THE Egyptian Modern Dance Festival, due to start in Cairo on Wednesday, will hounour Kariman Harak, a veteran music critic. Writing specifically on classical music, opera, ballet and modern dance for more than 25 years, Harak is crited with laying the bases for journalistic criticism of these arts in highly scientific, but at the same time simple, language. She writes regularly in The Egyptian Gazette. She graduated from the faculty of Arts, Cairo University (Arabic Studies Department), and got a diploma from High Institute of Artistic Criticism, the Academy of Arts. Having a large number of studies and scientific research on classical music, opera, ballet, and modern dance to her name, Harak also participated in several scientific conferences with scientific papers about these arts and most of her contributions were published in scientific periodicals. She is currently the deputy editorin- chief of El Messa Arabic language newspaper, and has been writing a weekly page on art since 1989, where she critically reviews and analytically evaluates the currents in the world of opera, modern dance, and classical music in Egypt. She has been covering activities of Egyptian Modern Dance Theatre Company from its inception until now. Her constructively critical reviews were of great importance in supporting the company and were indispensably profitable for refininng the message of this art in Egypt in both artistic and public circles alike. She also covered some of tours of Egyptian Modern Dance Theatre Company. Kariman has several books in print, in which she studied and documented the history of the artistic ballet, classsical music, and opera companies in Egypt. Among these books is "Modern Art", in which she devotes a complete chapter to the Egyptian Modern Dance Theatre Company with its annual international festival, and the role this festival plays in promoting the modern dance theatre in Egypt.
