At the Mena House, Pyramids, Youssef Rakha encounters a world apart Awatef is a belly-dancer. Unlike the American icon and teacher Morocco who insists on the term raqs sharqi (Oriental dance), she doesn't object to the designation. Her name would sound sufficiently grassroots in an Egyptian context: old-fashioned it certainly is, but, by itself, it has no particular associations of class or profession. No less than her clothes, on this occasion, her second name, Eshta, casts her rather more clearly in the role of performer and teacher: the word, meaning "cream", is a largely common reference to fair-skinned corpulence of the female order -- common in both senses of the word. The story fits together, all things considered, except for one small detail: Awatef Eshta is not Egyptian at all, not even Middle Eastern; like Morocco, her interest in Oriental dance has less to do with perpetuating than transcending the gendered norms of this all but risqué performance tradition; and there are quite a few other things she does besides. Awatef Eshta is actually a biologist, currently a PhD candidate in the subject, having completed postgraduate courses in both biology and Egyptology. "So I sometimes collaborate with the Spanish Egyptian Museum in Barcelona..." Not, she points out, that they are in any way related. Her interest in biology was rather the result of her love of animals. "And I am actually better with animals than with people, so..." she giggles. "But it's very hard to earn your life as a scientist. It's easier to do it as a dancer, which is not easy anyway." Archery, on the other hand -- what? "Because I do archery as well, which I started long before dancing. And most of my life I've made my money by archery, and by dancing. And I love to do scientific work," she sighs, "but I hardly get any pay." German-Italian in origin, Awatef has been in Barcelona throughout her life; and for a long time she was subject to a strictly Catholic father, now deceased, who being a mathematician-physicist himself, did not find it in him to give credence even to biology, let alone any form of art. Art was okay, she explains, so long as one practised it as a hobby; as far as he was concerned, the humanities and most sciences were a waste of time. "I wanted to train dolphins, when I was little," she declares matter-of-factly. "That was my goal in life, and my father said that wasn't a serious job." He barred her from the opportunity to study at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London -- as a minor she needed his approval -- "so I know he would have died, he would've killed me, had he found out I was involved in Oriental dance". Well, he must be turning in his grave as we speak. Awatef went ahead and did biology anyway, later discovering a connection between it and the dance. "They're very similar actually," she giggles again. "If you think of the technique when you dance you have to end up applying biology everywhere. Because you're working with a living organism, and it's very helpful to have a little bit at least of biology or anatomy in order to explain especially when you're giving class how you do the movements and... It's much easier for the students if they can assimilate what they're going to do." Still, while dancing she doesn't think of herself as a living organism, she says: "I try not to think of myself at all, because then I would go hide." Then again, she does think a lot, "a little too much maybe", and the conjunction of the two callings has given her plenty of opportunity for that. "I try to think of the movements that I am doing but specifically I like to feel it. Both in my mind and in my body. Once I have integrated the feeling very well, I usually try to explain it, through biology. Because I know that even if I am not able to do the movement perfectly yet -- because you need a lot of practice to do it perfectly, years -- it still helps me take it to another level..." She looks down, fumbling with her sword -- a dancing gadget that she has brought along. Awatef is one of over 1,200 dancers in the vicinity; and her story, while perhaps not typical, seems representative enough of the story of participants in the event going on -- beautiful women of every conceivable shape, size and hue -- Oriental or belly -- dancers, all. It is Tuesday afternoon at the lobby of the Mena House Hotel, off the elevation leading directly to the Great Pyramid, and, outside that part of the hotel set aside for daytime classes and evening performances and competitions -- ongoing for a week now -- I can already see a few clusters of them, in costume and not, lounging about discussing the immediate past and the immediate future, preyed on by numerous men in suits, in jeans, in shorts. I'm here to cover the eighth Oriental Dance Festival on its last day. An annual event founded in 2000 and directed by the Reda folk dance troupe veteran Ra'ya Hassan, it is wholly self-funded, depending on the willingness of the dancers -- students and teachers, amateurs and professionals -- to cover their own expenses: flight, accommodation and classes, with the revenues of the latter going towards both administrative overheads and the teachers' pay. A year or so ago, on meeting Morocco, my first non-Arab Oriental dancer, I had the impression that, being an Oriental dancer in the West -- indeed anywhere outside the Middle East -- you were a kind of black swan condemned to relative obscurity and isolation; Morocco's protestations to the contrary had seemed more a product of her own will than a reflection of social reality. As I pass into the festival area with Awatef, now, I realise it was a mistake to think so. A big mistake. The corridor leading up to