Issue No. 593
Culture
Previous issue
Site map
|
|
4 - 10 July 2002 Issue No. 593 Culture |
Current issue Previous issue Site map | |
| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 | Recommend this page | ||
In progress: Going solo
Dunya Abdalla is a student of theatre (acting) at the Faculty of Arts, Alexandria University. Now in her final year, she has been based in Cairo since 1996, taking time off to give her acting and singing careers a head start. She has participated in productions by Lenin El- Ramli's troupe, Studio 2000, Naser Abdel-Moniem's Studio Al-Tali'a and the Comedy Theatre, with major roles in three plays, the last of which, based on Bahaa Taher's novel, was Al-Tali'a's Khalti Safiya wal Deir (My Aunt Safiya and the Monastery). As a singer Abdalla has collaborated with Fathi Salama's band, Sharqiat, El-Warsha Theatre Company and, briefly, Mohamed Mounir, forming her own small band in June 2001. Abdalla has sung at the Gumhouriya Theatre and the Townhouse Gallery, among other venues, and was a regular participant in the Citadel Festival. She has also worked as an assistant video director. Her independent researches of popular songs during Khalti Safiya wal Deir has continued for more than five years.
For almost two months after I came back from Beirut I was doing very little. Then, suddenly, I found myself completely overwhelmed.
Last March I had given three performances during the Garage poetry week, part of the nearly year-long programme Tareq Abul- Fetouh devised for the Jesuits Cultural Centre in Sidi Gaber, Alexandria. Directly after that, also through the mediation of Tareq, actress Hanan Al-Haj Ali invited me to perform Soad Hosni's songs at the Beirut Theatre on International Woman's Day in the course of her and Roger Assaf's festival, "Shams". On the phone I asked her if I could incorporate some heritage songs into the performance as well. I had no idea how this might be done without compromising the integrity of the performance as a whole, but Hanan trusted my ability to manage my performance whichever way I chose. She was just concerned about the musicians who would accompany me because there was very little time during which they could master the tunes; and she asked me to send her tapes of all the songs I would perform so they could learn them. On schedule -- that would've been mid-March -- I started out as planned, with Soad Hosni's songs. It was fine but I didn't feel I was getting a particularly positive response. Then, as if by divine intervention, the sound system broke and I sat on the floor and started singing one of my own folklore numbers, the Ne'na' Al- Geneina (Garden Mint) quatrains, without the aid of an amplifier; the musicians knew exactly what to do. And the response was tremendous. It was as if something clicked all of a sudden, and after that when the sound came back the audience responded to Soad Hosni's songs with far greater enthusiasm. People like Pierre Abi Saab and Abbas Baydoun were present and articles came out in the papers and I was given another performance, at Nidal Al- Ashqar's Al-Madina Theatre, during which I sang only folklore numbers. I ended up staying for a month -- a delightful growing experience.
I arrived here at the start of April. I've been collecting and sifting through material. Only recently I was told I was to perform on 23 July at the Open Theatre. During the second half of August I am to perform at the Citadel Festival, and during the first half I am to go back to Lebanon to do two performances at the Southern Cultural Centre, I'm not sure where in the south. It is important to come up with a good balance of things for these two performances since Lebanon is really quite small and I'm sure that, while it's important to include some of the songs that made a good impression in Beirut, those who attended the Beirut performances will want to hear something new as well. Right now I'm coming up with and rehearsing a Lebanese programme.
At the moment the most pressing task is coming up with songs for the Zanzibar International Festival, at which I will perform this week as part of the Young Arab Theatre Fund programme, "Five Female Performers from the Arab World", along with Egyptian story-teller Sherine El- Ansari, Egyptian choreographer- dancer Karima Mansour and two other singers, Salma Al-Assal from Sudan and the Jordanian- Palestinian Sahar Khalifa. This is a different thing altogether, stimulating in a somewhat more frightening way. Zanzibar was under Omani rule for a long time and their music is essentially Arab, I am told. But I have no idea to what extent this is the case or how traditional folk music from Egypt will be received. The selection of songs, while wide, has been completely arbitrary. And to answer your initial question, this is basically what I've been doing, aside from coordinating with Tareq (the Young Arab Theatre Fund director) and preparing for the journey: sifting through material, coming up with representative songs and practising them with the musicians. The programme is exciting in that each of the five contributing artists is, in her way, working on some aspect of heritage. When I first came to Cairo, I could never have thought I'd be going to Zanzibar.
|
 |
|
|||||||||||||||||
| ARCHIVES Letter from the Editor Editorial Board Subscription Advertise! |
WEEKLY ONLINE: www.ahram.org.eg/weekly Updated every Saturday at 11.00 GMT, 2pm local time weeklyweb@ahram.org.eg |
 Al-Ahram Organisation |
