“Farewell to the lovely butterfly of Egypt’s Opera House, the renowned prima ballerina of Egypt and the Arab World, who danced in the first ever Egyptian-produced ballet in 1966, was Dean of the Egyptian Higher Institute of Ballet in 1984 – 1986, and founding director of the Cairo Opera House in 1987 – 1988. She danced on theatres of the Bolshoi and the Conference Hall of the Grand Kremlin Palace; she raised high the name of Egypt in international events; she enriched Egyptian cultural and artistic life. Farewell Magda Saleh, the embodiment of beauty, culture, and history.” That was how Maya Morsy, President of the National Council for Women, mourned Magda Saleh, Egypt’s first prima ballerina, who died in Cairo in the early hours of 11 June 2023, aged 78, following a struggle with illness.
“You taught me…”
Dr Saleh was also mourned by Culture Minister Neveen al-Kilany who said that she had opened the way for generations of Egyptians to love and dance ballet. “She was the first ballerina to be granted, together with her four colleagues who formed the first Egyptian ballet group, the Order of Merit. Dr Saleh not only participated in international ballet shows inside and outside Egypt, she also did extensive research to document the folk dance of the country.”
For his part, Head of the Cairo Opera House Khaled Dagher applauded the key role of Dr Saleh in the flourishing of the ballet movement in Egypt.
On social media, star actor Nelly Karim who started out as a ballerina, mourned Dr Saleh: “Rest in peace, beautiful spirit! Thank you for everything I learned from you.”
Another ballerina who went on to be one of Egypt’s most brilliant musical show stars, Sherihan, tweeted: “You were for me a great teacher and educator. I came to you a dreamy amateur; you taught me the ethics and discipline of ballet, you turned me into a committed, hardworking, conscientious, patient and loving professional dancer.”
The famed media personality Hala Sarhan took to Twitter to ask Culture Minister Kilany to name one of the ballet training halls at the Cairo Opera House after Magda Saleh, “where her heart has always been”.
Cairo ballet institute
Magda Saleh was born to an Egyptian father and Scottish mother. Her father Ahmed Abdel-Ghaffar Saleh was an academician; a pioneer of agriculture education in Egypt, and Vice President of the American University in Cairo in 1965 – 1974. Magda was an only daughter, the second of four siblings.
At an early age, Magda showed keen interest in ballet. Her parents, who were at the time resident in Alexandria, enrolled her at Alexandria Conservatory which included a ballet department supervised by a British woman from the Royal Academy of Dance in Britain. Spotting Magda’s unmistakable talent, she helped send her on a scholarship at the Arts Educational School, Tring, Hertfordshire, in the UK. But that was in 1956; the Suez War erupted in October and all Egyptians in the UK had to go home, as did the British in Egypt.
As Egypt’s relations with the West soured, elations with the Soviet Union flourished. Cultural ties between the two States thrived. The world famous Moiseyev Dance Company Director, Igor Alexandrovich Moiseyev came to Egypt. He visited the ballet department at Alexandria Conservatory; Magda Saleh caught his eye. He informed her of a visit scheduled for the following year by a teacher from the Bolshoi, who would come to Cairo to open a ballet school. He suggested she auditions.
In 1958, the Cairo ballet institute was established by iconic Culture Minster Tharwat Okasha (1921 – 2012), a man with exceptional vision. Ms Saleh was accepted in the new school, along with 30 boys and girls. Teachers from Leningrad’s Kirov and Moscow’s Bolshoi ballet academies taught at the school. Besides ballet, the students pursued normal schooling, and were able to get preparatory and secondary school certificates.
Order of Merit
In 1963, Magda Saleh was sent to Moscow, together with four other girls, for two years of training at the Bolshoi Ballet Academy. So it was that Saleh, together with Diana Hakak, Maya Selim, Aleya Abdel Razek and Wadoud Faizi, came back home in 1965 to form the first group of superbly trained Egyptian ballerinas.
In 1966, that same group gave the inaugural performance of the Cairo Ballet Company, Boris Asafyev’s Fountain of Bakhchisarai. Ms Saleh played Maria among a cast made up entirely of students of the Cairo ballet school. The ballet was directed by choreographer Leonid Labrovsky, former artistic director of the Bolshoi Ballet, with the Cairo Symphony Orchestra conducted by Shaaban Abul-Saad.
The event was, as described by Ms Saleh, “a bombshell, in a good sense of the word”. Mr Okasha was thrilled, he warmly congratulated them as the curtain closed, and excitedly informed them that President Gamal Abdel-Nasser would attend the following evening’s performance. That concluded with the principal dancers being honoured with the State’s Order of Merit.
Later, the Fountain of Bakhchisarai embarked on “a great adventure”, according to Ms Saleh, with performances in Egypt’s southernmost city, Aswan, a bastion of conservatism. Yet the show was a resounding success.
Parallel to her ballet career, Ms Saleh in 1968 graduated with high honours from Ain Shams University’s English Language and Literature Department. It required serious effort and self-discipline to achieve so well but, she always said, it was thanks to her parents’, especially her father’s, huge support.
Opera House tragedy
Until 1971, Ms Saleh repeatedly performed at Cairo’s Khedivial Opera. She danced in Giselle, Swan Lake, The Nutcracker, Don Quixote and others. Then in October 1971, tragedy struck. The legendary Khedivial Opera House, built by Khedive Ismail as a replica of Milan’s La Scala in 1869 to celebrate the inauguration of the Suez Canal, burned down. Apart from the profound national mourning of losing such a gem, the lack of its theatre severely impeded the development of Egypt’s ballet company.
