WATANI International
18 October 2009
Chopin’s 200th
The Giza Sound and Light Theatre in Cairo has been chosen by Poland as the venue for its 200th anniversary celebration of the death of the Polish composer Chopin, the President of the Cairo Opera House Abdel-Muniem Kamel has announced. Frédéric François Chopin (1810 – 1849) was a virtuoso pianist and one of the great masters of Romantic music. He was born in the village of Zelazowa Wola, in the Duchy of Warsaw, to a French-expatriate father and Polish mother, and was regarded as a child prodigy. At the age of 20 he left Warsaw and went to Paris where he embarked on an illustrious career in music which ended too soon, however. He died of pulmonary tuberculosis at the age of 39. His compositions are among the loveliest classic musical works.
2009-2010 programme
Abdel-Muniem Kamel, recently announced the new programme for the 2009 – 2010 season, which will include 689 cultural and artistic events.
Venues to host the events will include the Cairo Opera House, the Gomhouriya Theatre, the Arabic Music Institute, the Sayed Darwish Theatre in Alexandria and the Damanhour Opera House. There will also be 47 art exhibitions.
Dr Kamel said the coming season would see monthly themes of arts, since the Cairo Opera House has signed contracts with 26 international companies from Greece, the US, Germany, Jordan, Russia, and Spain.
Double anniversary
Thursday 8 October marked the 21st anniversary of the Cairo Opera House, which coincided with Victory Day which commemorates the 6 October War. The Cairo Opera House celebrated with a gala concert in which some 500 members of the troupes and ensembles of the Opera House took part, under the supervision of Abdel-Muniem Kamel.
The programme included a ballet performance, national songs, a piano recital, and closed with Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.
Experimental theatre
The 21st round of the Cairo International Festival for Experimental Theatre (CIFET) launched on 11 October and lasts until 20 October, featuring the participation of 60 countries; 13 of which are Arab.
The CIFET agenda includes seminars, art workshops, and the giving of awards to a number of writers and intellectuals.
The international committee has chosen the performances from among those nominated. Among the several companies participating are the Theatre Art House, which is taking part with six performances to represent Egypt in the official competition; and the creation centre which introduces three innovative visions of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Among the other nominated independent companies from Alexandria are the Tamarrud (Rebellion) company, which is taking part with a mono-drama entitled Waiting for Tom Hanks.
The best of tango
The last of the monthly concerts of the Cairo Opera Orchestra in the Main Hall was a gala concert on 5 October under the title “The Best of Tango”. The concert was conducted by Ahmed Hamdi accompanied by the Swiss musician Stéphane Chapuis playing the bandonéon. The programme included pieces of the most famous tango compositions.
The bandoneón, a type of concertina particularly popular in Argentina and Uruguay, plays an essential role in the orquesta tipica, the tango orchestra. The bandoneón, called the bandonion by its German inventor, Heinrich Band (1821 – 1860), was originally intended as an instrument for religious music and the popular music of the day, in contrast to its predecessor, the German concertina (or Konzertina), considered to be a folk instrument by some modern authors. German sailors and emigrants to Argentina brought the instrument with them in the late 19th century, where it was incorporated into the local music.
Pina Bausch
“To experience this is to be moved, to be carried out of the hall into another world,” is how Die Zeit described the dances of the German choreographer Pina Bausch, who died of cancer on 10 June. Bausch had a leading influence in the development of Tanztheatre style, which grew out of German expressionist dance.
To mark the occasion of its 50th anniversary the Goethe Institute, in cooperation with the Cairo Opera House, presented for two days on 3 and 4 October two performances by the Wuppertal Opera Ballet choreographed by Bausch. The company’s visit had been three years in the planning and went ahead despite the death of Pina Bausch.
The Tanztheater Wuppertal which was directed by Pina Bausch has a large repertoire of original pieces, and has regularly toured the world for more than 36 years, absorbing different cultures and dance styles and spreading its message of love and forgiveness, which grabbed the world’s respect.
This is the first time for the ensemble to perform in the Arab world, and it has been a dream that for Bausch herself remained ever elusive. The performance nevertheless was a way of honouring one of the most remarkable choreographers of modern times.
Bausch was awarded the UK’s Laurence Olivier Award and Japan’s Kyoto Prize. In 2008 the city of Frankfurt-am-Main awarded her its prestigious Goethe Prize.
Vivacious and dynamic
The performances were two of Bausch’s most famous masterpieces: Bamboo Blues and the Russian composer Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. Most of her pieces, featured with vivacious and dynamic moves, centre on the search for love and happiness and the fear of collapse and failure.
The Rite of Spring comes almost as light relief. Of all Bausch’s works, it’s the most full of movement, the most gorgeous. On thick brown earth, under a golden light, male and female dancers respond explosively to Stravinsky’s recorded score and its theme of biological imperative and ritual sacrifice. In this piece, performed on a layer of garden soil, the narrative is transformed into a fable of superstition and misogyny in which a young woman in a red dress is sacrificed to assuage the sexual hatred of those around her. By the end, the cast is sweat-streaked, filthy and audibly panting.
India was Bausch’s latest port of call, and in Bamboo Blues she transformed the stage into an amalgam of sensations. In Bamboo Blues, her last piece, Bausch is inspired by the incisive and delicate gestures of Indian dance. Softness prevails, as does fabric, often brilliantly coloured, always billowing. In one memorable sequence, thanks to Bausch’s unparalleled use of metaphor, humour, and kinetic wit, the dancers send up the intricacies of the dothin (a long cotton wrap) to hypnotising and affectionate effect.
