I grew up always surrounded by dancers, boys and girls. Either in dance position, lift or pose, touching one another is the ultimate basic. Body is nothing to be ashamed of, physical touch is innocent and necessary. Especially in modern dance and contact improvisation, but also any kind of couple dance.
Sometimes couple dance is so close, so physical and intimate that my up is down and my down is up, I have to grab someone else's something and it's completely normal, there is no hierarchy in body parts, they all the same tool of dance.
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| A scene from my bachelor degree dance performance inspired by Salvador Dali and Sigmund Freud. A man pleasuring a woman. |
Touch between a woman and a man has a completely different meaning in the islamic (dance) world. Let's go back to the roots of this. In the Koran it's actually written that a woman't body is only for her family to see and touch. This means, only her brother, father or husband. This is reflected in the public space. A stranger man can never touch a woman in public, if he should, it's considered disrespectful and is (almost) never innocent because it's such a huge "no-no". So how do dancers here dance with such strong body rules you might wonder? They also dance with their own rules...
Leave some space
We do dance and touch in Egypt but there is an important "but". To put it short, male dancers here have to be extremely careful where they put their hands and how they lift girls, how they throw their partners and how they catch them. Girl here have to be extremely careful how they carry their body when dancing. Dancers are all aware of that. Imagine this dance move: a buy has to approach a girl from behind and catch her as if hugging him. We always leave about 2 cm between us. This is the respectful space that is needed for appropriate dancing. So a grip is never really a grip. It's adapted to the cultural specifics.
Sometimes we also have to change a super cool lift because a girl's bottom is literally in the guy's face. This would be completely normal thing to happen in modern dance, but in the Egyptian modern dance it is pushing the limits too far. Even if our choreographer would decide to use the lift, our audience might feel disrespected and dancers would feel very, very uncomfortable.
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| A scene from my work in Cairo Opera stage |
I will leave you with a personal story.
When I first joined my contemporary dance company in Cairo Opera House I was not compleatly aware of this cultural difference and I thought dance is same everywhere.
I was coupled up with a guy and we had to do a difficult ballet jump. I basically run to the guy and as I reach him he throws me into the air into a spiral above his head and I land in a graceful pose between his arms without touching the floor. I was concentrating so hard on the lift and it happened so fast I had no idea where his arms were. I was then approached by a girl who told me he was catching me very inappropriately on my bust. Normally this can happen when dancers are just practicing, but here in Egypt this just doesn't accidentally happen (at least 9 times out of 10 it doesn't). This guy was actually testing me if I know and mind what he was doing. An Egyptian girl would have in an aggressive loud voice faced him and told him it's not ok and he can not do that again. At the time I had no idea and the guy obviously was taking advantage of it and checking if I'm an easygoing girl that he can mess round with.
Not all male dancers are like that of course, but this particular guy was a womanizer and I learnt an important lesson for the years to come. Accidental touching like that can happen by mistake and it's usually the guy's obligation to apologize to the girl.
So none of the dancers here can completely relax and let go as they dance, there is always the voice at the back of our heads telling us to be careful and precise. We dance and touch but try not to touch too much in the same time.
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