Dancing for love
Amal Choucri Catta finds Maurice Béjart making a plea for understanding
Mother Teresa and the Children of the World: Maurice Béjart and Company M with Marcia Haydée. Venue Goumhoureya Theatre, 28 to 31 January, 8pm
A melancholic monody filled the air while white forms on stage froze under a solitary spotlight. The scene changed suddenly, dancers dispersed, each assuming a particular identity, performing distinct movements. They had formed a magic circle and gone into meditative sequences. Now each was alone, going through individual motions; each free from burden, jumping up and down, rhythmically inhaling and exhaling the air of newfound liberty. Once more the scene changed, as did the music while up on the stairs, backstage, Mother Teresa was busily cleaning, wiping the floor, sweeping the staircase, until she gradually reached the stage where, getting down on her knees, she tried to bring the whole place to a brilliant shine.
Maurice Béjart's latest creation, Mother Teresa and the Children of the World, a one-act dance-theatre performance with several scenes, was presented by 15 young dancers from his new M- Company, with the famous ballerina Marcia Haydée interpreting Mother Teresa. It was a moving performance, evolving around calls for love, humanity and peace. "We should help a Hindu to become a better Hindu, a Muslim a better Muslim and a Christian a better Christian", the dancers told the audience in several languages, adding: "God is everywhere and we all are his children: united we are strong in his name".
Mother Teresa came up front saying: "Today's worst sickness in the Western world is neither leprosy nor tuberculosis, but loneliness. The feeling to be unwanted, unloved. The only remedy for solitude is love."
"If I had to give the Nobel Prize to someone," she told us later, "I would give it to the devil -- I think his way of dealing is the wisest: he is the father of falsehood, of lies, his patience is infinite, he never tires of waiting, he waits as long as it takes, until we surrender."
She danced around the youngsters, preaching love throughout the entire programme. "My house is for the poorest of the poor," she declared: "Take time to think, take time to pray, take time to live, take time to play; take time to love and to be loved." And suddenly, changing tone, she added: "Suffering is inevitable, so let us suffer joyfully." And joyfully she went into another dancing sequence.
Though Marcia Haydée may have been the attraction in this extraordinary show, the 15 young dancers, from Argentina, Korea, France, Germany, Czech Republic, Italy, Brazil, Guadeloupe and the Netherlands were the real stars : their performance was fabulous.
Maurice Béjart, whom Cairenes remember from Pyramid, presented 13 years ago at the Main Hall of Cairo's Opera House, did not come to Egypt this time due to health reasons. He did, though, despatch the loveliest ensemble of dancers.
Marcia Haydée is a Cairo veteran: in 1989 she danced the title role in The Taming of the Shrew with the famous Stuttgart Ballet at the Cairo Opera House to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the twinning of Stuttgart and Cairo. At the time she was director of the Stuttgart Ballet; she is also director of the Santiago Ballet and an internationally known choreographer.
"Ministers have their spiritual exercises; dancers, they have their bar." The words were spoken as a prelude to a sequence with long white sticks used by the dancers as rods, wands, or just plain canes, beating the rhythm of the music and other rhythms like that of soldiers marching to war. Their message remained, though, one of peace and harmony: their dances, often of an abstract nature, formed kaleidoscopic configurations, the choreography an expression of several esoteric ideas. This was often a language for the initiated, these Far-Eastern attitudes and Near-Eastern movements of overwhelming emotion and spirituality. The discipline and refinement of the dancers were fascinating: here were youngsters for whom this was far more than movement, for whom it was an expression of soul.
"Remember, love begins at home," intoned Mother Teresa, before telling us that love was everywhere, that we need only take time to find it. Then she told us a tale of the Indian women sitting beneath a tree, chatting with their neighbours.
There was a calculated balance between the spoken word, the movement and periods of absolute immobility. The different kinds of music animating the show were likewise balanced and if, at times, it became repetitive the message was nonetheless eloquently expressed. Any repetition was also alleviated by changes in mood, the introduction of new ideas and new dimensions into the performance.
"I believe that establishing a new company of very young dancers just graduated from the Rudra School, is one of the most reasonable follies. When this newborn energy is confronted with a great star like Marcia Haydée, they are provided with a lesson, a model, an experience, Mother Teresa, a unique person because of her unshaken faith, her strength and her unlimited ability to devote herself to the wretched people on earth, is also a lesson of life. Dancing is our life, not just a futile entertainment, but through our deep and permanent commitment towards it, we obtain a meaning for our existence. In this performance Marcia Haydée is not claiming to be Mother Teresa, although the texts she is quoting are hers; her students, the dancers are not Calcutta's poor lepers, but we aim, through our simple methods, to repeat the same simple truths Mother Teresa has lived and suffered for." So Maurice Béjart is quoted as saying in the programme accompanying this performance.
On stage the dancers gather around Mother Theresa offering dance and song as an expression of their love, even the Prima Donna who suddenly emerges in the most grotesque of costumes, declaring in German that she had once read in a book, or was it that she had seen in a film. Whatever the source, in the end it turns out they are all dancing the waltz. On stage the dancers take up the one-two-three tempo, waltzing ecstatically for Mother Teresa. Then the performance moves once more towards the esoteric: the dancers walk slowly on stage each carrying a bowl filled with water. When they reach the front they pour the water over themselves, turn around and slowly walk away. This symbolic baptism is as much a gesture of purification as it is one of rebirth, a symbolic entrance into a new life filled with love.
