Thread: Golden age choreographies?

Before Mahmoud Reda, most of the dances in egytian cinema don't seem too concerned about choreography. In the first video, every dancer seems to do a different thing... The same happens in the second video. In Taheya's video, the entrance looks choreographed, but the rest doesn't look so, does it?
I don't mean choreography doesn't exist, but dancers don't seem to be very worried about it, do they?
Thanks for your comments,
Ana

all of the teachers i study with perform improv, but they dance allot they also do choreography's if the have a group peice so it looks good and people are going the same thing. Reda did stage shows so there has to be chorography so people look similar and there is organization. but the dancers that left the troupe i think do allot of improv. A good improvist already pulls from there head and body things that work with the music. it is not ramdon. it is usually not a movement they have ever done before. i think for the movies there is some choreo of what the director had invisioned but there is the dancers vision as well. it looks improv to me but also a sign of a good choreography is that it does not look like one

I suspect some of it is just a different mind set. As a general statement, Middle Easterners seem less fixated on concepts like punctuality and perfection than Westerners are. They don't insist their music be precisely reproducible each time it's played, so it's not surprising they don't expect the dancing to be that way, either. And there may be an element that their movies were shot on a tighter budget than Hollywood's, so perhaps they didn't have the luxury of doing take after take until everybody did their part just right.

Regarding the last clip...this is very hard to replicate. The relaxed looseness of her dance. I have been trying, but God, that easy grace is hard to do. There is so little percussion to her movement. You just find yourself wanting to bang that drum.

In the first two clips there is quite a difference in the skill level between the back up dancers and the soloist, isn't there? Maybe you are supposed to be watching the solo, so the back up line isn't considered that important.

A friend of mine took an intensive dancer training course with Hossam Ramzy and Serena. The course consisted mainly of studying clips of the Golden Era dancers and then dancing in the style of each one. She said that even though they appear not to be doing very much in those clips (compared to dancing now), when you break it down and try to mimic it, it's not easy at all.

I use a mix of structure and improv in my dancing, perhaps that is what the soloists in these clips are doing, too, keeping in mind that they have to be in a certain place on the stage at a certain time for the camera.

Samia Gamal had very complicated choreos for her films - but hers were big productions with Farid al Atrash. They could afford rehearsals.

In my experience Reda introduced choreography to Middle Eastern dance for folkloric troups on stage in the 1960s. Nagwa Fouad introduced choreography to club belly dance because she had issues with being on beat... Mona Said hired Raqia Hassan in the 1970s to give her that "polished edge" and modern belly dance 'performance art' was born.

I hate choreography for belly dancers. Folkloric troups I understand. Otherwise its bumper cars on stage.

We're all entitled to our opinions and pet peeves....

Belly Dance - solo, improvised ... etc current use of troupe and choreography is a recent overlay. I think back to my jazz days - the troupe director was always aiming for a fresh, improvised performance within a structure. The dancers always wanted to get it "right" - which was actually wrong.

I believe the backup dancers were sometimes referred to as the "director's nieces" - they are not great - or even good dancers.

Originally Posted by Tourbeau

I suspect some of it is just a different mind set. As a general statement, Middle Easterners seem less fixated on concepts like punctuality and perfection than Westerners are. They don't insist their music be precisely reproducible each time it's played, so it's not surprising they don't expect the dancing to be that way, either.

I must agree with this. I have close to a hundred of these old black and white films, if not more.. and almost all of them name the choreographer in the credits at the beggining of the film. These group dances were definitely choreographed. Names that come up time and time again in the credits of these golden era films are Isaac Dickson and Khristo Kladaax...two choreographers who used to work at Badia Masabni's club training her dancers. Isaac Dickson was Samia Gamal's personal dance trainer and in fact he was the one who taught her to dance after Badia Masabni told her quite bluntly that she could not dance worth beans and stuck her in with the background dancers. These two men choreographed a great number of the dances in golden era films.

Occasionally Mahmoud Reda's name shows up as the choreographer on some of these old films, as well as his brother Ali Reda.

Originally Posted by kashmir

I believe the backup dancers were sometimes referred to as the "director's nieces" - they are not great - or even good dancers.

LOL! I always personally thought of them as the director's girlfriends!

If you get the chance, talk to Eman Zaki about her mother's experience in the movies. She was in Afrita Hanem.

I love watching these old clips! These dancers just dance and you really get into the spirit as well as the joy of their dancing. I believe today that if they were critiqued, their technique would be quite ripped apart, but it's amazing how they thought more about dancing and less as to "correctness." Bravo!

Well, films aside... I was of course always an improv solo dancer. But for I time I did work with an Egyptian group of dancers in Detroit. They had trained under Reda before they migrated to the US. For the folkloric choreography, I had to do the choreography. But we had many routines that featured a group and a solo dancer. I had to learn the guys choreography so I knew what they did when, but, my part was totally improvised, I just had to be in keeping with the story line.

Originally Posted by norma

Well, films aside... I was of course always an improv solo dancer. But for I time I did work with an Egyptian group of dancers in Detroit. They had trained under Reda before they migrated to the US. For the folkloric choreography, I had to do the choreography. But we had many routines that featured a group and a solo dancer. I had to learn the guys choreography so I knew what they did when, but, my part was totally improvised, I just had to be in keeping with the story line.

I had that same experience here with an Egyptian folklore troupe.

What about these girls on the back? They don't seem to be very concentrated in the choreography, do they?