Disclaimer: I'm not trying to be snarky
or offensive with any of my observations, so please don't take this personally.
Understand that if you're going to put yourself in the public eye, then you
have to expect and accept criticism.
The other day I posed a controversial question
on Facebook. Is it fair to pit Egyptian dancers against foreign dancers in a
competition? Almost all of the Egyptians who responded said no. Egyptians have a natural advantage in that they've been
Egyptians their whole lives. They grew up with Egyptian music, the Arabic
language, and have been dancing baladi
since the day they were born. Interestingly, the non-Egyptians responded by
saying that it's perfectly fair to compare Egyptian dancers with foreign ones
because the latter compensate for their cultural disadvantage with years of
hard work, passion, and amazing technique. While I generally agree with that, and
while there are many excellent foreign dancers, I have to say that I'm with the
Egyptians on this one. It's not that Egyptians are inherently and always better
dancers than non-Egyptians, but that both groups bring a different set of skills
to the table. Comparing the two would be like comparing apples to steaks. One
is pretty and polished, but the other is juicy and well done.
Watching round one of the "Al-Raqisa"
competition really drove this home for me. Three dancers competed in front of
Dina and the other two judges (a Tunisian actress and an Egyptian comedian).
The first dancer was Australian, the second French Algerian, and the third, Egyptian.
None of them went through a real audition process by the way. What I felt after watching all of their performances was that it was
impossible to compare the first two with the Egyptian dancer. Granted everybody
was nervous and probably didn't perform as well as they would have liked to,
but I found the first two dancers to be technical and somewhat stiff. The
Egyptian dancer was the exact opposite. She barely had any moves, but the few
that she did were very juicy... very Egyptian... very baladi. She danced to the original version of a shaabi baladi song
called "Ya Gazelle Il-Darb Ahmar"-- a song that most foreign dancers
have never heard of unless they've worked in Egypt. She entered the stage with
a melaya leff, and then left it to continue dancing in her typical baladi way,
replete with baladi facial expressions and baladi gestures. The whole routine was
improvised and simple, but undeniably Egyptian.