The following year, however, Ms Saleh performed as Giselle with the Bolshoi in Moscow. She was also invited, together with the brilliant Egyptian male dancer, Abdel-Moniem Kamel, to tour theatres in the Soviet Union as visiting dancers with Moscow’s Bolshoi and Leningrad’s Kirov.
As Egypt’s relations with the Soviet Union turned sour in the 1970s, Ms Saleh decided to go to the US to pursue an academic career. In 1979, she completed her PhD, titled “A Documentation of the Ethnic Dance Traditions of the Arab Republic of Egypt” at New York University. During that stay, Dr Saleh began a long-term friendship with Jack Josephson (1930-2022), renowned art historian and authority on ancient Egyptian sculptures, whom she eventually married.
New Cairo Opera House
Back in Cairo, Dr Saleh joined the Higher Institute of Ballet as professor and dean (1984 – 1986).
In 1987, she was appointed founding director of the new Cairo Opera House, a gift from Japan to Egypt. She was in charge of launching the new institution until it opened its doors in 1988.
In 1992, Dr Saleh moved to New York, where she remained close to the Egyptian artistic scene, helping in the organisation of concerts in New York’s prestigious halls, among them the NY Public Library for the Performing Arts at the Lincoln Center, featuring Egyptian artists.
Magda Saleh officially quit dancing in 1993 owing to back problems.
In 2016, Dr Saleh featured in Hisham Abdel-Khalek’s documentary A Footnote in Ballet History which looks into the history of Egypt’s ballet and its first stars. In 2018, she was honoured by the New York Theatre, and again by Egypt in events celebrating her life and art.
Following her husband’s death in 2022, Saleh returned to her family home in Cairo.
“So beautiful, madam, so beautiful”
It is perhaps surprising that, alongside a life and career that spanned the world, the most moving moments for Magda Saleh came from the depth of Egypt, from places remotely removed from ballet.
According to her own account, the first took place in Aswan where, following the resounding success of Fountain of Bakhchisarai in Cairo, the Culture Ministry decided to have it performed in southern, conservative Aswan. Dr Saleh recounts how the performance started to a silent audience who appeared untouched by anything that took place on the theatre. “We were there dancing, and there was no reaction whatsoever from the audience,” she said. “It felt almost as if we were performing to an empty hall. We were all aware of this, and it was not at all comforting.” Amazingly, however, the audience started to give strong intermittent response as the plot unfolded, with the performance ending in resounding applause. Four performances had been scheduled in Aswan, but these were doubled in view of the huge success.
It was special, Dr Saleh said, because the success was not among an audience familiar with classical dance, but from one that appreciated “the beauty of the art even though it might not have been at all familiar.”
Following the conclusion of one of the Aswan performances, Ms Saleh got “the most magnificent words of appreciation ever” she said. “I was standing backstage with my Russian instructor, reviewing a few things. I turned to find a typical Upper Egypt peasant with rough features. I asked him what he wanted; he just said ‘that was so very beautiful madam, really so very beautiful,’ and then he just walked away.”
“Maybe one day…”
Another moving moment came as recently as 2016 / 2017 from Minya, a hotbed of Islamist extremism some 250km south of Cairo. Alwanat, literally Colours, a NGO group that aspires to fight extremist thought by spreading the beauty of art, decided to launch a ballet school there, the first in Upper Egypt. Surprisingly, parents enthusiastically enrolled their children; there was a high turnout of applicants for the school’s first intake. But an even bigger surprise was how well received the school was. On social media, Fawzia Abd Elkader, a middle-aged veiled woman posted: “Make way, make way, you guys! Minya’s marching towards world renown!” A jubilant white-haired Holeil Ghali gushed: “What’s that?! Cannot believe it … moved to tears … This is the most important news I heard in the last 10 years at least. For me, more important than the New Suez Canal, the new capital, the 2014 Constitution … This is the area where we should all be working: art and culture.”
But perhaps the most telling post came from none other but Magda Saleh, who posted: “When I am next in Egypt, I’m inviting myself for a visit.” “Waiting eagerly!” was Alwanat’s reply.
Sure enough, Magda Saleh visited Minya in 2017. She was greeted by some 40 girls aged five to 13 and their parents in what she described as the “most beautiful public appreciation of ballet.
“As I arrived, I was greeted by one of the ballerinas who offered me a single rose after doing her pas de bourrée, and then she walked me through an entrance flanked with beautiful young ballerinas each offering me a single rose, and finally taking me to be seated with a whole full bouquet in my hands,” she said.
Dr Saleh offered the Alwanat Centre a gift from her own collection in the shape of a doll of Kitri, the leading female character in the ballet Don Quxiote, that was made for her in 1971, also three photographs of her performing Giselle, and Bakhchisarai’s Maria.
“A girl,” Dr Saleh said, “who must have been six or younger came to hold my hand as I spoke to the audience. She bowed very beautifully and took my hand and gave it a little kiss. I bowed to kiss her and to wish her good luck. Maybe one day she will be a beautiful and acclaimed ballerina.”
https://en.wataninet.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/w.en_.14-8-2016.pdf
Watani International
14 June 2023