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Canberra Today 14°/19° | Friday, March 29, 2024 | Digital Edition | Crossword & Sudoku

A dance of grace

"Alchemy" at Belconnen Arts Centre.

BELCONNEN Arts Centre recently hosted a very distinctive artist-in-residence, the Egyptian dancer-choreographer Suraya Hilal and her group of artists.

With the overall title of “Alchemy”, Hilal staged a closing weekend of performances at the centre on October 15 and 16, that gave some indication of the work they had been undertaken during the residency.

This work has little in common with the belly-dancing seen in Egyptian popular cinema.

Here, the pelvic region is not the main location, but rather the head and shoulders are used in dignified swirling movements that will inevitably be traced to the dervishes of Sufism.

Hilal Dance, conceived in 2000, is the title Hilal has given to an organic system of dance rooted in Arab/Egyptian culture, but translated into a contemporary idiom.

The movement is centred on three concepts, Pendulum, Scissors and Spiral and guided by the Arab concepts of harmony of opposites and the balance of creative energy.

For a lay audience like that in Canberra, such attempts to redefine the Egyptian aesthetic may have been elusive.

The first work was Mizmar, whose name is taken from a distinctive Egyptian reed instrument not unlike the Shehnai of  India.

Here, the whirling, flowing movements were most arresting, with choreographer Sarah Hamilton, an electric presence on the stage, leading the dancers in serene, graceful movements round and round.

A distinctive aesthetic feature of this dance was the flattened hand movement, quite unlike popular Egyptian dance.

The second choreographic work was “Origins,” devised in the Hilal dance classical style by  Melbourne artist Rachel Hilton and intended to evoke images of evolution.

Here, the dancers moved quietly to a fusion of Egyptian oud music by Joseph Tawadros and Indian tabla by Bobby Singh.

In this dance, the most remarkable elements were walking movements, especially the retreating walk.

The final work of the program, “Alchemy,” choreographed and danced by Hilal herself with five dancers, gave us a glimpse of the suppressed internal feeling and energy that this graceful dance form can reveal.

Interspersed with the dance was sophisticated live percussion work played by Marianthe Loucataris.

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Ian Meikle, editor

Helen Musa

Helen Musa

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