After three consecutive weeks of impressive, feast-for-the-eye performances, the eighth International Festival for Dance Theater ended with a string of disappointing performances that started with a bang and rapidly faded into inconsequence.
The last part of the festival kicked off strongly with the intriguing, stimulating La Volupte d etre (The pleasure of Being) by the Canadian Paul Ibey. Ibey s performance is composed of a solo dance routine of the famous Butoh, a visually eclectic dance performed in white body makeup with no set design or no set at all. Miming is one of the integral parts of the dance that tends to be very expressive, dramatic and sometimes exaggerated and grotesque.
Ibey s show is inspired by the life of Marchesa Luisa Casati, one of Europe s most notorious celebrities who eventually ended up with a debt of $25 million by the 1930s. Casati inspired numerous 20th century artists with her extravagant lifestyle that she created as a substitute for her unsatisfying existence.
Volupte is a recreation of Casati s mental world; the stage when the illusion invades her reality and the distinction between the two becomes almost impossible. Ibey succeeded in capturing and exploring the conflicts in Casati s head; the contradictory and extreme emotions that always haunted her; and dwelling into the several identities she might have assumed.
Identity is, in fact, the main theme that dominated the last performances. About Forging, Dalia El Abd s uneven performance is an examination of the mutating Egyptian identity.
Forging opened up with a striking sequence that saw the six dancers come forward from a large screen, each one taking on a distinctive personality including a farmer, a clerk, a high-brow lady and a construction worker among others.
Nearly everything about Forging looked promising, especially after the strong start. But then the flaws started to surface, increase, and ultimately drown the performance. The cast of the show lacked any harmony with each other and the entire performance felt like individual attempts from each one to demonstrate the character he/she was taking on.
Despite the average overall quality of Forging, many performers stood out and grabbed the audience s admiration.
Some of those performers are first-time dancers like Nadine Emile, a radio presenter who joined El Abd s company after one of the principal dancers dropped out. Emile told The Daily Star Egypt that she was attracted to the predicament of the Egyptian identity conception. It s something I didn t understand, she said. It s something very versatile that I wanted to learn about.
Quite a shy person in real life, Emile s conversion from one character to another is miles away from the person she actually is. She affirmed that dancing helped her to be aware of her body and the possibilities instigated by movement. On stage, I feel different; it s a pretext to be different. Emile added There are many things I know I can t do in real life but on stage, I felt I could do anything. It was very liberating.
Mena El Naggar, another dancer making his public stage debut seized the viewers with an imposing presence and poise. I liked the idea that I could express my inner feelings through my body, El Naggar said to The Daily Star Egypt.
El Naggar believes that Forging demanded him to dive under the skin of characters he was not necessarily familiar with and communicate their persona through body movements and facial expressions.
El Naggar blamed disorganization, the long, ineffective rehearsing hours and lack of commitment on behalf of some of the participants for the end product he described as unsatisfactory.
Nevertheless, El Naggar attributes El Abd for widening my body range and opening the dancing world doors to him.
Sarah Helmy, though, was the clear outstanding performer not only of Forging, but, arguably, of the all the Egyptian dancers in the festival.
The 22-year-old dancing student enjoys an exceptional stage charisma that forces viewers to follow every one of her steps. Helmy told The Daily Star Egypt that she hated acting at first when she joined the Opera House s Modern Dance School in 2005. Her performance is a true showstopper and the young psychology graduate is, without a doubt, destined for greatness.
Forging allowed Helmy to improvise for the first time in her infant career and the experience was no trip-to-the-park. It wasn t easy to come up with different moves and dance routines, she said. Especially when we had to adjust our routines to the lighting, customs and music that weren t settled on until the last moment.
Helmy graduates next year from the Dancing School. She s traveling to London in a few weeks to attend an intensive workshop and she s yet to decide upon fully adopting dancing as a career.
The festival finished with the big dud that was Verdeckte Ermittlung by the German choreographer Martin Nachbar.
Ermittlung is based on a well-known German detective TV program and the actor who played him. Nachbar contemplated about the identity of both the actor and the character he played for years; did they blend, intertwine or meet? How can an actor generate another person unlike himself?
The promising idea produced one of the most frustrating performances of the festival. Nothing much occurs during the one-hour duration of the show.
Ermittlung is a purely experimental performance with very little dancing. The patience of the audience is exploited, never rewarded and affronted. Nachbar s take on the fragility of identity and the pointlessness of the fictional world is not only dull but weak and thin.
Overall, this year s festival presented a treat of the divergent and always fascinating modern theatre dance for almost an entire month. Dance professionals and performers still constitute the larger part of the attendants and publicity remains anemic. There are more newcomers to the festival though and an appreciation for this non-mainstream type of art is increasing, albeit in baby steps.
