Learning to talk

"I tell you this in all sincerity, having informed you already that what motivated me to dance in the first place was the need to earn my bread, due to family circumstances. I tell you that dancing is not arousal, it is neither exhibitionism nor a feast of the flesh. Dancing, in short, is not sex -- that is very important. All it is -- is that the dancing that I know and feel for, the body language that I've come to speak best, has an element of femininity to it. But when you dance -- so long as you're practicing an art form, and dancing is undoubtedly an art form -- that doesn't mean that you have in any way compromised your personal dignity. So you practice your art, femininity and all. But it is not a yalla-ya-abliti (come-along-darling), one-two-three, shake-your-hip affair. You really need to understand rhythm to do it, how to make your body reflect the music. An artist, any artist deserves respect. And dancing is an art like any other."
Dead serious, au fait with her subject, self-expository: Lucy (In'am Mohamed Abdel-Wahab) thus begins an intermittent exhortation on raqs sharqi (Oriental dance), the one grassroots art form that has contrived to remain on the frontiers of respectable society, seldom traversing them unaided. It stems from the Ottoman tradition of the awalim (singular alma), now long extinct but frequently and fondly remembered. The word alma means literally "a woman of knowledge," but in the spoken Arabic of Egypt it designates the female profession of singing and dancing in popular celebrations like weddings and circumcisions and, since the beginning of the 20th century, increasingly in Western-style casinos -- later christened "nightclubs" -- as stylised if not fully choreographed performance. The awalim were a social category apart: respected enough, but regarded in most circles as a little more than risqué. And yet not only belly dancing but female tarab (enchantment induced by classic singing) emerged from their trade.
Through the likes of Tahiya Carioca and Samia Gamal, the latter-day ra'aasa (belly dancer) began to double as an actress, eventually acquiring the impermeability of stardom. However much raqs sharqi has continued to be denigrated in "moral" contexts, individual dancers -- the famous ones, at least -- are no longer more reproachable than actresses or singers. Lucy became a household name through acting, not dancing. But her exhortation eloquently sums up the belly dancer's predicament from the standpoint of a conscious and informed insider. Here is the definitive end-of-the-millennium alma's statement of purpose -- in its latest draft.
Is she an actress or a dancer? "Allow me to tell you something: this question is wrong. But you have the right to ask it and I have the right to correct it too." Her voice mellows, tense disagreement giving way to righteous self-justification. "There is something inside of me that tells me that art is a totality that cannot be divided [not a shade of irony here]; this means: the artist, the actor particularly, must be competent at singing -- not tarab, that is a different thing altogether -- but singing, rhythm, movement... and dancing, if it is required of him. Not just the performing arts, no: a sculptor, a painter, a swimmer -- sports, football: these too are forms of art -- all these people do essentially the same thing. And it cannot be divided, what they do. As for what I like about what I do," she switches to confessional mode, impersonal as ever. "Dancing is my firstborn. It is what I started with, and I started with one of its most refined forms, ballet. Whether I like it or not, dancing has to come first. Then comes acting, then singing. I love all three, I love myself in all three and alhamdulillah I realise myself in all three."
Dancing is essential to her career in a different sense, too: "It gives me the courage to stand before a piece of iron that always tells the truth." The camera may seem inane, unresponsive as a piece of iron. But it captures a photographic likeness that leaves no room for lies. The camera, Lucy claims, transfers exactly what is there straight to the viewer, telling him whether or not the artist he is seeing is sincere. "So you stumble on an artist who's been acting for 30 years and it's obvious he's lying, he doesn't trust himself, he doesn't believe in his role. Then you come across another artist whose mere appearance on the screen makes the audience says yes, identifying instantly." Dancing teaches you to be comfortable with yourself, to trust what you are about to say. And knowing what the camera is capable of, having danced, you are not fazed by it. "If the tear doesn't drop of its own accord, I do not force it out of my eye. I do no such thing as 'call to mind' a funny situation in order to laugh or a tragic one in order to weep. The only situation that I call to mind is the one that I'm acting now, as I act it, and if I don't feel something I won't show it. If the dialogue is not something I might actually say, I won't say it."
So be it: the Thespian flutter took root just as early as the sense of rhythm, anyhow. And Lucy launched her film career at the age of 14 (see Filmography). Some seven years ago, a five-part soap opera written by Osama Anwar Okasha, Layali Al-Hilmiya (Hilmiya Nights), took Egyptian households by storm. On the initiative of actor Yehia El-Fakharani ("I am from his school, by the way"), Lucy was cast in the role of a young alma from Alexandria. As belly dancer and film actress, she already had some claim to fame. Her Layali Al-Hilmiya performance upgraded her profile so significantly that she was hailed as one of Egypt's best younger actresses almost overnight. Since then she has participated in other TV top-runners (Okasha's Arabesque and Zizinia among them), taken on leading roles in the cinema (she received the Alexandria film festival's best actress award for Romantika in 1996), resumed her dancing career, taught belly dancing in the United States, and presided over National Geographic and Canal Plus documentaries. "I was never selfish or self-obsessive, but as an artist I have boundless ambition. I aspire to international recognition, for example, to an international status both for myself and for Egyptian film at large."
