It’s been noted recently that the art of belly dancing is dying in Egypt, that the profession is being taken over by a torrent of foreign dancers. But watch out for Fifi Abdo, one of Egypt’s top three belly dancers and perhaps the most “violent.” Abdo, who commands a fierce band of bodyguards, recently stormed the office of the censor after one of her performances had been censored for being too provocative, and is on the warpath against the “Russians” – the foreign belly dancers that she says are “giving a bad name to our traditional profession.” – Ha’aretz (Israel)
Month: August 2000
IT’S MINE TO RESTAGE
Vancouver’s Ballet BC wants to stage a work by its former artistic director, but the choreographer has refused, saying the company must hire her to restage it. – CBC
DISAPPEARING TUMMIES
The art of belly dancing is dying in Egypt, where it was born “Fewer hotels, clubs and Nile River boats are offering the live performances, and more and more Egyptian women are shunning the dance because of Islamic disapproval. As a consequence, more of the dancers performing professionally in Cairo are outsiders – from Japan, South America and the countries of the former Soviet Union. They are from almost everywhere, in fact, except Egypt.” – Los Angeles Times
IL BEL MARCELLO
A salute to Marcello Mastroianni, on the eve of the UK’s National Film Theatre’s major retrospective of 22 of his movies. “Nowadays, if you want to sum up Italian style, that sinuous Italian charm that is so easy on the ear and eye, then it’s usually Mastroianni who comes to mind.” – The Guardian
WHERE OH WHERE
The Moscow Film Festival is supposedly an “A” festival alongside the likes of Cannes and Venice. But it’s difficult getting the stars to come to Russia. “This year, as in the past, many of the promised celebrities failed to show, leading an English-language newspaper here to dub the event the ‘Moscow Vanity Fair – high on vanity but low on fair value.’ ” – New York Post
WILLIAM MAXWELL DIED —
— at age 91 on Monday. Accomplished novelist and revered editor at the “New Yorker” for 40 years, Maxwell honed the prose of some of this century’s finest American writers, J.D. Salinger, John Cheever, and Harold Brodkey among them. – CNN
AN INTERVIEW WITH STANLEY KUNITZ, —
- — the new U.S. poet laureate. First published more than 70 years ago, Kunitz, now 95, has won almost every poetry award (including the Nobel in 1959 to the National Book Award in 1995), although he’s only published a handful of books. “I write poems only when I cannot escape them, when it is so urgent I will sacrifice everything else to do it.” A new Kunitz collection is due out next year. – NPR [Real audio file]
IL BEL MARCELLO
A salute to Marcello Mastroianni, on the eve of the UK’s National Film Theatre’s major retrospective of 22 of his movies. “Nowadays, if you want to sum up Italian style, that sinuous Italian charm that is so easy on the ear and eye, then it’s usually Mastroianni who comes to mind.” – The Guardian
OLYMPIC ARTS FEST SPUTTERS
What if they threw a party and nobody came? Sydney’s arts companies are reporting that the Sydney Olympic Organizing Committee has botched the arts festival by not promoting it properly and failing to deliver tickets. “Arts companies have complained that some events have sold as little as 8 per cent of tickets with just six weeks until the festival’s opening.” – The Australian
THE NEW LATIN
“Think of mathematics as the Latin of modern times. Across the world, it plays, as several historians have noted, the role that Latin played for Europeans in the Middle Ages. It’s the international language of vital work. It unites those whose thoughts produce big changes, and it helps make those changes occur. We who know nothing of mathematics (like Europeans who knew nothing of Latin in, say, 1350) are fated to be, in a crucial sense, more spectators than participants at the central dramas of our lifetime.” – National Post (Canada)