By David Blake Many things whirl: butterflies, ballerinas, bats and insects, the Holy Ghost Himself. The entire planet whirls, helpless, through a cloud of detritus produced by earth's best friend, man himself. But man does not whirl much. Far and wide are known the Whirling Dervishes of Cairo, but dervishes began whirling first in Turkey, in Konya, the inspiration for whom was Jalal El-Din Rumi. It is a labyrinthine mystical experience which requires also labyrinthine preparations of such classic formulae as to make the music of Bach seem over-simplified. But these movers, or dancers, have been whirling since Genghis Khan lived and died his life of magnificent plunder. Their rituals are founded on profound love and respect. Better not ask why, just look and say yes because the event we as spectators were given at the Opera House bears no resemblance to the dervish show to be seen in Cairo at the Ghoury Palace. That latter performance has the bright light and flash of cabaret-tourism, not the revelation of the cosmic dance harmony which we saw. The Cairo dervish is a solo performer doing elaborate turns for a solid half hour without interruption, a sado-machismo turn which is unpleasant, suggesting servitude and inebriation. A feeling of exhaustion pervades it. Why does he not die at the end or at least in a fit of ataxia fall in an inert heap? Of course he does not. All smiles, he moves off to appear in another show. But there were no smiles in this Turkish Mevlevi group whose visit here is coeval with the restoration of the Mevlevi samaakhana near the mosque of Sultan Hassan, the work of professor Giuseppe Fanfoni and the Italian-Egyptian Cultural Centre for Restoration. To begin, there is the problem of colour. As the performance begins it is better to have conceptual understanding of the vast possibilities of black. When this dance sequence was formed so long ago, the European Renaissance was in its early years, and black as a painting medium probably began in Sicily. It was Antonello da Massina who bequeathed black to the Dutch from whom it passed eventually to the High Renaissance of Venetian art. By 1998 the colour black is an "experience", like Coca Cola or Chanel. Yet here, in this austere, almost Trappist setting, black is given back its grandeur -- the same effects that Velasquez knew. To simple musical sounds for whirling, not listening in the Western sense, 15 men come on stage at the Main Hall, each wearing tall, mud-coloured terre de Sienne turbans, tightly pulled down over the ears. Uniform in height, their bearing is rather special. They look extremely plain, ordinary males, rather placid, good workers and reliable. The effect is very grand in this setting. There is a table at the rear, and the collection of musicians on the rebab (the three string violin), the ney (reed flute), the drum, and with voices. One must be present for every breath. An open atmosphere. They look very tolerant and will not mind if you miss a few breaths. The stage is a deep, dark cavern, generating a generous space. Down stage, far down, left, is a potent symbol, a candle stuck in its heavy stick and giving a flame, also whirling. A Sufi saying: "Only the moth who gets burned by the flame gets to know its message." It is up to us to find out. After hieratical bowings, the black coat-like garments are peeled off, and the 15 men are in quite stunning white clothes, flowing immaculately in wide-skirted garments, held at the waist by a black belt. After more salutations between the men, it has come -- the mythic transference. The whirling begins. They do not begin together. Each takes his place, confers with the sheikh and then, moving in absolutely stately, time honoured steps, launches himself into the whirl. It thrilled. He goes like a skiff, out from land into the open sea. He's afloat on the ocean of custom and belief and for sure, certain salvation. Visual visitation flies around him: Poussin, The Rhythm of Time, the Dance of Harmony in the Hall of Celestial Sounds. Never waver. Go with him. He looks so safe. They have been doing this for 700 years, and the candle waves its flame. It is a real candle, no battery at one end. The white figures are now an ever-moving circle, expanding and contracting. They are as white as arum lilies and as firmly placed on their feet as oak trees. Their steps are unhurried, but the pattern is complex. They lock the feet as they cross and turn like spinning tops. One missed step and you're down. They sail on. The opera stage gets bigger. Every balletomane knows Plato's words on "arms into infinity." These dancers know their Plato. It is very beautiful, almost unseemly so for a mega-city in 1998. Such placidity. The white flowers dance on