22 - The decline of
the Egyptian Dance Scene
FROM MOUNIR ABBOUD IN BEIRUT
"Egypt has decided that when it comes to belly dancing, enough is enough. It has stopped issuing
licenses to women who want to shake it all about because, says the Egyptian Culture Ministry, "there are just too many of them".
About 1,500 women hold licenses and there are complaints that the market has been flooded by former ballerinas from Russia and Eastern Europe.
According to the Egyptian Arts Authority, 5,000 professional belly dancers were registered in 1957, compared with only 372 today. Mindful of the increasing preponderance of outsiders, the Egyptian Dance Group recently called on the authorities to stop licensing so many foreigners, Cairo's Egyptian Gazette reported.
Fundamental changes have taken place over the Middle East over the last 20 years or so. The fall of the Shah of Iran was replaced by extreme Islamic regimes and ever greater "Cocoalisation" of the world by America has created a spiritual backlash. Egypt generally
polarized towards a more stricter and traditional form of society. So there has been a decline in the rich Arabs from the Persian Gulf region who used to
patronize the 5 star nightclubs in Cairo. The final nail in the coffin has
been driven in by the Sept 11th events.
Also the younger generation, fed on MTV would prefer more European entertainment, and would see the belly dancing as old fashioned.
"Seven or eight years ago, the Arabs used to come here, sit with a bottle of whiskey in front of them and stay up all night watching a show," says one club manager, Samy Saad. "Now the younger generation of Arabs goes to Europe or the United States during the holidays. They don't go to the nightclubs. ... They prefer to dance themselves in a disco. They want to move their bodies."
Dwindling economic returns have led every five-star Cairo nightclub but one to close their doors, forcing the three most famous Egyptian dancers, including the 50-something Fifi Abdou, to branch into films and lucrative private weddings. Their fees -- $10,000 an hour and up -- are so high that rich Cairene families have been known to save money by flying in entire Brazilian dance troupes or American music groups like Kool and the Gang.
The ongoing influx of foreign dancers into Cairo diluted the the effect of the indigenous dancers and this accelerated once the Communist regime collapsed in Russia with the result of huge numbers of
penniless ballerinas desperate for work. Also a huge number of Europeans who were driven by the love of the dance and therefore took the dancing very seriously came into Cairo .
They were prepared to work for far less money and so became very exploited. They became very good but according to the likes of Dina they don't have the dance in their blood in the same way as the Egyptian women do.
Meanwhile the Authorities clamped down harder and harder as Islamic Fundamentalism
took hold. All these kinds of pressures simply reduced the amount of belly dance in the clubs to a mere fraction to what it was a while ago.
But not completely disappeared, Western interest in the dance has created a fresh market of hordes of Western women keen to learn the dance and thus fuelling all sorts of things including costume makers in Cairo and the staging of the 1st Belly Dance convention within Egypt and of course no end of belly dance holidays for the Westerners. Overseas demand for "I Dream of Jeannie" harem pants, hand-beaded bustiers and slit skirts is now so high that the handful of remaining belly-dancing couturiers are growing rich off exports. "Ninety-five percent of my customers are foreign," says Ahmed Dia el Dine, the John Galliano of costume designers, waving a sheet of faxed orders from Australia in his atelier on Cairo's Mohammed Ali Street.