Egyptians lose out
in battle of belly dancers
By Philip Smucker
Russian and other foreign
performers are taking advantage of favourable treatment by the country's `morality
police,' writes Philip Smucker in Cairo.
EGYPTIAN BELLY dancers are losing
out on business to Russians and other foreigners whose talents are challenging the future
of an ancient art form.
The home-grown dancers blame
Cairo's so-called "morality police" who, they say, apply a double standard;
often arresting them for violations of the country's strict Islamic codes of dress, while
ignoring violations by their foreign counterparts.
July and August are the height of
the belly dancing season in Cairo. Gulf Arabs, escaping the baking temperatures of home,
rent flats on the cool, green islands in the Nile and while away their evenings to the
wiggles and wobbles of Cairo's most agile dancers.
For the women, the rewards can be
dazzling. At one nightclub, I watched a bug-eyed sheik toss a wad of at least $10,000 (
£7,000) onto the dance floor as a shimmering belly covered in red netting weaved a
language of lust.
One foreign dancer in particular, a
Russian beauty called Tatiana "Queen Nour" Fediaeva, has taken the Cairo dance
scene by storm this year. Not since the 1930s and 1940s, when the royal khedives paid for
les etrangers to be trained in the art, has Egypt seen this kind of influx of fresh
talent.
"Queen Nour", the
daughter of a Zil limousine executive, has honed her talents across Central Asia and the
Middle East. Connoisseurs of dance say that she has developed a unique, modern style of
belly dancing that has her Egyptian counterparts shaking with fury in their slippers.
"The Egyptian dancers tell
people that we foreigners cannot move to the music with the same feeling," she told
me over cocktails on the deck of a Nile cruise ship, the Maxim. "What they are
forgetting is that the Russians are very cross-cultural and multi-talented." An
accomplished pianist, the Muscovite also directs all her own choreography.
Several of the ageing grandes dames
of Cairo dance have turned their stout backs on the likes of "Nour". They want
the authorities to enforce stiffer work permit regulations, but that appears unlikely.
Egyptian tour operators and police, who often cut deals for a percentage of the dancers'
earnings, are thriving on the competition. Russian women often work for half the wages of
an Egyptian dancer. Yet even the club managers who hire them admit that most of the Slavs
do not have the same zeal for the art as the local women.
Madame Raaya Hassan, one of Egypt's
top belly dancing instructors, is also dismissive of the abilities of the foreigners. She
arranged for me to meet one of her ablest students at a grand flat in the exclusive
Heliopolis district of Cairo. As Wafaa Fawzi emerged from a back room in a sequinned
bikini, I could see immediately that "Queen Nour" had met her match.
Wafaa explained the relative
disadvantages suffered by aspiring Egyptian dancers. "Our morality police usually
single out Egyptian women for not wearing a shabakh [the loose netting that is required to
cover the midriff]," she said. "If the foreign women do this, they are exempt;
treated like tourists on a beach."
Wafaa, whose lithe, streamlined
figure contrasts with the more wobbly build of most of her Egyptian colleagues, admitted
that she did admire "Queen Nour's" abdominal virtuosity. "She has a lovely
figure and beautiful moves but she just does not have the same rapport with the customers
that an Egyptian dancer has," she said.
Ten days earlier she had given a
Russian woman a sound drubbing at an audition for work at one of Cairo's top nightclubs.
"I beat her bellies down," she said.
With the sun sinking over the
Pyramids, I asked if Wafaa would demonstrate some of the moves that won the battle for
her. Without further ado, the servant entered the room, ushered us to the door and told us
to await our "invitations in the mail".
