Amal Choucri Catta speaks with Abdel-Moneim Kamel, the head of Cairo Opera Ballet Company and now the new chairman of Cairo Opera House Abdel-Moneim Kamel, the head of Cairo Opera Ballet Company, has been artistic counsellor to the Chairman of the National Cultural Centre while at the same time artistic director of the music, opera and ballet sectors at Cairo's Opera House, a combination of posts that has provided him with a unique vantage point from which to observe behind the scenes machinations at the centre and its affiliated theatres and concert halls. It was almost inevitable, then, that his name should emerge as the front-runner for the post of chairman following the departure of Samir Farag, who was last month named governor of Luxor. Abdel-Moneim Kamel, who received his PhD in ballet from Moscow, was born in Cairo and began his career as principal dancer at the age of 18. Trained by Russian experts, his repertoire included Albert in Giselle, Don Basil in Don Quixote, the prince in Sheherazade, Siegfried in Swan Lake, Hamlet , and the prince in The Fountain of Bakhchisaray. He has been a guest dancer at the Moscow's Bolshoi Theatre, at the New Siberia Theatre, the Tokyo Theatre and the National Theatre of Maracaibo. In 1980 he was engaged as soloist for two years at La Scala in Milan where he met his wife, Erminia, prima ballerina at the theatre. They were married in 1982 and came to Egypt that same year. Kamel had ambitious plans for the Cairo Ballet Company which, at the time, was going through a crisis. Established in 1966, the company was initially affiliated to the Higher Ballet Institute and the students and dancers were coached, at the time, by Soviet experts. Their first production was The Fountain of Bakhchisaray, with Egypt's prima ballerina Magda Saleh dancing alongside Abdel- Moneim Kamel. When, in 1971, the Russian trainers had to leave Kamel was appointed artistic director of the company, which eventually moved to the Cairo Opera House in 1989. The move provided the boost the company needed. Kamel began choreographing and directing contemporary ballets, including Al-Nil, Carmen Suite and Osiris, and produced his own versions of Don Quixote, Swan Lake, Nutcracker, Giselle, Romeo and Juliet, and others. Following his appointment as artistic director for the music, opera and ballet sectors, Kamel directed Aida at the Pyramids in 1998, 1999 and 2002, and produced Al-Leila Al-Kabira in 2001. In recent years Cairo Opera Ballet Company has toured successfully in France, Germany, Japan, Korea, Mexico and Tunisia, the US, China, Canada and as well as in Arab countries. Among their more recent productions, Zorba, choreographed by Lorca Massine, has met with great acclaim abroad. Today Cairo Opera Ballet Company is firmly established as one of the National Cultural Centre's most popular ensembles. Abdel-Moneim Kamel can, then, look back with not a little pride at his achievements, and at the solid foundations he has laid on which to build. But what is he planning? "I am depending," he says, "on Russian ballet dancers working with Egyptian dancers to help the latter improve their performance and to gain more experience from their Russian trainers. I have always taken the classical repertoire into consideration, not forgetting that when the Cairo Ballet Institute was founded it was established by Russians and the studies were conducted along Russian lines. I have always tried to give local dancers every chance to become high-standard performers. I was privileged to be allowed a number of Russian trainers by Cairo Opera House, and this allowed us to have a school within the ballet company." The advantage of this, Kamel maintains, is that youngsters from the Ballet Institute could be trained to take part in performances. "Helping them in this way allows them to get a feel for the stage while taking on small, secondary roles." Indeed, Kamel thinks of the Nutcracker as "a factory for the formation of young dancers". "They face the public aged 10 or 11, in small roles, taking on more important roles the following year. After having danced three to five years in the Nutcracker the performer can be featured in more important, more demanding roles." "Cairo Ballet's Nutcracker," Kamel points out, "was premiered in 1993 since when a number of young dancers have graduated into remarkable performers, taking on title roles." "I see the Nutcracker as an educational, traditional ballet: the 50 young boys and girls forming the group of children -- the mice and the different dances of the first act and the finale -- are, 10 years later, in their late teens and early 20s, at which point they are in a position to become members of the corps de ballet or else soloists, depending on their talent and ability." Kamel clearly enjoys watching the progress of the dancers under his charge. "I love their work, their art, their dancing career," he says, "and appreciate the audience's applause. You need to remember that for dancers, as it is for all performers, being appreciated by an audience feeds the soul. Applause is the performers' raison d'être, and it gives the performer the strength to continue." "You see," elaborates Kamel, "the dancer's job is a bit monotonous. Like singers, or other musicians, the advance is slow. You spend hours, and often days, repeating the same movement, the same gesture hundreds of times in order to improve a performance. Dancers are like sportsmen -- you have to train for hour after hour after hour, day in, day out, to gain a single second's advantage over competitors. And this race against time can go on for years." "Ballet does not depend only art and technique, it also involves physical fitness. To be a successful dancer you must begin by loving the dance because without that love you will never be able to muster the dedication necessary." Given the variety of Cairo Opera Ballet's current repertoire one wonders how items are selected? What criteria are used? Kamel explains that he tries to choose "ballets presenting subjects and music easily appreciated by Egyptian audiences, items such as Carmina Burana, Prince Igor, Lorekiana and Bolero ". "Music," he argues, "plays an important part in ballet. Sometimes audiences like the dance simply because they like the tune." Under Kamel Cairo Ballet Company has undertaken several successful tours abroad. The logistics of touring are daunting, and so, to begin with, overseas performance involved small groups. But then things grew in scale. "It all started in China," Kamel reflects. "You see, a Chinese delegation had seen our Corsaire at the Main Hall without letting us know anything about their presence in the audience. A week later I was informed they had chosen the ballet to represent the Middle East at the Shanghai Festival in 2000. There were only four companies chosen -- Maurice Béjart, the Bolshoi, Cairo Opera Ballet and a Swiss ballet company. We performed Corsaire twice, in an immense theatre seating 20,000 spectators. It was a huge success for the company. We then went on tour to the Prague Opera House where we presented Malgré tout and a variety of Oriental inspired dances before leaving for the US where we had the privilege to perform in the Main Hall of Washington's Kennedy Centre." "Last year we were invited to dance at the Istanbul opera house. After that we gave three performances in Montreal, Canada, followed by Russia, where we presented Zorba, with 50 dancers. One of our latest performances abroad was in Sankt Poelten, Austria, where we likewise presented Zorba. It was a fabulous success". And what of future plans? "Until now we have produced one new ballet every season. We started with Don Quixote in 1991, and followed on with Swan Lake the next year. In 1993 we had the Nutcracker, followed by Giselle and every year another production. At present the company has nine long ballets and seven one-act ballets and half a dozen different dances choreographed for operas like Aida and Anas Al-Wugoud in the repertoire. Now we are planning to present more than one ballet each time and to concentrate on new production. I must say the company is working very hard: when we started over 50 per cent of the dancers were foreign. Now we have 11 foreign ballerinas and only three foreign male dancers. Time and hard work changed the situation. But there still is quite a lot to be done on the road to fame and glory."
