The tongue-in-cheek name of fusion contemporary/belly-dance troupe ‘Awalem Khafiyya is a pun that proves quite tortuous to translate: ‘awalem means ‘worlds’ in classical Arabic (singular: ‘aalam), but in the Egyptian vernacular, ‘awalem also means ‘belly-dancers’ (singular: ‘alma). So the respectable surface meaning is Hidden Worlds, while the tongue-in-cheek meaning is Hidden Bellydancers. Add to this the fact that ‘awalem, while not in any sense a swear word, is a reference to something vaguely scandalous – since Oriental dancers are widely regarded by the general public as loose women, to put it kindly – and you have a name that invariably evokes smiles. And smiles are needed when dealing with an all-female belly-dance troupe in today’s conservative society. I recall a paper by the late Nehad Selaiha, “Spirit Away the Body”, where she deconstructs society’s fear of the liberated sexuality claimed – and owned – by female belly-dancers, the only women whose sexuality is not possessed by a man; and indeed, anthropologically, it is considered shameful for a man to allow his womenfolk to dress immodestly or act in a blatantly sexual manner, which is still more pronounced with belly-dance than with, say, modern dance or ballet.

This theme of shame is very much front and centre in Burqa’ al-Haya – another punny name for the show with a double meaning – performed on the Naguib Rihani Theatre stage on 1 and 2 November, choreographed and directed by Shereen Hijazi. Let’s start with “burqa”. Long before the Taliban and similar groups introduced the niqab, chador, and various full-body coverings that English-speaking news outlets describe using the generic name ‘burka’, in Egypt a burqa was a flirty net face-veil worn by lower-class women (aristocratic ladies wore something similar but in sheer white chiffon, called a yashmak) to give the illusion of modesty, sometimes decorated with gold beads or other flashy accoutrements. Haya is a fluid concept that can mean modesty, decency, or discretion. Together, burqa’ al-haya features in a folk expression called ‘khala’a(t) burqa’ al-haya’: he/she threw modesty to the four winds; literally he/she took off the veil of discretion. It means to act in a bare-faced or shameless manner. Contexts are as diverse as “she took off burqa’ al-haya and asked how much she would get in inheritance” or “he took off burqa’ al-haya and demanded his share of the profits” as well as, of course, “she took off burqa’ al-haya and told him she was attracted to him.” This connotation of “barefaced” in English can be linked culturally to the idea of removing the face-veil in Egyptian Arabic, so that it is literally barefaced cheek.

Class is an important factor here. Most professional belly-dancers are traditionally from very poor backgrounds and lower-class families, frequently affiliated with the entertainment business on the most low-income level – that is, entertaining at moulids (saints’ birthdays), weddings held in vacant lots, and so on. (There is a distinction between ghawazee and belly-dancers that space will not permit me to go into here.) Such women have, socially, nothing to lose, especially if their families are already in the entertainment business. (Occasionally a star will rise from such a background, such as the famous Fifi Abdou.) However, once we start looking at middle-class families, the context is radically different. I believe it is not hyperbolic to say that any middle-class family that sees itself as “above” its daughters performing this kind of art out of financial necessity will look down on the profession as something beyond the pale. In fact, raqqasa or belly-dancer is still used as a euphemism for “prostitute”. (The idea that a woman can own her sexuality and even display it without needing to commodify it is still beyond our current collective grasp as a society.)

Burqa’ al-Haya leans into this dilemma facing the members of ‘Awalem Khafiyya, middle-class practitioners of group Oriental dance since 2015. Shereen Hijazi, their founder, is passionate about the legitimacy of Oriental dance, and recalls in an interview with Vice how a show of theirs in 2015 was rejected for its Oriental dance content, but when they rephrased the proposal as “modern dance with an Oriental flair” the show was not only accepted, but went on to win Best Performance at the 2016 National Theatre Festival. This and other rejections inform the dramaturgy of Burqa’ al-Haya, which intersperses group dance numbers in various styles of Oriental dance with scenes from the daily struggles faced by the members of the company. In group scenes with dialogue interspersing the dance’s set pieces, a dancer confesses that her fiancé broke up the engagement and refused to come back until she stopped dancing; a concerned mother calls up the manager of the company to demand they delete a video from Facebook that has her daughter dancing in it, citing her father’s disapproval as the reason; various would-be clients call them expecting them to work for free “but we’ll be serving you a meal!” and scenes where the dancers’ conflicting schedules and lack of financial remuneration interfere with their attendance at rehearsals. (There is also an entertaining but largely superfluous a cappella singing scene.) These are handled with humour and satisfactory ensemble acting, frequently using the situation or incident as inspiration around which to build a satirical or expressive dance scene.

