Nora, the protagonist of Henrick Ibsen’s “Doll’s House, shook the norms of European society with her defiance in the face of patriarchy and her determined quest for an identity that is separate from her roles as a wife and a mother.
Her namesake, Nora Amin, used Ibsen’s 19th century play as an entry point to examine the current situation of Egyptian men and women’s search for their unique sense of self.
Amin’s dance theater performance “Nora’s Doors, presented this week at Cairo Opera House’s Gomhuria Theater, promised to “analyze our realities and the female positioning in our contemporary culture . to confront our current challenges and endless questions.
Unfortunately, it was unable to fulfill these promises.
The dance performance relies heavily on Ibsen’s last scene, where Nora confronts her husband Trevold, and informs him that she is leaving him and the children to search for herself. His appeals fail to dissuade her, and the scene ends with the famous slamming of the door behind her.
This door is the spine of Amin’s performance, evident in the title and five door frames hanging on the back wall throughout the performance, until the final scene where the five dancers pick them up and incorporate them in their dance.
This performance is challenged dramaturgically. It claims to work in a spiral, which evokes forward and upward progress, but this piece does not move in either direction. There is no dramatic buildup as it starts with an ending and continues to present variations on the same theme: couples splitting up.
In one of these scenes the man and the woman exchange roles. The male performer informs his wife that he is leaving her and the children to try to find himself away from the prescribed roles that society imposes on him. An interesting twist on the original play, but unfortunately this whiff of freshness is thwarted by the unclear logic of Amin’s text.
The couple scenes are interspersed with inexplicable sequences where each of the women crawls diagonally across the stage floor making odd noises. These noises add to the incongruity of the already perplexing soundscape of “Nora’s Doors.
Separating the text from the performer is an established Eastern theater technique that has been adopted by Western theater makers for decades. In the case of the current performance there is no obvious reason why the text is not performed by the dancers, especially when they rarely dance vigorously. What is more confounding is the monotonous style of delivery which emptied the text from its emotional charge. In the meantime, the music arrangements did not capture the tension between partners and verged on the feel of a thriller.
The odd breathing sounds/muffled cries that accompanied much of the performance flirt with ritual theater, but have nothing of the depth, integrity or true purpose of these primordial repeated sounds that alter the brainwaves of participants in ritual. The main reprieve in the soundscape was a French balladic song which was repeated twice. The melodic chant with its soothing music was a welcome break from the stifled screams and the annoying monotonous reading of the text of the play under the guise of acting.
The program notes declare that “Nora’s Doors is an attempt “to search for the contemporary Noras.seeking independence from tradition and the patriarchal system. While paying lip service to the liberation of women, and the deconstruction of the patriarchy, Amin’s choreography places the male figure center stage, subconsciously giving him the position of power and bestowing on him visual importance.
The unforgivable insult to women’s rights comes in the final scene, where the Nora in the scene wears a veil, and long over ropes quintessential to low-income areas in contemporary Egypt. This Nora is trying to break free, and her partner is refusing, in crass language, to let her go. The scene ends with the man slapping the woman, who collapses to the floor, with no commentary from the performance creators. As this is the last couple scene with dramatic text, the audience is left with that final image as the statement of the performance.
Violence against women, epitomized in the physical slapping of the female, (making Ibsen toss in his grave), is not what this performance wants to propagate. Unfortunately, it is a statement which undermines the message of the performance of the call to break the doors.
That said, this dance theater piece is not without merit. There are some interesting visual moments including an interesting sequence where Amin appears on stage fully wrapped up in cellophane, which she tears apart to free herself.
With support from the Cairo Opera House, the Norwegian Embassy and the Ibsen Awards, this performance cannot use the usual excuses of lack of funding, or scarcity of rehearsal space. What is lacking is the genuine creative process of original ideas, dedication and honest to God rehearsals.
This over-funded and under-rehearsed performance is what seems to be giving modern dance its bad rap in this country.
“Nora’s Doors will be shown on Nov. 16, 17 in Sayyed Darwich Theater, Alexandria, and on Nov. 25 in Jesuit Theater in Minya, 8 pm.