the main hall is lined with stalls selling all manner of Oriental souvenirs and paraphernalia; both corridor and hall -- as well as the auditoria to which the latter gives way -- are seething with multinational activity. There are dancers from not only Europe and North America but from Latin America and the Far East as well. There are beginners and masters, dancers who have diversified into other forms of dance and dancers who arrived at Oriental dance by way of other forms in the first place... Their numbers are well in the hundreds; and one can only sense that they make up but a small portion of this worldwide phenomenon. Gone are the days when belly-dancing was the exclusive business of a small portion of the female population of the Middle East, living largely as a separate caste and morally looked down on by society. The world has indeed become a small village, what with the Golden Age of the dance -- centred largely in Egypt, the movement peaked in the 1960s -- giving way to this very impressive medley. Why Oriental dance, I ask Awatef. "I always liked it very much, and I had always liked Egypt and Arab culture very much. I don't know, I felt it was very close." She mentions something else as well, a crush on Othello that made her "want to do anything related to the Arab world", which she insists on calling "stupid". The object of this one-sided love remained largely unethereal, she affirms. "But I did like Omar Sherif... and I think he's a very charming man." It was six years ago that she started taking classes, at a time when "it was becoming popular but not as popular as it is now"; Awatef implies that belly dancing became a cool thing among the European young, especially in its American-modified variation of "tribal" dance, mixing " raqs sharqi, Indian Kathak and a little Flamenco, and there is another wave of tribal which mixes a little bit of Goth in too". In this latter incarnation, especially -- heavy Indian jewellery, black clothing and an attitude not of seduction and charm but of aggressive self-possession -- the dance looks very powerful, she says. Morocco categorically denied any connection between the dance and femininity or seduction: qualities that, while clearly undermining the aesthetic integrity of raqs sharqi, seem nonetheless essential to it, a part of what it means. Someone like Tahia Karioka -- "I think she was the best," Awatef concedes -- became a diva precisely through exercising such charm, not withholding it. "But I think that happened with the Golden Age" she says. "Now I get the feeling, even in Europe, that when you say that you're doing Oriental dance, they sort of think, Ahh," she laughs, "you know. I think most sorts of corporal expression, at least in a slight way, are all a sort of exhibitionism. In Flamenco it's funny because you adopt a pose as if you were dancing for yourself, but you're actually trying to show off. That's the thing I think that's attracting many people to tribal, because in tribal you do it for yourself, and if no one is looking you don't mind. Oriental is more associated with look-at-me and I'm-playing-with-you, and yes, that's the beauty of it. But I think there has been a problem with that -- that there's been everything. There's been some very good people, some very professional people, but also the opposite, and because it's something that looks very easy to do, at least in Europe we have the problem of people who are not doing it seriously but are pretty enough to show off, and they're doing it. So you're starting to lose class. The audience starts to get confused. That's a problem." At other dancers' performances -- Awatef loves to attend -- she sits in the back where, contrary to the people in the front who are invariably enthralled by the dancer, tend to react genuinely; and she overhears their comments: "Most of them think she's just shaking, so most people associate any kind of shaking with belly dancing," the very reason Morocco rejects the term, "and I think that's the main problem. Many people think that low-class dancers are dancers. Low class in spirit, I think. Oriental dance doesn't have the same status as, for example, ballet." Her own experience reflects the ambiguity of raqs sharqi. "I thought it was very close to the feminine side and to the playful side, and that was the major part I didn't like -- that's what restrained me from taking classes for a very long time -- because," she says, giggling with an admirable honesty, an honesty you would not normally associate with someone who has her name, "I am very uncomfortable with myself, I don't like myself, so showing off was very problematic." She started by herself, she says, out of books. She did not attend classes until her father had died. Her joy in the dance does not make her any less ambiguous, however -- an attitude reflected in her response to Egypt, to which she has been five times in the last three years at her own expense. "I have to save a lot. I'm working very hard in order to be able to come. Now I'm also working as a clothes provider for a dance workshop. And that's helping me to come more often to Egypt, which is nice." Still, "I think Egyptians seem very open, but I think they are really not that open. That's very different from where I come from. In Catalonia especially, people seem very closed, but they're actually quite open, when you give them a chance. I think Egyptians are charming people, but I am never sure if they are charming because they want to be charming or because they were raised to be charming... I think there's also a romantic factor when people think of Egypt. And I think it can really be that way if you come to visit but maybe not if you have to live here."
