Dance at Alwan

Conferences and Talks, Egypt, Music and Dance, Yemen


Magda Saleh, “Giselle”, Studio Portrait, Cairo, Egypt, 1968, left; Magda Saleh in “Don Quixote”, Guest Artist, Bolshoi Ballet, right

Panel Discussion: Dancing Culture and Controversy: Professional Women Dancers of the Arab World
Monday, June 4, 2012 6:30 pm at Alwan for the Arts

Join renowned professional dancers Magda Saleh of Egypt, Leila Molaei of Arab-Iranian descent, and dance anthropologist Najwa Adra, for a panel presentation and discussion on women professional dancers of the Arab world and diaspora.

Dance by women is the most controversial of all performance arts, because it is the body, the basis for construction of gender difference, which creates it. Traditional or culturally specific dances especially embody cultural ideals and taboos related to the female body.

Panel Discussion 6:30-8:30

$5 at door (Free for members.)

Magda Saleh will share vignettes of her trailblazing career path of classical dance, becoming Egypt’s beloved Prima Ballerina with the Cairo Ballet Company. She will also present footage of her 1979 documentary film, “Egypt Dances”, highlighting women performers of Egyptian traditions such as zar, haggalah and others.

Leila Molaei, expert performer and teacher of raqs sharqi, Iraqi kawleya, and one of a handful of Arab professional dancers of these forms in diaspora, will speak to how she negotiates cultural challenges of performing female solo dances. Leila will also discuss gender issues in performance of dances such as kawleya and khaleegy, including demonstrations of relevant technique and issues such as costuming and context.

Leila will also be teaching a workshop on Iraqi dance and performing in NYC, presented by Mark Balahadia. For more information on the May 31 show, or June 2 & 3 workshop, visit www.markbalahadia.com.

Najwa Adra, cultural anthropologist specializing on dance in the Middle East region will serve as the panel respondent.

About the Artists: Continue reading Dance at Alwan →

Shaykh Abu Luhum (1938-2012)

Yemen

*يمن برس – متابعات
وصل جثمان الفقيد المناضل الشيخ محمد عبدالله صالح أبو لحوم إلى العاصمة صنعاء أمس الخميس والذي وافته المنية في فرنسا يوم الأحد الماضي.

وتم الصلاة على جثمانه صباح أمس الخميس بعد نقل جثمانه من مطار صنعاء في جامع مستشفى جامعة العلوم والتكنولوجيا، واوري الثرى في مقبرة خزيمة.

الشيخ محمد عبدالله صاللح أبو لحوم من مواليد منطقة نهم، شمال العامصة صنعاء عام 1938، درس في الكلية العسكرية ببغداد وحصل على دورات عسكرية متعددة.

وتولى عدة مناصب عسكرية ومدنية، حيث بدأ حياته العملية كبيراً للمعلمين في مدرسة المدرعات، ثم قائداً لكتيبة المدرعات والمدرعات الاحتياطة، قبل أن يكون عضواً في مجلس القيادة وقائداً للواء السادس.

وعين الفقيد رحمه الله لاحقاً محافظاً لمحافظة حجة ثم سفيراً مقيماً لليمن في باريس وعضواً في مجلس الشورى.

نسأل الله أن يتغمد الفقيد بواسع رحمته وأن يسكنه فسيح جناته ويلهم أهله وذويه الصبر والسلوان, وإنا لله وإنا إليه راجعون.

The 8th Voyage of Sindbad: #2

Humor and Satire, Literature, Travel


Sinbad’s Seventh Voyage by Arthur Szyk

[Webshaykh’s Note: This last semester I taught an Honors Seminar on the Arabian Nights. The last assignment asked students to write the 8th voyage of Sindbad, drawing on what happened in earlier voyages. I will post several of these here for your enjoyment. This is the second one I am publishing and it is by Marissa Priest. For the first by Taryn Teurfs, click here.]

The Eighth Voyage of Sinbad
By Marissa Priest

Before all the hairs of his beard could turn white, Sinbad the Sailor longed for one last voyage. Yet after all the turmoil of his past adventures, his wife was worried for his safety. Her concern only multiplied when their young son Hamza showed the same symptoms of wanderlust. Like his father, he longed to sail the seas to gather wealth and taste adventure. Despite her pleading, the two set off to begin the eighth voyage. First, Sinbad took his son with him to the docks to gather a reliable crew. They found plenty of honest and faithful men who were eager to set out with the fabled Sinbad. After gathering enough supplies, the men sailed out with no idea where they would find themselves.

