had been interned in a concentration camp for the duration. Her mother had managed as well as she could, supporting the household and paying for her daughter's ballet lessons until Laurella was old enough to start teaching ballet herself. After the war, they refused to follow the throngs of Italians who emigrated to South America, the United States, Canada or Australia. Mr Laurella never retrieved his position, however, nor did he find a new one of great interest. "My school was doing well by this time, I did not care, we were never in need," says Laurella proudly. "We travelled in summer and had a good life together, as good as if my father had provided for us."
Things are simple for Laurella. She does not dwell on the other possibilities that life could have offered her, had circumstances been different. She knew by the time she was five years old that she would be a ballerina. Her mother, who had trained with Mademoiselle d'Albret in her youth, recognised her daughter's gift and encouraged the little girl's passion. She enrolled her at the Ivy and Gleen Moore ballet school, run by a husband and wife team. The couple left when Laurella was 13 and she resumed her training with a Russian teacher, Madame Schubert. Laurella seems to have had no ambitions other than executing perfect pas-de-chats. The possibility that she could take up ballet as a profession one day had never crossed her parents' mind, however. Had the war not disrupted her life, she would never have had to think of dancing professionally. As it happened, she was lucky to possess a skill very much in demand.
I remember hearing of Laura Laurella in the 1950s, at the time when Sonia Ivanova was the most famous ballet teacher in town, and she still a very young teacher. Despite the older woman's established reputation, many preferred Laurella's less crowded studio for their children. I also remember going there one day and watching one of her classes. One of the young apprentice ballerinas was so graceful that I have her image before my eyes to this day. As I recall, Laurella had been reluctant to take me on, because I was too fat. At the time, with the lithe young ballerina's figure still dancing in my mind, I had readily agreed with her judgement. I was definitely not cut out to make a mark in that particular field. Laurella denies the occurrence emphatically, however. "I don't refuse children because they are too fat," she says indignantly. "I force them to lose weight."
Over the years, at any rate, she has taught generations of more agile young girls who are now bringing their granddaughters to her, and she has loved every moment of it. She is terribly upset about her "stupid accident," because she has to wait a while for her hip to heal before resuming her lessons. "Such an idiotic fall," she comments, scowling. "I was teaching the girls a step: I leapt, and the parquet was faulty just where I landed. I slipped. I got up and resumed the lesson and never thought about it until a week later, when I woke up in pain. In the morning, I went to the hospital for an x-ray, but it was clean. I went back home and resumed my work. The pain returned within a few days and this time, the x-ray showed a fracture of the hip. They would not let me go home and they operated on me the following morning. What an experience! They gave me an epidural and I was awake the whole time. I heard them sawing the bone and hammering the nails in." She shivers and shakes her head at the memory. "I knew the film was going to premiere four days later and I told my doctor I wanted to attend. He said I could, if I agreed to take this contraption along." She points to the walker standing in the hall, forgotten. "I wanted to see the film: it recounts how I danced at the Opera in front of King Farouk. Umm Kulthoum sang at that gala evening. I also danced for Gamal Abdel-Nasser with the Reda Troupe during the big event when the green flag of Egypt was replaced by the revolutionary red, black and white one. All this is recorded in the film. You really should see it. It is much more interesting than what I have to say."
Laurella has to walk, and she conscientiously paces between the dining room and the hall. She has to do it for 15 minutes several times a day. On her way back from one of her tours, she grabs a packet of cigarettes. "I did not know you smoked," I protest. I have been dying for a cigarette. She laughs and offers me her lighter. We stand on the balcony smoking and watching the sun slowly descending between the buildings. "When we took this flat, only fields surrounded it," she says wistfully, "and at night we used to hear dance music coming across the Nile from the Kit Kat in Imbaba." She shows me the rest of her flat, a real home with family pictures, cosy furniture and the pleasing clutter that surrounds people who are used to living alone and have come to enjoy it. A ginger cat is lounging on a sofa and Laurella caresses the little head raised towards her. She picked it up at the club, a tiny kitten with a bad eye. She brought it home and has cared for it since.
"When I came back from the hospital, Kitty would not talk to me for days. She stuck her head to the wall and refused to even look at me. After a couple of days she consented to come out of her corner and began to scold me. She was very piqued, I could see." Laurella mimics the cat's mews for my benefit: 'what were you thinking of, leaving me with the maid like that?' I am sure that is what she was telling me. After that we made up."
Laura sorely misses her mother, who died a few years ago, and her father, who passed away recently at the age of 101. She devoted her entire life to them and to her ballet school. Today, she is alone. "Some people were mean enough to tell me that it was over, that I would never dance again. I don't believe them. Soon I will be back on my toes." She has had six operations in the past five years and she probably knows deep in her heart that she has to slow down a little. Does she regret the way things have turned out? "I felt privileged to be able to care for my parents. I loved my students and I thoroughly enjoyed teaching. I would not have had it any other way; I only hope it lasts a little longer," she says, and her eyes twinkle with barely contained vitality.
photos: Mohamed Mossad
