Thread: movie review: DANCERS, by Celame Barge

"Dancers" (Mirayat el-Masrah) is a documentary about egyptian cabaret dancers, which I saw last night as part of the Arab Film Festival. It is 51 minutes long and follows about half-a-dozen dancers onstage and off. The dancers are the lower-status girls dancing at cabarets, not at the nice places we see filmed on peko videos.

It was visually very rich, with many different settings: dancers are filmed walking to and from work, at the beauty parlor, at parties, nightclubs, and in their homes. I felt that the filmmaker was trying to present these women sympathetically to his intended audience. What struck me throughout the movie was what a difficult lives these women led, and how few resources they had access to. Many of them began at a quite young age, such as 12 or 14. They have little recourse when they pay is taken by middlemen, musicians and bookers.

The dancers retain only a portion of what they earn, and risk physical safety at times. They reported their dancing might make 200 pounds in a day ($35), doing gig after gig at a variety of locales; but they themselves get to keep perhaps a quarter of that amount.

One girl talked about being grabbed and beaten when she objected; to escape the situation, she jumped from an moving car and injured her leg. This girl, about 17 or so, cried during one of her interviews and said she hated dancing but needs the money. She said that she longed for the day she could quit and take the veil to be a good girl again.

Another dancer aged 38, said that she takes her 7-year-old son to performances for "protection" because the vice police will beat her and lock her up if they find her alone but will leave her in peace if she has her son along. (I think the problem this woman had was an expired permit, and she wasn't supposed to be performing until renewing it)

I don't know how biased this documentary was, but it was very interesting all the same. I felt like a lot was being left out, but I guess that is the nature of filmmaking, otherwise movies would all be 100 hours long. I did like that the dancers were mostly speaking in their own voices, rather than having other people talk *about* the dancers. Substance use wasn't really touched on, although I wondered how anyone gets through night after night of that sober.

The movie made me reflect again on how spoiled we really are in a way. We can pick and choose the parts of dancing that are pretty or fun, and wear fancy costumes, and choose our settings. After seeing some of the godawful parties these girls in the movie have to deal with, even my worst gigs look pretty luxurious.

I've always thought it was kind of funny that there are dancers who project this badass image, and that they are usually the ones who think Egyptian dance is all flitting about in a cloud of glitter and chiffon. It was my intuition that actually most of these "badass" dancers wouldn't last a second if they had to actually _be_ a dancer in Egypt, making it on their own from scratch. It's apparently not for the faint of heart, unless you have the right connections to entirely bypass those gigs. It seems like having the right connections or a sponsor would be absolutley crucial to quality of life.

There were some moments which were kind of funny: the montage dancers checking wristwatch during show; the audience girl (apparently a global archetype) who gets up onstage to upstage the entertainer, and so forth.

I personally also felt a thrill when one of the dancers apparently got fed up with someone's shenanigans and kicked them. The scenes of makeup application alone were worth the price of admission.

Thanks for posting about this--I hope the film gets some distribution!

hi badriya! did you see it when the festival came through boston? what were your thoughts??

I'd so like to see this! I wonder whether it'll be generally distributed.

Lotus,
This sounds fascinating! Thanks for posting. I wonder if this will turn up at any of the indie theaters in my city? I'm going to keep my eye out. It sucks sometimes living in the flyover part of the country...

This reminds of the book "A Trade Like Any Other", which explores how tough the working conditions can be in Egypt, probably other Mid-East countries as well. We Americans are very fortunate.

yes, I like that book very much.

Originally Posted by lotus

hi badriya! did you see it when the festival came through boston? what were your thoughts??

Unfortunately I did not. My thoughts are that I need more hours in the day and more days in the week and more weeks in the month and more months in the year so that I can do things like go to film festivals