A 1980s bass line is thumping. Young men, some shirtless, dressed in sweats or cargo pants, are lifting and swirling their bodies to the beat. These are not flimsy ballet dancers; they are tall, sinewy, muscled young dudes. They’ve got attitude.
In front stands a small man, an earring glinting in his ear. His salt-and-pepper hair betrays an age not otherwise evident as he spins on one foot, arms lifted, demonstrating the step he’s looking for.
This scene is set in the Cairo Opera House, but opera it is not: This is the Egyptian Modern Dance Theater Company and, despite its penchant for controversy, it has become an incontrovertible fixture in the local art world.
These 11 men and their nine female colleagues — waiting in the wings to practice the sequence — make up the dance company, now in its fifteenth year. The dancers range in age from 17 to 30; their salt-and-pepper teacher is choreographer and director Walid Aouni, a legendary figure in the Arab world of dance.
While the battle for acceptance as a legitimate art form isn’t over, Aouni says that Egypt is much more open to modern dance today than it was 18 years ago, when he first arrived from his homeland of Lebanon.
“Some people didn’t like it at all,” he says of the difficult early years with the fledgling dance company. “The attitude was ‘go home, Walid Aouni!’” he recalls. “There was so much misunderstanding: ‘Why do you have to walk on this side of art’?”
Egyptians did not understand the abstract nature of modern dance in the early 1990s, Aouni says. The genre uses symbolism and suggestion in its performances; everything is open for interpretation by the audience. It is the antithesis of ballet and its fairy-tale plots that were already dear and familiar to Egyptians. “[Ballet] is romantic: it has a beginning and an end, a battle between bad and good, and the bad guy dies in the end,” he says.
When Aouni founded the Egyptian Modern Dance Theater Company in 1993, despite its status as a government institution fully funded by the Ministry of Culture, modern dance was something most Egyptians had never experienced. The Lebanese choreographer had landed in Egypt almost by chance, after coming to Cairo in 1990 with a Belgian dance company to present a show.
Then (and now) Minister of Culture Farouk Hosni, an avid supporter of the arts, saw the show and asked Aouni to consider setting up a modern dance company in Egypt. Aouni seemed a solid candidate: He had a list of successful shows, a reputation as a rising star in dance and, being Lebanese, a fluent command of Arabic.
He accepted the offer and started from scratch, opening auditions and launching his company.
Despite an initial backlash, there was a glimmer of hope for the dancers even then. It wasn’t a complete rejection. “Some said, ‘this is what we want,’” Aouni recalls.
That hope, coupled with Aouni’s tenacity, kept the dancers going. Fighting low show attendance, booing audiences and public outrage, the company survived, putting on notable shows such as The Fall of Icarus, Elephants Hide to Die, and The Smell of Ice. The troupe won awards at home and abroad and slowly gained recognition for their art form.
Indeed, beyond just surviving, the company expanded, progressing to the next step in the nation’s artistic dance evolution: the opening of the Modern Dance School in 2002. Another trial by fire, it left many burned and the public, at the outset, confused. “A lot of [people] thought it was a belly dance school,” Aouni says.
Despite the skepticism, young people turned out for the auditions, if not in droves, in decent numbers, he says, and he soon had a full class ready to tackle the first three-year program.
Public and religious outcry was fierce, however, and the pressure was too much for many students. Many quit — only one month before one major performance, 11 of 20 students had jumped ship. “It was very bad,” Aouni says pragmatically. The choreographer didn’t let it stop him. He put the show on anyway. He says it was a success.
Modern dance’s struggle for acceptance here is tied to the idea that it is haram (forbidden) in Islam.
“Contact between men and women is something forbidden in Islam,” Sheikh Mohamed Shaheen of El-Salam Mosque in Cairo says. “Nothing good or beneficial comes of it other than satisfying desires and pleasures in a filthy way that is not appropriate.”
Unique in the Arab world, the modern dance school and company, both under the auspices of the Ministry of Culture’s Cairo Opera House, are fully funded by the government. Though the other Arab dancing communities are envious — it’s hard to make a living on the stage without government help — it’s ironic, Aouni says, that the company and school are in Egypt.
“We are the example for the other Arab companies,” he says, “and, at the same time, we have the country the most against the dance: Here it is very controversial.”
It’s not hard to see why the conservative set might balk. Two recent performances included, among other elements, male duets with homoerotic undertones, an angel/demon theme, and a dramatic and bloody staged throat-cutting.
Modern dance includes the word ‘modern’ for a reason — it blazes new territory.
Shaheen is adamant that the government funding of modern dance is unacceptable in Islam. “The supporter of good deeds is a doer of good deeds and the supporter of bad deeds is a doer of bad deeds,” he says, “so the government shouldn’t support bad deeds.” The sheikh wants to see the government stop funding it and the company shut down.
The perceived controversy has led to verbal attacks on Aouni, his company and the Ministry of Culture. The opposition can be heavy, according to Tarek Sharara, a composer who wears many hats in the Ministry of Culture, including Opera House board member and member of the High Council for Culture.
“The dark side [of the opposition] is really dark, but it’s not as dark as it used to be,” he says, claiming that beyond those who genuinely oppose the dance, it has also been used as a political scapegoat for those wishing to make trouble for the Minister of Culture.
By Erika Sherk
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