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Al-Ahram Weekly 7 - 13 September 2000 Issue No. 498 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 7 - 13 September 2000 Issue No. 498
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Features Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Come along the archipelago
By David Blake
Cairo Opera House, Open Air Theatre, 30 August
Old dances in a new way: these dance like songs were certainly written some time ago. The composer, though he has kept the tunes, has now changed the instruments on which they are played. Yet still the music sounds daunting. We have been here before, but nothing is the same, if only because the dreams have changed.
Tonight's showing was a trip to somewhere not quite identifiable. With Kazazian this is usually the case, though the sights and sounds do change. Yet everything continued to melt restfully into everything else.
The trip began with an infinitely long held pedal note over which the radiograph of a faltering heartbeat sounded. It sounded like the last gasp of Arnold Schonberg and the next stop is space.
It is very lonely out in this kind of musical landscape -- everything is new, you do not know where you are yet you recognise everything. Stroll on, but don't listen too intently or it will disappear. It is very private music, strictly for itself, and perhaps for lone dancers. Most music is composed for people to listen to. This is not. It makes no compromises. There is no concessionary access as it slithers along.
Kazazian is on strong ground here. There is nothing to listen to, yet the sound does go on. But air and water are firmer support than you ever thought when you began this amazing listen.
If the feathery texture of Song I bothers you, then go a tad upbeat. This is exclusively for those far out on the worn out limb of the world, a place broken by the wind a thousand years ago.
This counting in millennia is very Egyptian. But this is not Egyptian or oriental music. It is old music, made older by just a few years on the shelf. No sets of laws exist with which to judge such a recently acquired patina. Like old friends who are not there because you have invented them, their only use is that they look so lovely. Kazazian is not a cunning composer. He does not use his effects to dazzle or charm. Indeed, there is no charm of any note to his long periods. They have a baroque feel, something at once authoritative and expensive.
George Kazazian
photo: Nina Menkes
The second song suggested richesse, something Baudelaire, lux, calme et volupté.
If you own a white marble villa somewhere far out on an archipelago washed by a tranquil sea, and you've dumped all the people who bore you into the pelagic waves, let yourself go completely but do not lie down for then you may never get up. This is charismatic music and it hides dark streams of sound which can unbalance the physical body.
The new players who form the group now are all joy. They really are great. They concentrate on making each phrase airborne and their sound is always perfect, and no more so than with the violins. Yet in spite of the new dress, at times the old songs are still recognisable, and the audience applauds when these strange song-like incantations end. But there is no doubt that it is difficult music and puzzles many listeners.
There is still that air of mystery -- does Kazazian really write this or does it all come about as improvisation?
Put on a sarong for the last two items and go occupy your favourite rocks in your favourite, isolated cove. The music takes a new turn, the band lets go. There are kitchen noises, choppers and liquidisers and all the paraphernalia of modern cooking. And then the percussion goes muffled introducing a sinister note. There are dramatic pauses, but nothing is ever done like anything else. It gets more distant and lonelier. In the high summer when the beach fire is burnt out and the big villas on the mainland are empty, only the archipelago and the white marble palazetta remain. The flames could not jump the channel but the music can. Europe is far away and has become, really, a kind of archipelago music with endless twists and turns.
There is a lament for something, maybe a tree, because there are no trees visible. The green is the green of the sea only. This lament is one of Kazazian's best songs. Dark but witty and full of feeling. The white marble comes in handy as keep-awake music that grows more and more mad as the insomnia continues. This song has more than a touch of Schumann.
Something old, something new, nothing borrowed and the blue is the reflection of the sea on white marble.
And still there is something apprehensive about it all. What was too dreadful to be apprehended has come and gone and we still survive in what is left. The rest is music. Maybe Kazazian will leave us to drift down to his music by the blue white sea, where the dawn and the dusk are the same.
Shahrazad; Walid Aouni; Cairo Dance Theatre; 3 September
Dangerous to know: yet in spite of having been reviewed twice before -- the first performances were given at the new Salaeddin theatre within the Citadel complex, this production at the Opera House -- a part of the dance theatre season -- represents an entire rethink of the show. There was no canned music at the theatre on the hill. Instead he Cairo Opera Orchestra was conducted with understanding by Sherif Mohieddin. The immense orchestral meditation by Rimsky Korsakov called Scheherazade has become another meditation called Shahrazad by Walid Aouni. In the new production Aouni himself dances a long role as a sort of vindictive magician, adding stunning black and gold costumes to the original, Citadel incarnation.
Nazir Shama opens the production once again with beautifully played makamat (variations). Gradually, around the sound of this virtuoso playing, which as usual includes surprising sounds not normally associated with the lute, comes Mona Blosova's voice, singing some phrases of Shahrazad's narrative. The production builds on to what we had already seen at the Citadel, though this time a set of male dancers in grey flannel suits and tarbouches relocate the opening in quite another era. The dancing soon speeds up, moving into original steps, and as in the first production there is a preponderance of male dancers. Aouni is expert at devising disturbing and provocative steps for them. They are, it has to be admitted, an imposing team. Tall, muscular and excellent actors, they are given dangerous and difficult steps to negotiate.
But this show lacks the sheer, full-frontal attack of its predecessor. The impetuous and unending drive of the dance is lacking, and the result, unfortunately, are gaps and pauses that hold up the speed of the original.
The first Shahrazad is now history, and though the beauties and grand, open, outspread movements of this new incarnation suit the stage of the Opera, it lacks something the original possessed. Aouni knows how to use big spaces and this show is a credit to him. The manner in which the dancers spread their jumps and gyrations -- which are unending -- suit the splendour of Aouni's conception. What it lacks in speed, it gains in statuesque nobility. It may be called dance theatre, but it is great ballet, which is more important.
No one can blame him for being seduced by the allure of the Cairo Opera's astounding stage. The Salaeddin Theatre restricted the flow of spatial excitement. The costumes, and their Delacroix richness of texture and colour, are still irresistible.
The Citadel was an on-rush of Mameluke charge, dusty and dreadful, like the Byronic affair which shook the 19th century. Bad, beautiful and dangerous to know.
Down at the Opera, there is a stately, spacious charade balanced on the top of the tarbouche. One can always choose.