Up until the age of 12, let us remember, she had practiced only classic ballet, but she remembers little of the ballet institute she attended. "Happy childhood" notwithstanding, her formal education came to an end after the second year of prep school. "I had a father and a mother," she abstracts her biography, "God rest their souls." A cigarette hovers around her mouth while she fiddles with the lighter. I offer my own lighter as soon as the cigarette settles in her mouth and she leans slightly forward and takes a drag before she continues, slowly, in a cordial, I'm-the-same-as-everybody-else tone. "My father was an oyma (woodwork) master, my mother an artist herself. And due to extraneous circumstances," which she does not care to relate, "I took the path of baladi (popular) weddings and raqs sharqi. I went to sit the i'dadiya exam," which concludes the three-year course of prep school, "and I fell asleep in the exam room. I had arrived straight from a wedding in Qanater or somewhere far away and I was tired." Hardly any remorse can be detected in her voice. "Later I found out that, besides education, there is something called culture. And that the latter makes up for any loss that takes place in the former."
One cultures oneself -- and unlike much of what Lucy says, this is something that many, many female performance artists have said before -- by seeking out mentors, by utilising the company of prominent minds, by (innocently?) going up in the world. "I danced at a couple of houses -- you could say these people were well-to-do, from well known families and such. This doesn't make a difference to me now because alhamdulillah I am self-made and whatever I have is the fruit of my effort, of my own personal toil. So I was very happy with my life as a child making my own living, acting, dancing, educating myself and happy. I didn't take the exam because I was drawn to the limelight. I loved the whole atmosphere and I yearned for it: the big lights, the cameras, the smell of the performance space. After that, while they were preparing the first part of Layali Al-Hilmiya, Dr Yehia El-Fakharani noticed me..." Here too she seems to abide by the standard conventions of the performance artist's rise-to-fame reminiscence.
Lucy's acknowledgements come with a disclaimer: they are not comprehensive; and the indispensable help provided by people she does not mention has not gone unnoticed. Apropos of the role models of her youth: "I didn't really have role models, but I learned from people. Just watching them perform. Magda is one example. Her acting opened up an opportunity for me, not to be like her, but to do the same thing. I will never forget her encouragement, the way she would find roles for me despite my too-young status." What about helpers she did not know personally? Na'ima Akif, she starts, remembering as she goes along, Faten Hamama, Soad Hosni, Shadia, Samira Ahmed... Lucy gestures as if to indicate that the list goes on. "Each of these people was very distinct, her own person. But they all inspired me." El-Fakharani "made me realise that the better the actor opposite me, the better, not the worse, I am." Filmmaker Dawoud Abdel-Sayed "taught me how to read a film as scenario, not simply dialogue," while Okasha helped develop "my ability to match the way I utter the words with what they imply on paper." Of her helpers from outside al-wasat al-fanni (the artistic milieu), on the other hand, Lucy names her husband, businessman Sultan El-Kashef ("who encouraged me and helped me make decisions") and her five-year-old son, Fathi ("who taught me patience").
"In my own style of dancing, I always stress dignity." Petite, instantly eye-catching despite her unassuming demeanour, marvelously unpretentious: Lucy resumes her exhortation. "I love the Flamenco dancers because they are so grand, their heads raised, tilted proudly to one side, their movements vigorous, beautiful, controlled."
***
She comes across as a character in a Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel, Lucy. Her earthiness is so featherweight it seems to hover at the edge of heaven. Her eloquence masks an act of affirmation so mythically proportioned, so larger-than-life, that the mere thought of contemplating it sends shudders down the spine. There is the same volatility about her, the same improbable yet warmly convincing edge. She can be spontaneous but never nonchalant. And the shift from cool indifference to impassioned responsiveness -- persuasively gradual -- is not very long in the happening. When she warms to a theme, it is as if she is pointing to a buried emotional mine she will never proceed to excavate. A convincingly melodramatic sincerity informs her every move. Here, one surmises, lies one explanation for her unique brand of self-confidence: rather than overtly attempt to impress, trust in your impressive qualities and act normal. Lucy knows by now how well this recipe works, and she serves it up with well deserved impunity: "I don't hate, I don't hold a grudge, even when somebody has hurt me I forget. When I started out I had innocence and purity of mind, and I've kept them both. I was a child, a child that knows how to talk. And I feel I am still just that. A child that knows how to talk."
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