Talking about the body
Sonali Pahwa speaks to three contemporary dancers about practising a marginalised art in Egypt. Reem Hegab and Karima Mansour are participants in the Young Arab Theatre Fund's forum Roaming Inner Landscapes: Self Image and Artistic Expression in Africa and the Arab World. They presented performances at the forum's festival in Alexandria. Mirette Mechail directed and performed a prize-winning dance theatre production, Details, at the Young Directors festival at the Centre Français de Culture et de Coopération (CFCC) in January
Reem Hegab
"Contemporary dance feels closer to me and more familiar to my body than other genres. I trained first in ballet, and it still provides a base to which I return. I draw on yoga and karate as well when I am choreographing. But when I develop a performance I do so without paying attention to specific schools of dance. The important thing is to deal with physicality. The body is my main concern and I want to make use of it.There is always a mix of theatre and dance in my work. I cannot separate the two. Movement is an inextricable part of theatre. And theatre, for me, is simply a space with a performer and an audience. In my last performance, Hide-and-Seek, I looked at the marriage between the voice and the body. Silent Red, which I performed at the Roaming Inner Landscapes festival, underlined the visual aspects of theatre.
Even though I call my work theatre it is sometimes difficult to find performance space for what I do. Theatre people and dance people each think my work belongs in the other camp. When I returned to Egypt eight months ago after a spell of study in London, I did not see much of a future for my work here, but now there is a little candle of hope. The Alexandria forum was a fantastic opportunity to see what dancers are doing in other Mediterranean countries and talk about our performances as well as our journeys. It encouraged me to think that I am not alone.
The first stage of the forum took place in Tunis in January. We had a fruitful discussion between the dancers, coinciding with a dance festival in which some of us were performing. I noticed in Tunis that going to the theatre is much more of a habit than it is here.
I maintain that theatre is important to the extent that people feel a need for it. As long as there is this dialectic between theatre and its audience, it will survive and justify its relevance. At a certain point, I felt that theatre in Egypt was not important except for those who worked in it. But since the Young Arab Theatre Fund's project, I have been thinking that since I am living in this country I may as well do what I do here. If you're interested, come and see my work. If you're not, then come as well and let me know you're not interested.
Winning the interest of an audience is still very much a problem for a dancer. Aside from the publicity and media work it entails, there is the question of familiarising the audience with this kind of dance. It is not that you educate your audience, but that you take care to bring them into your work slowly, without sudden shocks. On the other hand, you must not compromise your art. That serves neither the art nor the audience. There are midpoints at which you make the transition and then go on."
Karima Mansour
"Body language is a universal language. Here there are less likely to be problems of translation, or misunderstandings of plays on words, such as you find in more verbal arts of language. But just as you do not take language at face value when you seek to understand culture, dance must also be interpreted. Its universality does, however, lend it to imaginative readings.I trained in contemporary dance with a European vocabulary. Europe is where this kind of dance developed and we can't change this fact of history. But I take into consideration my history and environment in my choreography, and find a blend without forcing any one form upon the other. I find something that is mine and speaks for me. I, too, am partly this and partly that.
As much as there is an interest in this young and new art form in Egypt, we are not able to use the incredible potential in this country to the maximum. To begin with, we don't have proper schools for contemporary dance. It is also difficult to be an educated, professional, independent artist in this country. There is a continuous struggle between independent artists and the government, which does not want to collaborate with them, so they do not feed off each other in a positive way. Added to this is the lack of teamwork among artists, and they end up being isolated.
It is not easy doing what I do in Egypt. I have lived and studied abroad, and then worked as a professional in Egypt since 1998, and I can see the difference clearly. A dancer needs to train every day, so continuous access to a space is necessary. So are good teachers. It is not very inspiring to train on my own. I teach and give workshops occasionally, but I also need to refill what is being emptied. The option of travelling abroad is not available to everyone -- it is so expensive now. I don't see why state-owned outlets refuse to make room for independent artists when we are working in and for this country. It will only kill art.
Festivals such as the recent Roaming Inner Landscapes, where I performed my sixth piece, Temperament, are very important. I hope that Cairenes will learn from the lead that Alexandria is taking in the cultural sphere! I am glad that the festival is travelling. One makes art to be seen and to communicate as widely as possible. Hopefully such region- wide festivals will create a movement for the arts in the Arab world.
Whether we like it or not, the Arab world is seen by the outside world in a certain way. Art plays a very important role in changing this image. It offers a chance to express that there are many sides to us. This is important for us to acknowledge, too, and not just for the outside world. We need to be confronted with the fact that Egypt, for example, is full of paradoxes and cannot be generalised.
Contemporary dance has many possibilities because it is new in Egypt, but a certain responsibility lies with the dancer who addresses an untrained audience. It is not all about me, about my wanting to be seen. I must also ensure that there is integrity and honesty in my presentation to the audience."
Mirette Mechail
"Ballet is often about abstract ideas, myths and legends, but not about the everyday experiences that are closest to us. Contemporary dance takes up these experiences. I may appreciate the technical accomplishments of ballet, but there is more to dance than this.There are important differences between modern and contemporary dance. Modern dance can be traced to movements in the 1920s which aimed at breaking the conventions of ballet. It is closer to pure dance, while contemporary dance focusses rather on particular subjects and stories.
There have been contemporary dancers in Egypt for a while --such as Karima Mansour, Mohamed Shafiq and Karim Tonsy -- but they have had few opportunities to perform. There was only one troupe, the Modern Dance Troupe at the Opera House. Now there are more dancers as well as a few more outlets for their work. They all have very different styles. Some focus on technique, others on philosophy or on simplicity of expression. The difference between them is productive.
The use of contemporary dance, or more often expressive movement, in theatre is a more recent trend. At the Young Directors festival at the French cultural centre there were three dance shows in addition to plays that had a large component of movement. My own performance was a kind of visual theatre in which I had to let the body say certain things alongside the lighting and images. These were simple things, not really dance, but they expressed the meaning I was aiming at.
Among the pitfalls of using dance in theatre is the use of movements the meaning of which is obscure. There should be a story behind the movement. It must not be too abstract, like painting or the plastic arts. The performer should be acquainted with some of the different schools of thought about dance and expressive movement.
My relationship with dance has been a self-revolution of sorts. I started studying dance at an international school in the Emirates. Then I spent two years in France. When I returned to Egypt I did not dance for several years until I joined the Ballet Institute. I made the shift to contemporary dance when I worked as an assistant to Diana Calenti, who taught dance at AUC and had her own troupe.
As a woman, I am bothered by the fact that our relationship with our bodies is still very complicated. It is very unfair that we have all these inheritances which define the female body. I wish we could take everything off and use it as just a body. Performers who work with the body need to have a greater awareness of it, and women often are more conscious of their bodies. Perhaps this is why there is a strong representation of women among contemporary dancers in Egypt."
Al-Ahram Weekly Online : 19 - 24 February 2004 (Issue No. 678)
Located at: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2004/678/cu2.htm