Who is the real champion here? Is it Qassem Amin, or is it the Egyptian woman? Rania Khallaf attends Walid Aouni's latest dance performance At first glance you might think you are watching an old black and white film from the 1960s, or so the opening sequence would suggest. For near on the next 25 minutes the changes come very slowly, conveying images from the past and moving on to symbols from our present day. Ladies and gentlemen, you are watching the latest in modern dance choreographed by the talented Lebanese dancer Walid Aouni. Aouni's 50-minute dance performance Women of Qassem Amin was presented over the past two weeks in both Cairo and Alexandria. The significance of the dance inspired by Qassem Amin stems not only from the fact that, as he showed in his two books Woman's Liberation and The New Woman, he was a significant defender of women's rights. In fact, as Aouni says, the name of Amin is associated with the beginning of a new era that began at the end of the 19th century. This was a period that witnessed a cultural upheaval and was marked by important pioneering figures such as Refaa El-Tahtawi, Gamaleddin El-Afghani, El-Kawakbi, and Sheikh Mohamed Abdu and his student Qassem Amin. Those pioneers created what we could call a conflict of ideology, a shift to more dialectic principles; the liberation of women was one of their targeted issues. "What is left of this ideology was not a mere documentation of a historical period, or an incomplete archive, but rather a group of symbols, shapes and imaginations." A place "where there is no crisis anymore, nor an ideology, nor even a truth," Aouni heralds in the show's introductory programme. These scattered symbols, he says, resemble the microscopic cells that unite, reproduce and finally die. The performance marks the 102nd anniversary of Amin's death. "Personally, I consider Amin an icon, a significant social reformer whose contribution to the movement of modern Egyptian society is no less than that of El-Tahtawi or El-Afghani," Aouni told Al-Ahram Weekly. This show comes as a part of a series of dances in Aouni's repertoire that, in a way, document a life of a pioneering artist or thinker. They raise questions about his or her historical works. These performances include items about novelist Naguib Mahfouz in 1996; artists Shadi Abdel-Salam in 1992, Tahya Halim in 1997; and Mahmoud Mokhtar in 2001. As with those shows, Women of Qassem Amin has widened the scope of Aouni's audiences. It has taken him partly away from the circle of the elite to a wider public audience. However, the theatre was half empty. It's a great pity that theatre goers generally are on the decrease. Although highly thematic and full of symbols, this performance could be seen as a documentary, something a little unusual, even taking into consideration that modern dance today is often based on the accumulation of symbols and representations. The title, Women of Qassem Amin, suggests the clear and rather direct concept of the show: women's emancipation. "You are right," Aouni told the Weekly in his soft voice. "I have suffered a lot from the ambiguity of symbols that existed in my prior performances. Audiences used to complain about this. So sometimes I would give certain keys to clarify hidden meanings," he added, clearly struggling to put his thoughts in order. "The symbols might be direct and clear, but it is how you put them in a way to yield more meanings and signs," he explained. Aouni founded the Egyptian Modern Dance Theatre Company (EMDTC) in 1993, the first and most professional of its kind in the Middle East. It was intended that the company, which is affiliated to the Cairo Opera House, would bring more modern dance to Cairo and allow the city to share in the growing world interest in the art form. Six years later the Ministry of Culture decided to support Aouni's initiative by establishing the Cairo International Festival, the first modern dance festival in the region. The stage lighting was par excellence and helped add a new dimension to the performance: the black and white spotlights haphazardly appear on stage in the first half, to be replaced by gaily coloured lights in the second. During the show, Aouni proposes questions that do not necessarily have answers. What is the position of women today? Do men really respect and support women, especially those who have developed their own careers? Where do we stand now compared with the status of women in the developed world? In the first half, both women and men appear in black gowns. The women look gloomy in the black niqab. Now the women switch gowns with the men. In another scene, female dancers move slowly in groups, as if they are lost cattle looking for the rest of the herd. Then, as scene follows scene, the women remove their transparent head coverings and, bare-headed, hurl abuse into the faces of the men. A female dancer wearing a white dress with a long-train moves with abandon, a paper fan in one hand and combing her hair with the other. More female dancers, still in their black gowns, lag behind her in an attitude of helplessness. She clearly uses the modern, white European woman as a model. The show pays tribute to several pioneering women who came before and after Amin, such as Hoda Shaarawi, Safiya Zaghloul, May Zeada and Princess Nazli. Their names appear on a background screen every now and then during the evening. For me this detracted from the visual continuity. Unexpectedly Aouni agrees, but he pleads that the new generation is ignorant of the story of such pioneering women. "When you work on the life of a historical figure, the show must be supported with some data," he says. "Many Egyptians are ignorant of the fact that Amin was a keen guest in the literary salons arranged by the famous female Lebanese intellectual May Zeada." One of the show's most fantastic scenes is the one in which women, dancing in silhouette in white gowns against a background of male dancers, stand, twist or move deliberately slowly in numerous white frames. Women now take control on the stage, as well as in life. Rather obviously, female dancers fill the leading roles. They dance elegantly and with high euphoric physicality; it is an advanced shift compared with Aouni's prior performances. "This is because of the rigorous effort during rehearsal and training made by each and every female dancer in order to show her personality, her inner feelings, which should show differently in her body's movements," Aouni told the Weekly. The last third of the show is unexpectedly cheerful. The female dancers now wear brightly coloured gowns in a clear indication of women's acquisition of their social rights. One might wonder if women today are really happy. Are we not in need of another upheaval? Or, let's say another reformer, a clone of Qassem Amin?
