I stand stiffened like the 1980s Barbie, watching others gracefully glide across the glinting black floors of Downtown Cairo’s Falaki Theater.
“Don’t dance,” says choreographer and artistic director Mohamed Shafik. “Draw first and the dance will come later.”
I’m doing a two-week course, organized by Studio Emad Eddin. I was attracted by the title: The Monkey Fish Dance Workshop.
Most of the other 16 or so participants seem to have dance experience and know each other from previous Studio Emad Eddin classes. They’re confident and slender with crazy hair, and feel comfortable enough to wander around in their underwear before class starts. Some seem to be wearing old pajamas.
Fortunately Shafik, in his mid-thirties and not unattractive, is an experienced dancer, fun and charismatic, creative but organized.
First there had been a one-hour warm-up introduction, where we rolled on the floor like fish in a frying pan. After, we had to imagine we were submerged in a meter-deep pool and could only breath once on the surface, and once on the surface we had to say what we had done that morning, then dive again.
Now we have to imagine we are drawing with our hands, legs and heads underwater, which very effectively makes us appear like a group of dancing zombies roaming around the stage.
“I want people to open up to the newness of contemporary dance, so I am creating new channels of physical expression through familiar activities, such as drawing, clapping and diving,” explains Shafik. “I want them to dance through other familiar activities.”
By the fourth day — it runs from 5 to 9 pm four days a week — he introduces pairing and stage combat. Suddenly it seems as if the stage is besieged by a bunch of livid quarreling apes.
“I had a speaking impairment as a child and dance was my outlet,” he says, explaining why dance is a lifestyle and a tool of expression for him.
He started his career as a dancer in the early 1990s, at the National Company for Folk Dance, then the modern dance company at the Opera House. In 2002, he founded his own company, Homma for contemporary dance, and has performed locally and internationally, alongside teaching at the School of Modern Dance at Cairo’s Creativity Center.
Shafik says his workshop method is inspired by research carried out by dancers Jozef Frucek and Linda Kapetanea. He feels that monkeys and fish embody his own dance technique.
“It combines the flexibility, slothfulness and lightness of a fish in the water, with the energy, the drive and aggression of a monkey jumping between trees,” he explains.
The results are earthy, recognizable, free dance routines that not only resemble the dynamics of the forest and the sea but also that of eating dinner at a low tableya, with one movement consisting of sitting down and standing up by leaning only on the palms of your hands and the sides of your legs — not the knees — just how we sit at or leave a tableya.
The aim of most of the exercises is to create new situations for the body to move and react — new uses for hands and little competitions with gravity.
“Draw with your hands, feet and heads,” Shafik tells the herd, “and maybe your body will pick up a move it didn’t know.”
The work is floor-based to stress links with earth, which the fish monkey technique is consequence and reaction to. The results aren’t graceful, but who said graceful was part of monkey fish equation? It’s expressive and existential. Dance is merged in our daily lives and relationships, we’re told, so whatever is fashioned onstage is the result of the sociopolitical, psychological and emotional state of the dancer.
“Don’t be afraid to touch the floor and get covered in dust, this is not a ballroom dance,” yells Shafik. “You will get dirty!”
The vibe among participants is good: A certain cockiness can be sensed from the more experienced, and they’re always used by Shafik to demonstrate how a move should be done.
As for me, I’m utilized to show how a move could go so wrong it could potentially hurt you, especially as at the beginning I avoided touching the dusty floors and was afraid for the wellbeing of my designer jeans. Such sentiments soon fizzled.
I’m enjoying the LE300 workshop a lot, despite being slightly intimidated by the other dancers. The moves are tough and need stamina. I’m a pretty stiff person, so I consider the whole experience a fun chance to exercise, but I believe a dancer would benefit a lot.
Shafik will lead a three-month workshop at Hanager in January (with a show at the end), but it will tackle contemporary dance basics — although I’m sure the fish monkey technique will come into it.
