![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alonewiththemoonMy left calf muscles are still screaming at me from Tuesday's physical therapy and dance class. It's definitely getting better, but it still rather feels like somebody is driving a large nail into the back of my leg, exactly right here. I can see some broken blood vessels as well. Will have to have a talk with the PT about this when I go back next Tuesday. My foot feels ok, but this isn't really an acceptable trade off...
I did dance last night, because with two shows coming up next weekend I don't really have any choice. Most things don't really hurt *while* I am dancing, it's only afterwards that the soreness sets in, despite stretching and ice. So it's hard to gauge how much is too much. I danced more than I meant to, an hour instead of 15-20 minutes. It was productive, though. And even if my calf is sore, I am happy to note that after several backbend-into-drops my quads and psoas are just fine. Still, I really have to watch it. Good thing I scaled back my performing when I did. Though even without the Middle East in my schedule, I've got six or seven confirmed dates between now and the end of May.
In totally different news, here's a review of the Egyptian movie Salimle Ala Susu (Regards to Susu)
Salimle Ala Susu is the story of two young Egyptian men who get jobs as court ushers, work that entails tracking down people who are having lawsuits brought against them and serving them with papers. Apparently, court ushers take a lot of abuse in Egyptian society and bear the brunt of people's anger at being sued. But still, it's a job, and they try to take it seriously--so seriously that they make the other ushers who take bribes look bad, and worse yet, they have a habit of resolving people's problems so that the lawsuits are canceled and then the court doesn't get to collect any fees. They are somewhat hoodwinked into becoming corrupt, partly through the influence of Susu, a belly dancer played by Hayatem, but mostly through the influence of a corrupt politician/bureaucrat. I'm not sure when it was made, but judging by the clothing and hair styles I'd guess mid-80s.
I had ordered this film because I have some other footage of Hayatem doing some Saidi stuff in which she is as cute as a button and wanted to see more. She's a bit older when this movie was made, but in her two dance scenes she has a wonderful baladi (urban baladi, so I guess shaabi) style, nothing flashy but supremely confident and earthy sexy. The scenes are short, but I enjoyed them. Her character was rather Mae West like and very funny--she was a good actress.
I was very interested in the social background to the film, something I don't think I would have understood at all without having read "A Trade Like Any Other" and various novels by Naguib Mahfouz, the Nobel Prize winning Egyptian author. Susu dances in a nightclub, making her definitely seedy in the eyes of proper society, but in a couple of scenes, she alludes to the fact that her body is not for sale, saying that the club owner doesn't buy her as part of her dance contract. So we get the sense that Susu, although a dancer, is not as bad a woman as she might be. In a conversation with the crooked politician, an old friend of hers (who she refuses to marry), an old neighborhood is referred to as having been destroyed when they were children and their lives having been destroyed as a result. This is where reading Mahfouz gave me insight into the importance of the neighborhood/alleyway in Cairo's cultural and social makeup. I'm reaching, but I'm imagining that there was some veiled criticism of the government there for ruining people's lives by razing neighborhoods in the name of progress and forcing them to become crooked men or immoral belly dancers. Well, given the entire topic of the film, in which good boys get corrupted by working for the government, perhaps it's not that much of a reach at all.
In the end, the young men get in lots of hot water all around, wacky shenanigans and romantic comedy ensues, and they happily decide to quit Cairo and go to the countryside to become farmers, where they will be poorer but can live honest lives. And who helps them to do this? Susu, who turns on her old friend the crooked politician. She even drives the young men out to the countryside, directly enabling them to leave Cairo and start anew. So again we see that although she is a belly dancer and a terrible tease to all the men around her, she is a good woman at heart who only wants what is best for those around her. She reminded me of the gadaa concept outlined in A Trade Like Any Other, a word often translated as macho but as it can also be applied to women, that doesn't seem entirely correct. Somebody who is gadaa is strong (she won't sell her body), independent (she won't get married, and she can drive), generally a well off business person (she has a lovely apartment and apparently her own car) and good to the less fortunate (she helps the young men). Again, I'm reaching, but I wonder if she is supposed to be a sort of Mother Egypt, Umm Misr, definitely down on her luck and making some compromises but trying to make those compromises on her own terms, Egypt entering the modern world. That is probably reading entirely too much into a piece of fluffy entertainment, but OTOH, sometimes fluffy entertainment is the only way to get a real message across when censors abound.
