Venus Fouad is uplifted by the young talent at the Cairo Opera House, before being heavily let down Every year, youngsters with a talent go to the Cairo Opera House seeking to enrol in music and dance lessons. The Opera House's Educational Centre for Promoting Talents has been in operation since April 1992, offering lessons in the violin, piano, ballet, opera singing and Arab music. A powerhouse of young talents, the centre is run by the legendary Ratiba El-Hefni and boasts among its teachers such distinguished artists as Marcel Matta, Nadia Abdel-Aziz and Iman Mostafa. At the end of every year, the Opera House holds performances to showcase its new crop of gifted youngsters. This year the ballet performances featured two classes of students. One was utterly brilliant and inspiring, the other lifeless and discouraging. The class run by Lamiaa Zayed saw 170 young dancers performing 11 scenes from Rimsky- Korsakov's Scheherazade. Yasmine Riyad and Marwa Magdi dazzled the audience in solo scenes inspired by palace life, while group dances featured slave girls challenging the awesome swordsman Masrour, and the two protagonists of Arabian nights, the lovely Scheherazade and her fearsome husband Sherayar, locked in duels of wit and intrigue. In the second part of her show Zayed changed gear, throwing in her lot with hip hop modern dance performances in a brilliant set designed by Nermine Azab and backed by expert lighting from Reda Ibrahim. Zayed, who teaches choreography and ballet production at the Academy of Arts, designed the costumes herself, while Hala Mahmoud supervised the costume production in the Opera House's workshops. Tamer Abdel-Latif provided a set of enticing accessories for the scenery of the Turkish, Andalusian and Indian dances In the modern half of the show, Zayed made use of soloists Mohamed Nabil and Mohamed Abu Sariye to bring the performance up a notch of two, making the whole performance by the youngsters look convincingly professional. As soon as the Sameh Saber's show began, disappointment set in. It was a reiteration of the performances he has provided for the last two years, with the same youngsters, the same choreography, and even the same music. And yet it had no clear focus. The "selection of international and local dances" Saber had promised turned out to be a mishmash of styles, lacking innovation and bringing nothing new to the art. With names such as Waltz Cobilia, Dream, Shadows, Waltz Bonbon, Light, Pharaonic, Turkish, Bridal March, Navy March, 100 Years of Cinema, CanCan, Salsa, Comic, Halawet Shamsena (Our Lovely Sun), Michael Jackson, The Black Swan and Pas de Quatre, Saber offered us the usual fare of monotonous choreography and clichéd style. With the exception of two talented dancers, Yasmin El-Hawwari and Nadine Medhat, the troupe looked unmotivated and under-rehearsed. The talented opera soloist Ahmed Yehya was featured in one dance, Tawba (Repentance), but instead of dancing with the youngsters to enhance their style and add motivation, this was a solo dance almost unconnected to the rest of the show. Adding insult to injury, Saber had his entire family working in the show. His son, Youssef, featured in almost every dance. His wife, Eisha Fouad, acted as an assistant coach and costume designer. Saber also included his daughter Romaysaa in the production, with a written note in the programme saying that she had edited the video. There was just one small detail: the show had no video. This did not need to happen. Egypt has dozens of talented choreographers dying to work for the Opera House, as I am sure the Opera House director Abdel Moneim Kamel, himself a professor at the Academy of Arts, knows full well. The good news is that a new art teaching centre for young talents has just opened at the Academy of Arts in the Sayyed Darwish Hall. I am very hopeful that this might have better luck than the Opera House's talent-promoting operation.
