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Yalla Fifi!
Feb. 10th, 2008 07:44 pmI just did the Saturday DVD of Fifi Abdo's workshop in Dallas last year, and OMG I am in love!!! The movements felt so completely right, I was smiling along in my living room all by myself. Both songs, the fast version of Tamra Henna from Jalilah's 3 and Saad's version of El Hantour, were already pretty familiar to me (oh lordy is Tamra Henna familiar to me), so I could really feel her interpretation. She never danced a song through the same way twice, so this is not a DVD for somebody looking for choreography, but if one is looking for solid baladi interpretations of a classic and a pop classic , then one need not look any further. This is something I will go back to again and again, especially when I need a shot of joy in my dancing. Many of the movements are simple*, but she uses them so effectively, and it's a good lesson for a Western dancer in how to slow down and not over complicate things. Plus it's a good opportunity to work on presentation and personality, which I think was really Fifi's goal for the workshop anyway, based on the things she was saying. In the immediately useful department, I was just thinking the other day that I should use some horsey movements in the baladi performance that I'll be doing more or less during the Kentucky Derby, and boy do I have some horsey movements now, after Fifi's El Hantour!
*sort of shocked by the number of people, judging from the questions, who were at a Fifi workshop but did not seem to know basic Egyptian movement vocabulary, but it makes me value Seyyide and Najmat all the more.
From a technical perspective it's not a perfect DVD; the voices are often difficult to hear (the music is loud and clear though, necessitating constant leaps for the volume buttons). It would be nice if Little Egypt could mike the stage somehow for workshops and not rely on the camera's microphone. And Fifi does do a lot of joking around, which as I understand it some workshop attendees found a time waster, but I found that nearly as educational as the dancing, because it's part of her whole persona that makes her dancing what it is.
Another benefit of this DVD is the use of the song Tamra Henna--Sarab danced to that song and I had that choreography drilled deeply into my head. That's the song that I came in as pinch-hitter for after I officially left the troupe. I love the song, and that version of it, very much but I couldn't break free of the choreo, muscle memory was just too strong. Dancing it through six or eight times differently every time with Fifi's less sharqi, more baladi interpretation I think has broken the choreography's spell over me!
Foot held up pretty well through all the dancing. I'm really yearning to get back to performing now!
*sort of shocked by the number of people, judging from the questions, who were at a Fifi workshop but did not seem to know basic Egyptian movement vocabulary, but it makes me value Seyyide and Najmat all the more.
From a technical perspective it's not a perfect DVD; the voices are often difficult to hear (the music is loud and clear though, necessitating constant leaps for the volume buttons). It would be nice if Little Egypt could mike the stage somehow for workshops and not rely on the camera's microphone. And Fifi does do a lot of joking around, which as I understand it some workshop attendees found a time waster, but I found that nearly as educational as the dancing, because it's part of her whole persona that makes her dancing what it is.
Another benefit of this DVD is the use of the song Tamra Henna--Sarab danced to that song and I had that choreography drilled deeply into my head. That's the song that I came in as pinch-hitter for after I officially left the troupe. I love the song, and that version of it, very much but I couldn't break free of the choreo, muscle memory was just too strong. Dancing it through six or eight times differently every time with Fifi's less sharqi, more baladi interpretation I think has broken the choreography's spell over me!
Foot held up pretty well through all the dancing. I'm really yearning to get back to performing now!
