An Occidental Tourist Takes the Orient Express
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Dancer Hadia Transforms the Classics
by Kerry Sloan
What happens when the Middle East meets Mozart? Can Mussorgsky be Modest in a skimpy bra and belt?
I was about to find out on the “Orient Express”, a collaborative performance of oriental dancer Hadia, the Aiwa Arabic Dance Ensemble – and the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra.
On November 27, 2003, a packed house of novelty-seeking Calgarians filled the Jack Singer Concert Hall, one of the city’s most prestigious venues, to see their own Hadia’s acclaimed choreographic talents applied to Western classical music.
As I sat, ticket in hand, waiting for the “train” to depart, I admitted to feeling fairly skeptical. Was I about to witness the birth of an artistic monster – a pop pastiche of “East meets West”? Was I going to be subjected to the worst in trite orientalism?
The CPO’s promotional material had done nothing to allay my fears, using the words “sensual”, “exotic”, “allure” – even “magic carpet ride”.
However, I did feel some consolation in the knowledge that, if anyone could pull this show off with class, it would be Hadia, an internationally respected dancer and winner in 2000 of the coveted “Best Choreographer” award from the International Association of Middle Eastern Dance.
I glanced down at my program and scanned the offered repertoire – all oriental-inspired works composed between 1775 and 1920. Obviously, the European fascination with the Middle Orient was not a recent phenomenon. Hadia’s choreographic commission from the CPO was simply following tradition.
I also noted from the program that we wouldn’t be seeing the dancers until the second half. We were going to be put into an oriental mood – but gradually.
The orchestra began with two Turkish-influenced pieces by Mozart. First, the Overture from the opera The Abduction from the Seraglio, then the Violin Concerto No. 5 in A Major, with its famous “Turkish” Rondo, performed by the young and capable Canadian soloist Karen Gomyo.
Mozart wrote these two pieces during a period in which Vienna was occupied by the Ottomans – a number of times. The Viennese, despite their fears, seemed enamoured of all things Turkish: there were Turkish dress styles, Turkish hair-dos, Turkish stories, and what the Viennese thought of as Turkish music. “Turkish” military music was especially popular, perhaps suggesting the use of the triangle and the bass drum in the Overture, and the striding, angular phrases of the Rondo. Despite all this, I felt convinced I was still in Vienna.
Imagining myself on a pleasant Strasse, sipping coffee and indulging in Sachertorte, I was suddenly jarred eastward to a surreal street scene, to the garish strains of “In a Persian Market” by Albert Ketelbey.
The English silent movie score composer wrote a number of popular sentimental pieces, including this one, with its visions of carnivalesque camel-herders, snake charmers and slaves. The audience was cajoled into a sing-along, all the better to contribute to the bustle of the marketplace.
After the intermission, we were quite firmly back on European soil with a rousing rendition of Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 in C Minor, with its popular “exotic” allusions, this time to the music of the region’s Gypsies.
Evidently, we the audience were now primed for some real honest-to-goodness sensualism.
Still, not to rush or rouse us too much, the first dance was a cross-over number, Tchaikovsky’s “Arabian Dance” from his ballet The Nutcracker.
I surmised a synthesis of styles would be suited to Hadia, who has trained and performed throughout Turkey and the Middle East, and has also studied ballet, jazz and contemporary dance with the likes of Les Ballets Jazz du Montreal, Phil Black, Luigi and Alvin Ailey.
Evidently, the “Arabian Dance” has been performed before by Middle Eastern dancers, notably by Zari in 1998 at the Boston Conservatory.
Hadia’s rendition was graceful and balletic – and not overly oriental. She floated onstage in a white cabaret outfit and veil, and was slowly joined by members of her troupe flourishing their jewel-toned veils in tandem with surges in dynamics and tempo. Subtly interspersed with ballet and jazz moves were occasional hip drops, soft shimmies and gentle undulations. I felt I was in a pleasant dream, and for a moment forgot my interest in the East-West dichotomy.