The show also advocates for Oriental dance using archival footage of some of the most famous Oriental dancers of all time, including the legendary Samia Gamal and Soheir Zaki, who is reported in Al-Ahram to have converted Om Kalthoum herself to the concept of dancing to her songs after impressing composer Baligh Hamdi, when both became devotees of Zaki’s art. This footage attempts to trace the roots of this art form in our society in addition to outlining the love-hate relationship we have had with it since it sought to move past moulids and low-class weddings and actually assume a place among the artistic classes of society. In addition, there are some promotional videos of the troupe, which were rather lengthy and could have been cut down, but made for entertaining viewing.

Although ‘Awalem Khafiyya are known for a fusion of modern and Oriental dance, their vocabulary of movement is taken far more from Oriental than Western modern dance. While I am far from a dance specialist or critic, there is a repertoire of movements that one has become accustomed to seeing in modern dance performances and, at least in this performance, none of these were in evidence. However, a certain modern aspect prevailed in the Oriental dance numbers. First and foremost was the ensemble element, a radical departure from the solo-performer tradition of belly-dance, where an individual dancer or a pair of dancers perform in the center of a circle of clapping supporters, frowned upon in middle-class circles except in all-female situations or on specific occasions such as dancing at family weddings by a female guest (and occasionally a male guest) determined to attract a man, but the latter is a different story altogether. All of which serves to remind us how far removed belly-dance has become from the simple pleasure of moving one’s body to music. ‘Awalem Khafiyya seeks to return dance to a place where the joy of movement is decoupled from the shame of exposing or glorying in the female body, and also from the over(t)ly sexualized gaze of modern society with its determinedly puritanical bent.

Succès, the production initiative behind this and other independent theatre shows, is the brainchild and pet project of Ashraf Abd al-Baqi, an actor turned producer who has been behind various theatre projects for affluent audiences, including the well-known Masrah Masr, which commissions comedies and performs them live while also recording them for broadcast at a later date. What he does at the Rihani Theatre downtown – a welcome change from everything springing up in New Cairo and the suburbs – is host independent theatre companies and market their shows aggressively, guaranteeing attendance, and taking 75 percent of the ticket sales plus the concession revenue (for which a 20-minute interval was shoehorned into an hour-long performance – ah, the appeal of selling overpriced popcorn). Although at first glance this seems unjust, it is actually a good deal for amateur companies, who struggle with poor attendance and inadequate publicity as well as a dearth of venues. Abd al-Baqi was at the performance and attended all the rehearsals, and appears genuinely invested in the success of theatre as an art form, something we need urgently from a great many more producers.

No overview of Burqa’ al-Haya would be complete without some mention of the scenography and costumes (the latter designed by Hijazi). The show starts out with a stunning parade of electric blue costumes loosely based on ancient Egyptian attire, and while the other costumes are practical and gorgeous, the ancient Egyptian number is really where the aesthetics of the show peak. Behind the dancers (absent in other performances where such apparatus is not available) is a video screen that projects oversized, gigantic, immersive images of ancient Egyptian temples for that number, French-style architectural ballrooms for other numbers, and a dressing-room with makeup lighting for the spoken scenes where they discuss the woes of their chosen profession, argue about schedule coordination and top billing, and so on. The lighting is mostly tightly focused Fresnels in either serviceable or moody colors, and the entire show is punctuated by a ruinously loud smoke machine which really needs to be replaced with a dry ice machine, moved far off the stage, or got rid of. Still, there is no denying that it adds to the visuals, although the noise is execrable. The music is pre-recorded, a collection of popular standards and instrumental classics, although the ancient Egyptian segment is especially composed for them and stands out spectacularly amid the show’s aural landscape. (It is worth mentioning that Hijazi undertook the choreography of the nationally famous Pharaohs’ Golden Parade, a musical and dance extravaganza extensively televised, where 22 ancient Egyptian mummies were transported from the Egyptian Museum in Tahrir Square to the newly built National Museum of Egyptian Civilization in Fustat, televised to great success in 2021.

Hijazi has been vocal about the issue of entertainment for its own sake, insisting that the inclusion of overt social and political messages in art can be intrusive and self-conscious if it is not organically part of the theme. More to the point, the presence of a group of middle-class women on stage practicing Oriental dance is in itself a political act, although more pertinent to the broader definition of politics that comprises sexual and gender politics and anthropology. It is political to see women practice belly dance not out of financial necessity but out of belief in the art form, persevering despite disapproval and actual police harassment (during filming in public, their manager was arrested multiple times). It is political to see middle-class women who could “do so much better” independent and liberated and reclaiming a form of dance that has been seen as taboo since at least President Sadat’s time. (That was when television stopped broadcasting Oriental dance numbers, which had been common practice before that era, on the pretext that it was morally decadent and socially improper.) The entirety of the show is a political statement about class, wealth, women’s position in society, the art of dance and music, and just how far we may have drifted, as a society, from the secular 1920s, specifically the 1919 Revolution when women were taking off their face veils and chanting for equality, even though middle-class women could not be dancers at the time. A hundred years on, it seems time to think of that.

* A version of this article appears in print in the 28 November, 2024 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly