Eat, sleep, breathe...dance!: Damanhur festival and egyptian heroes

Damanhur - what and why
The 1st. Damanhur Inernational Festival of Folk Art was intended to introduce egyptian dance and music
heritage to the foreign embassies to develope international cooperation of folk arts. Egypt was represented by 6 different folk companies, Cairo Opera with "Forsan Al Shark", the famous Balloon Theatre companies Reda Troupe and Kaomeya. Also a huge tanoura (twirling derwishes) company and 2 more folk groups from Upper Egypt. This year the foreign quests were Greece, Indonesia and Turkey. We only got to see the greek group, because we were opening the festival and they were straight after us. Some lovely circle dances to traditional music followed by the women's improvisational chiftetelly bellydance! That got the egytian audience really gigelling and laughing, approvingly:)

Opening the festival

Our performance was a nice mix of our previous perfomances. It started with a shamadan bellydance solo, followed by a new girls bellydance to a mizmar taqseem. Then the overture of Naasa with the tanoura final. Then the Bahia characters with 3 dances from Bahia, followed by the bellydance solo from Naasa and ending with a modern saidi final with the whole company. It had technique, drama, great image and costumes and a story! During the performance we received applause after each single dance and also in the middle. The audience was warm, welcoming and generous!
Here is an overview of our performance:

To and from


Choreographer Karima and manager Walid in the bus

We were accommodated in our usual Alexandrian hotel King Royal and every day drove out to Damanhur, 1 hour from Alex. That was a bit annoying, because our opera bus is not very comortable, dancer actually compained from sore back and bad blood circulation in feet because of the narrow seats and design. We had two different remarkable happenings while on the road. What happened and how it was it handeled, the egyptian way, I will tell You;)

Egyptian helping egyptian
We were heading back from Damanhur to Alex after our prova general (the last main rehearal before performance). It was already dark, the bus was driving with moderate speed. Suddenly I hear one of the guys screaming to the driver to pull over and open the doors. There was a accident on the road side and someone standing on the road stopping the cars and asking for help. Now listen to this - ALL the men got out from the bus running towards the accident place. The company leader Karima actually forbid the driver to stop and kept yelling "Malaks dawa" (Its not our problem) but noone listened and the people poured out from the bus. Only the driver and the girls remained inside, its not proper for women to walk the highway let alone go and get involved in a rescue operation. Later we learnt what had happened. A minibus with travelling egyptians had collided with a car, the minibus rolled down a slope and all the people inside were stuck and injured. Our guys ran down the slope, broke the doors of the bus and started to get the victoms out. Some took the sand and brushed it onto the oil still covering the main road, slippery and dangerous for the fast traffic continuing on the highway. When the guys returned after half an hour, they were sweaty, dusty and bloody.
Here is my feeling towards this situation. The guys left the bus without doubth or consideration for their own safety, they wanted to help no matter what. They came back tired and dirty but had saved lives of fellow-egyptians. The girls inside the bus were nervous and worried. Nervous because we didnt know what had happened and worried because it was OUR team out there. I definately understand the choreographers's attitude towards it, sure she doesnt want her team to leave the bus and jump into an accident without knowing whats happening, will there be fire or explosion or whatever. With our grand festival opening the next day she wants everyone to reach the hotel safe and sound, to eat and sleep and focus for the big day. But egyptians are not like that. They love action, love to help and love to come out as the heroes!

A boy is still a boy
One of our dancers was smoking outside the bus just waiting the bus to take off. Suddenly we hear guys shouting towards him to pay attencion of the thief! A small, maybe 10-year old boy was reaching for his wallet in his pocket. The guy happenend to be the especially hot-blooded and impulsive egyptian man. He grabbed the little boy and started screaming at him, took a rock from street and threatened the little one. Sure, he would have never hit him, but egyptians usually use intimidation to educate the small ones, to make them scared so they learn from it. Another dancer quickly got out from the bus and separated the big and small egyptian;) This guy also told the big guy to get onto the bus and gave the small thief two pounds and told him to go and buy a sandwitch. The boy smiled and seamed to calm down, he was obviously scared to his guts and just hungry and to see someone protect him and give him lunch money meant a world to him. This situation for me represents two beautiful things I love about Egypt. One is what they call "ibn el balad", an egyptian helping an egyptian he has never met before, just because they are the sons of the same county! Secondly, the young street egyptian thieves we hear about are just small boys, hungry enough to go and try grab a wallet and brave enough to face a strong egyptian man, bigger than him. But he just needs a pound or two and a friendly face to give it to him...egyptian or foreign! I sometimes get so annoyed by the beggers on the streets coming up to me for money just because im foreign. But seeing the generosity of egyptians around me (that also is connected to the principles of islam) truly taking care of them melts my heart. A little boy is just a little boy.

Kaidi on the moon in Alexandria

How truly important music is to egyptians
So again, we are in the bus driving to Alex from Damanhur and the driver turns on the radio channel of the egyptian oldies - best of Om Kalthou, Abdel Halim Hafes, Mohamed Abdel Wahab and Feiruz. One after another they start to sing along "Gana el Hawa", the original. Finally the whole buss is singing, the driver, the costume and hair crew, the manager and the choreographer, all the dancers. A girl gets up and starts to dance, he is soon joined by a guy and soon I feel we have reached the state of tarab. Without a specific audience, actually we are the audience, we sing and we dance, perfrom and appreciate at the same time. The whole bus in the same high mood from the great song!...only in Egypt;)

Below more photos from our perfromance!