A Half Hour in Hell

The irony of a bright red sun setting so serenely as all hell breaks loose underground. People clamor for their lives, but the sun doesn't care. It sinks into the Nile with a nonchalance that budges for nothing and no one. 

I happened to be in the Attaba metro station this evening, on my way to work from a modeling shoot when the escalators gave out. Thankfully I was not on one of them. It was just my luck, as I decided that climbing six long flights of stairs was preferable to being sandwiched between a sea of men and teenage boys on the escalator. Good call, because then THIS happened. There was an electrical failure, and the four escalators going in both directions stopped abruptly. Some people fell as others were squished, and many were badly injured. Mass panic ensued. People were screaming and crying and jumping over each other to escape. Others were trying to capture the magnitude of the crowd with their camera phones-- there were already thousands of us without each arriving train replenishing the stock. 

Birth Control, Secularism, and the Belly Dance 'Revival'

In Egypt, belly dancers are hired for as many reasons as there are people. Some are hired for their looks. Others for their locks. Some are more affordable, while others confer status on those doing the hiring. And then there are dancers who are chosen for their personality, or because of their connections, or even their status. What we all have in common though, is that we are rarely sought out for our dancing. Even the best of us. Nevertheless, we all cultivate an audience-- a loyal set of fans that follow (and sometimes stalk) us around as we perform in hotels, weddings, and boats around the city. Amie Sultan, a newer, foreign-born Egyptian dancer and the subject of"Amie Sultan: Reviving the Art of Belly Dancing in Egypt", is no different. She, like the rest of us, has carved a niche for herself in the super competitive world of Egyptian belly dancing. No more, no less.

I'm stating the obvious here because somebody has to...because Amie makes a bold if dubious claim about her impact on the dance scene. She says: “Now I’m seeing belly dancers trying to become more elegant and trying to lose weight and, you know, tone it down a bit. People want something more refined, more studied. People want the art of it, not the tattooed eyebrows. I think because of me there’s less vulgarity.” While I'm no fan of tattooed eyebrows, I do believe that Amie is overstating her impact. Just a bit. It's not that Amie is changing the way dancers are approaching the dance or Egyptians' tastes-- in fact her influence is mostly limited to a rather closed circle -- it's that she's found her audience in a certain sector of Egyptian society that's already had those tastes. The Cairo 'posh.' The 3%. The self-serving elite and nouveau riche who prefer English to Arabic, whiskey to hasheesh, and who uncoincidently situate themselves away from the lumpen. I'm not rich-shaming, by the way. Just laying down the facts. Amie is part of and thus appeals to this sector of the society. More power to her. But let's not buy into the hype about her single-handedly changing dancers and audiences' preferences.