The Sufi chanter looked peaceful in his white galabeyya, greeting the crew backstage. Musicians jammed while Mawlawia dancers rehearsed their movements a few minutes before the performance began.
It was 8:30 pm on the eve of Eid Al-Adha when the group appeared on stage at the Sawy Cultural Center. Amer El-Touny’s Islamic Sufi songs, his deep voice and the colorful whirling of the dancers caught the eyes, souls and minds of an audience of different age groups and social backgrounds
For El-Touny, what he and his Mawlawia group present is an aura, an experience, rather than just a show. “The audiences are usually ready to live in a spiritual mood and receive the positive energy it derives, he told Daily News Egypt.
The Mawlawia dance is a symbolic ritual through which dervishes aim to reach “perfection. They attempt to desert their egos and personal desires and communicate with God through the music they create.
“The spinning in Mawlawia is a sort of identification with the rotation of other beings such as electrons and planets of the micro- and macrocosms, which is how they worship God, El-Touny explained.
The Mawlawia was originally a Sufi order formed, at the time of the Ottoman Empire, by the followers of Jalaluddin Rumi, the famous 13th century Sufi Persian poet and theologian who lived in Turkey. A Mawlawi (Sufi) performed their rituals at a music ceremony called the sema that also involved whirling dance.
“Rumi created the spinning dance of Mawlawia as a means of expressing love for God, El-Touny explained. “The name of Mawlawia was based on the word mawlana (our master), Rumi. Yet our Egyptian Mawlawia belongs to Al-Mawla (God).
Mawlawia was first introduced to Egypt with the Ottoman conquest in the 16th century. At that time Egyptian musicians traveled to Turkey and their Turkish counterparts visited Egypt as part of an exchange program.
“El-Tanoura dance is indeed a variation of Mawlawia spinning, El-Touny noted.
El-Touny’s group does not however adopt the ideologies of a certain sect. “I took the idea of whirling from Mawlawia, adapting it to our music and culture. That is why I call it the Egyptian Mawlawia.
The songs of El-Touny’s group are usually taken from the poetry of the Muslim Sufis like Omar Ibn Al-Farid, Rabaa Al-Adawiyya and Mansour Al-Hallaj, accompanied by traditional Egyptian music composed by him. Members of El-Touny’s group play traditional instruments like the rababa (fiddle), nei (oriental flute), sagat (cymbals), qanoun (dulcimer) and tabla (doumbek drum).
El-Touny read extensively about Mawlawia and watched numerous dance performances before developing a framework to train his group. He began his project in 1994 and it took years of practice until they gave their first Mawlawia performance at El-Sawy Cultural Wheel in 2004.
Things got underway when he started working under the umbrella of the Artistic Development Fund, a Culture Ministry affiliate, which granted his group the much-needed media attention.
Another success factor was Facebook. “Through this online tool, we managed to reach a wider spectrum of audience, he said.
El-Touny has established a school for teaching Mawlawia in Egypt. He’s scheduled to perform in Spain alongside a musician reviving Sufi Andalusian mowashahat. He has also been working on a project cooperatively with an American musician to perform Sufi Jazz.
Catch El-Touny and his Mawlawia group at Beit El-Suheimy on Dec. 25.