I quickly snapped myself out of my reverie in contemplation of the poor Prince Ivan Khovansky, the subject of Modest Mussorgsky’s opera Khovanshchina (“The Khovansky Plot”). The ambitious prince, feeling comfortable and secure in his luxurious palace, orders his slave girls to dance for him. Such are the raptures of the “Dance of the Persian Slaves” that he becomes oblivious to a messenger warning of a plot against his life. He dies, of course.
Despite my disdain at such obsession with the powers of the exotic, I confess I was again transported by Hadia and her dancers – and by the choreography. Hadia is certainly adept at transforming the aural into the visual by accentuating melody, harmony and rhythm, and by capturing musical moods and styles. For the Mussorgsky piece, Hadia used melodic phrases, motifs and rhythmic accents to create “characters” for her slave dancers.
The melody was sinuously portrayed by Hadia. Two tall blonde dancers carrying veils aloft like banners flanked the troupe, providing foils for Hadia, as well as a frame for the other dancers and orchestra. A triad of dancers, in “doo-wap” fashion, minced in unison to ornamental motifs. Meanwhile, more characters flitted across the stage – a pink ballerina accompanying an airy melodic theme, and a blithe, folksy tambourine player highlighting percussive accents.
By this point I was wondering whether Prince Ivan might not have had his priorities straight after all. Oh dear.
Feeling a bit sheepish, I was relieved to be able to return to my original cynicism with Carl Neilsen’s Aladdin Suite, which was originally intended as incidental music for a Danish stage setting of Aladdin and was first perfomed in 1919. It was variously menacing, frenzied, nostalgic and swashbuckling. In other words, more vaguely exotic popular entertainment.
The music for the evening’s finale was the “Bacchanale” from Saint-Saens’ opera Samson and Delilah, which seemed fitting, as the composer was born in Paris and died in Algiers.
The “Bacchanale” takes place inside the Temple of Dagon, where pagan worshippers revel in preparation for a sacrifice. The oriental theme is one of unrestrained sensuality and hedonism. And, typically, because no one can have too much fun, the revellers are eventually punished, with the prurient onlookers feeling chastened and somehow absolved.
Saint-Saens employs pseudo-eastern scales, prominent augmented second intervals, and a great deal of crashing percussion, supposedly evocative of sensual abandon and barbarism.
This was by far the most heady and intense of the dances, and definitely the most bellydance-like of the three. It was also a showcase for Hadia’s choreographic talents in highlighting musical device, evoking mood and creating story.
The “Bacchanale” began with quick-moving, energetic “worshippers”, arrayed in red and black peasant-style costumes, creating a mood of excitement and anticipation. Enter “goddess” Hadia, undulating and spinning langourously, her sensual yet muted costume setting her apart from the brightly-clad minions. At other moments, ranks of dancers performed a ritual of repetitive head slides while a sinuous oboe theme piped on.
At one point, a number of the dancers moved coyly through the audience, as if to solicit more followers.
In the last moments of bacchanalic bliss, the troupe formed a chorus line, and then, as Hadia returned from the aisles, her devotees enclosed her in a circle of ecstatic worship. Suddenly, she took the form of an avenger, perhaps of an angry Dagon or of Samson, and she scattered her dancers, charging at them and waving her arms to great crashes of sound. The scene ended with all dancers falling to the floor as the “temple” crumbled down around them.
The audience, obviously mesmerized, exploded into applause. Luckily, no divine punishment was visited on the hall, which left it available for the second performance of “Orient Express” on November 29.
As the dancers returned for their third curtain call, I realized that what I had witnessed was neither East nor West, or some bastardized combination of the two, but the workings of choreographic imagination. The music itself may have portrayed a romanticized version of the Near East, but ironically it was the dance which redeemed it by embodying it as universal art.
As Conductor Susan Haig told audience members in an informal talk after the performance, she was initially apprehensive about working with “bellydancers”, but her worries quickly vanished when she realized, “The choreography brought the music to life”.
Members of the Aiwa Arabic Dance Ensemble performing with Hadia and the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra were Alexandra Braginsky, Jumanah, Nim Khan, Christine Maurette, Holly McWilliams, Jess Rozon and Anna Samuelson.