Sinbad had chosen a mighty ship, but she was not strong enough to last the force of a great sea storm. As the great waves pounded across the ship, the men were tossed back and forth. Many were thrown into the sea to perish. Provisions flew off the ship and broke apart in the ocean. Sinbad was not afraid, but clung to the mast and instructed his son to do the same. Catching some rope that flew past him, Sinbad tied himself to the mast. Before he could secure his son, the ship capsized. The dominant water swept his son away, carrying him far out of sight. Despite his cries, Sinbad was subject to the ocean’s whims as well. Still bound to the now broken mast, he bobbed across the vicious water for days until being spat out on the shore of a foreign island. After untangling himself from the wet rope and shattered wood, Sinbad rose to study his new surroundings. Continue reading The 8th Voyage of Sindbad: #2 →

Al Qaeda in Yemen

"Arab Spring", Film and Video, Journalism and Media, Terrorism Issue, Yemen


Frontline aired an interesting program on Al Qaeda in Yemen last night. It features the Iraqi journalist Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, who was able to visit the towns of Jaar and Azzam in southern Yemen, both as they were controlled by Ansar al-Sharia. It is clear from his reporting that some of the fighters are from outside Yemen, as he specifically mentions Somalis and Afghans. At the end of his report he visited Lawdar, where the local Yemeni tribesmen drove out the militants and are defending the town from them. The Yemeni tribes do not support either al Qaeda or Ansar al-Sharia, whose strict interpretation and high-handed ways go against tribal customary law. Although the government troops are currently suffering internal conflict, the days of Ansar al-Sharia are surely numbered. You can watch the program online.

An end to creationism?

Anthropology/Sociology, Bible and Holy Land, Environment


In Monday’s Washington Post there is a report that the paleoanthropologist Richard Leakey is predicting that in another 15-3o years the evidence for evolution will be so overwhelming that creationists who believe in a literal Adam and Eve (which includes about half of the American public, according to opinion polls) will finally throw in the towel. Would that it were so, but the evidence has been overwhelming for well over a hundred years. Every aspect of scientific discovery since Darwin rests on the assumption that life, and indeed all matter, has evolved over a process that involves millions of years. There is not a shred of evidence for the old Bishop Ussher chronology that it all began in a garden called Eden with a lump of clay, a serpent, a couple of symbolic trees and a refashioned rib; not a shred. Push back that divine origin story several thousand years and there is no difference.

If I am still around in another 15-35 years I do not expect the ardent creationists to be any less active. They continue because of an ideology that refuses to accept that the Bible is myth and not the inspired science and history of a rather old and unconvincing idea of God. Creationists do not approach science with an open mind, so they will not be convinced no matter what scientific evidence there is. The theology of the creationists has not changed. Take this old “history of the world” text book I have from the early part of the 19th century (the title page is missing, but the last information is for 1815). It may very well have been one of those books that Abraham Lincoln sought as a child for his own education. I include here the first section, which takes the sacred history of Genesis as real history. This was a book used in the public schools before Darwin published his revolutionary Origin of Species, not a religious tract. Science has come a long way, notwithstanding David Hume’s contributions not long before this book came out; creationists have not and never will.






How much more blood will be spilled?

"Arab Spring", Afghanistan, Arab-Israeli Conflict, Egypt, Iraq, Israel, Libya, Palestine, Syria, Tunisia


Painting of St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre by François Dubois, a Huguenot painter born circa 1529 in Amiens

Here in America summer is well on its way as most colleges have already finished their spring terms, public schools will in less than a month and the beaches start to fill up. People will complain about the high price of gas and brace themselves for an onslaught of political advertising in which billions of dollars that might have helped the poor abroad will be wasted on the media madness we foolishly think is democracy at its best. Forget the dream of “one man/woman, one vote” in a system where corporations and billionaires see if they can buy elections in our red state/blue state electorality.

In Egypt the first round of voting is over and what a choice: the Brotherhood candidate or the old regime hack. Damn those Brits for not letting Saad Zaghlul take Egypt into the 20th century. Imagine if the map drawn up after World War I on that infamous Churchillian napkin had actually given autonomy to the various ethnic groups, including the Kurds, in the region instead of mandating the old Ottoman precincts. The protests that erupted over a year ago just about everywhere have a long fuse. Yes, the last dictators have fallen in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt and Yemen. But the future in all these countries is full of potholes that the IMF will not be able to pave over; nor will Saudi billions make life all that much better for the millions of people suffering economic hardship more than ever.

And the blood keeps spilling, a flood only matched by the tears of those who mourn the dead. Continue reading How much more blood will be spilled? →