ALEXANDRIA - When the large choir started singing, their ordinary and familiar feel appealed to the audience, who liked the way they expressed what everyone in this country is feeling. The enthusiastic Choir Project sang some lovely songs about Egypt, even criticising the behaviour of certain people. Before they began, they introduced themselves as a choir troupe who can't sing well but are nice to listen to. Their most recent concert was held late last month in the French Cultural Centre in Alexandria, as part of the Second Hakaya Regional Meeting: ‘Tales of an Arab Spring: Who Writes People's Histories?'. The meeting, organised by the Arab Education Forum (Jordan), I-Act Organisation (Egypt), El-Balad Theatre from Jordan, El-Mawared (Resources) Centre for Popular Arts from Lebanon and el-Warsha Troupe from Egypt, was funded by the EU. The Choir Project, a troupe of professional singers, invites people from all walks of life to put their hopes and concerns, their feelings and thoughts, their jokes and sorrows into song in a week-long workshop of communal improvisation, lyric-writing, and composition, that culminated in a short performance. These workshops create new songs that show how Egyptians are feeling. Anyone can participate in a Choir Project workshop, even if you're no great shakes as a singer. "The Choir Project was born in May 2010. It began as an offshoot of the international Complaints Choir, a project initiated by two Finnish artists with the aim of transforming the huge energy people put into complaining into something else," said Salam Yousry. With around ten years' experience in theatre, Yousry, the founder and artistic director of the Choir Project, and artistic director and coach of, as well as a performer in, the Cairo Complaints Choir, starts his workshops with some training for the participants. This training involves voice training, physical exercises and acting also. "We get participants of both sexes and of every age. Many of them have no previous experience in music, theatre or performance, but they all want to learn something new. "They come from a diverse range of backgrounds, but all have one thing in common: the urge to actively express their views on the current state of affairs. “Their participation in this workshop is a kind of political involvement. But let's not use the word political. Let's say just we're expressing our point of view," Yousry added. His intensive workshops, of which he has held many in Egypt and abroad, yield so much more than complaints. They witness everything from personal reflections to public concerns, biting humour to heartfelt confessions, cultural specifics to issues of universal significance ��" all set to song. "The results are always amazing. These workshops make us explore different themes of relevance to the community. The results can never be the same in every workshop; they will always be new and unpredictable, depending on the theme, the people involved the unique experience unfolding in the rehearsal room. “The only constant is the drive towards self-expression and community collaboration, and the spirit of equal and active participation," he explained. Yousry's aim is not just to reach all Egyptian people, but rather to create a big network for all people through the Choir Project. "We want to reach the whole world. We want to create a dialogue involving everyone," added Yousry, who is also a painter and who graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts, Helwan University, in 2004. Unusually, he has never asked any institution for financial support. "I believe that we have succeeded because we are volunteers. We work because we love to, not because we have to. We have faced many obstacles and we always try to overcome them, because we want to reach all people through our art. We want to make them more aware, and we want them to think and understand," Yousry stressed.