like the candle, flaming to the mystery of time. What are dervishes? Their white is without explanation, untainted by any human exhortations. White petals, faces of creatures fulfilled. They seem to be leaving the stage. The candle burns on, illuminating some of them as night creatures. Eustace La Tour loved to paint such people. They could be men, considering what they are calling the species down in the marketplace. As men for 1998 they are not doing so badly. The candle burns on. See also: A feather on the breath of God by Nur Elmessiri An Evening with French Music; Marcelle Matta, piano; Amira Selim, soprano; Small Hall, Cairo Opera House, 30 June No candles burned in this concert, but plenty of sparks flew. The sponsoring of French music in this year of France's 200th year of "presence" has been successful. Composers -- Chausson, Ibert, Satie, Berlioz (in glory) and, latterly, Saint-Saens -- have all been retrieved from virtual obscurity to display French versatility. Saint-Saens, like Brahms before him, has had fresh performances to show the riches that are still waiting for attention. We need more Fauré from the older school and, from the new, Boulez is disgracefully overdue. June saw Danielle Laval here to thrill. Angelic she looked, and played with the authority and audacious formality of Marguerite Long. The difficult Saint-Saens Piano concerto no. 5 could have no better player. This concert of 30 June was highly professional. Marcelle Matta is at home in French music, and the great thing she knows about is tempo. The French idiom puzzles most performers trained to manage almost everything else, and they fall down on the needs of the French idiom. It sounds foreign, and the sound just does nothing for anything French. For singers it is not merely a question of words, it is how the thing moves along, how it fits. The French musical accent is strong, and unique in atmosphere. It is a substance that is the essence of perfume, and the key to this is how the tempo goes, followed by accent. All these angles are shown as Marcelle Matta "plays French". She did the long and uniquely disdainful melody of Fauré's "Claire de lune" properly, judging its poise and phrases. And after the wanderings of the internal part, the gradual falling into the repeat, one of the loveliest songs ever composed, it set a seal on the concert which was sustained. Soprano Amira Selim sang "Si mes vers avaient des ailes". Very wonderful melody, suggesting a salon expensively hung with early Manet and Proust sitting in a corner. This is the way Amira Selim sang it, understandingly. Most drag queen sopranos pull the thing to pieces. Matta and Selim did it properly, kept it moving, and gave it the proper decadence. Selim next sang the first of her big operatic pieces, the waltz from Gounod's Romeo et Juliette. This is a must for divas. Pianist and singer did it, and it was one of the loveliest things in the concert. Sung as Gounod intended, in strict time. It became a slice of Juliette's character, grand, unfailing and brave. The tune is improved by quick speeds, the jewellery of the song gleams and the end, if done like this, thrills. Amira Selim was as brilliant as the great recording of Marcella Sembrick. The Saint-Saens Suite Algerienne for eight hands (with Matta and her pupils, G. Shaker, N. Fikri and S. Selim) was strong and very colonial. It suggested David Roberts. Two Debussy pieces, "Soirée dans Grenade" and "Jardin sous la pluie" were more examples of Matta's strength in French piano. She cast a proper spell under rain, a garden of Monet. Ambroise Thomas wrote an opera in the French classical style on Hamlet -- all of it. Selim chose to do a section of Ophelia's "mad scene." Of all her operatic mad scenes, this is the best, really dotty, but there is a lot more to it than that. It has water spouts of runs and trills, but there is a weird pathos behind it, a sense of personal injury under all the vocal jewellery, and only the greatest high lyric sopranos do it. Selim shone. She made a tragic, world corrupted heroine rather like Wagner's Gutrune in The Ring. The shoals of horrible intervals she did without a tremor. And all of this was completed at a sizzling speed. Hamlet's Ophelia is a role for her, but as yet not in a big house. She ended the night with Delibe's "Bell Song" from his opera Lakmé. The opening of this old trouper was firm and delivered in a no nonsense way, and then she unleashed the aria about the bells of love. Absolutely on the dot of time. Before singing it, she had wrapped herself in a sari and, tall and beautiful, looked the heroine of this steamy, once popular show opera. It all went well. Opera houses of today are hard on stylists, but the sparks flew.