There's also a subplot about a lecherous butcher who wants to marry the fiancee of one of the young men. He's already got three wives and families but says he is willing to cast them all aside for the new woman's sake. Her mother wants her to marry the butcher, saying yes, he's gross and I'm sorry, but I want you to be financially secure, that's more important than love. Doesn't take much to read social-political commentary into any of that, things like upholding responsibilities even when faced with shiny new toys, not selling out your ideals for money.
I'm currently working my way through the very long Egyptian movie "A Man in Our House" about the revolution against the monarchy. It's a big classic of Egyptian cinema. I will have a lot to say about that one.
I did dance last night, because with two shows coming up next weekend I don't really have any choice. Most things don't really hurt *while* I am dancing, it's only afterwards that the soreness sets in, despite stretching and ice. So it's hard to gauge how much is too much. I danced more than I meant to, an hour instead of 15-20 minutes. It was productive, though. And even if my calf is sore, I am happy to note that after several backbend-into-drops my quads and psoas are just fine. Still, I really have to watch it. Good thing I scaled back my performing when I did. Though even without the Middle East in my schedule, I've got six or seven confirmed dates between now and the end of May.
In totally different news, here's a review of the Egyptian movie Salimle Ala Susu (Regards to Susu)
Salimle Ala Susu is the story of two young Egyptian men who get jobs as court ushers, work that entails tracking down people who are having lawsuits brought against them and serving them with papers. Apparently, court ushers take a lot of abuse in Egyptian society and bear the brunt of people's anger at being sued. But still, it's a job, and they try to take it seriously--so seriously that they make the other ushers who take bribes look bad, and worse yet, they have a habit of resolving people's problems so that the lawsuits are canceled and then the court doesn't get to collect any fees. They are somewhat hoodwinked into becoming corrupt, partly through the influence of Susu, a belly dancer played by Hayatem, but mostly through the influence of a corrupt politician/bureaucrat. I'm not sure when it was made, but judging by the clothing and hair styles I'd guess mid-80s.
I had ordered this film because I have some other footage of Hayatem doing some Saidi stuff in which she is as cute as a button and wanted to see more. She's a bit older when this movie was made, but in her two dance scenes she has a wonderful baladi (urban baladi, so I guess shaabi) style, nothing flashy but supremely confident and earthy sexy. The scenes are short, but I enjoyed them. Her character was rather Mae West like and very funny--she was a good actress.
I was very interested in the social background to the film, something I don't think I would have understood at all without having read "A Trade Like Any Other" and various novels by Naguib Mahfouz, the Nobel Prize winning Egyptian author. Susu dances in a nightclub, making her definitely seedy in the eyes of proper society, but in a couple of scenes, she alludes to the fact that her body is not for sale, saying that the club owner doesn't buy her as part of her dance contract. So we get the sense that Susu, although a dancer, is not as bad a woman as she might be. In a conversation with the crooked politician, an old friend of hers (who she refuses to marry), an old neighborhood is referred to as having been destroyed when they were children and their lives having been destroyed as a result. This is where reading Mahfouz gave me insight into the importance of the neighborhood/alleyway in Cairo's cultural and social makeup. I'm reaching, but I'm imagining that there was some veiled criticism of the government there for ruining people's lives by razing neighborhoods in the name of progress and forcing them to become crooked men or immoral belly dancers. Well, given the entire topic of the film, in which good boys get corrupted by working for the government, perhaps it's not that much of a reach at all.
In the end, the young men get in lots of hot water all around, wacky shenanigans and romantic comedy ensues, and they happily decide to quit Cairo and go to the countryside to become farmers, where they will be poorer but can live honest lives. And who helps them to do this? Susu, who turns on her old friend the crooked politician. She even drives the young men out to the countryside, directly enabling them to leave Cairo and start anew. So again we see that although she is a belly dancer and a terrible tease to all the men around her, she is a good woman at heart who only wants what is best for those around her. She reminded me of the gadaa concept outlined in A Trade Like Any Other, a word often translated as macho but as it can also be applied to women, that doesn't seem entirely correct. Somebody who is gadaa is strong (she won't sell her body), independent (she won't get married, and she can drive), generally a well off business person (she has a lovely apartment and apparently her own car) and good to the less fortunate (she helps the young men). Again, I'm reaching, but I wonder if she is supposed to be a sort of Mother Egypt, Umm Misr, definitely down on her luck and making some compromises but trying to make those compromises on her own terms, Egypt entering the modern world. That is probably reading entirely too much into a piece of fluffy entertainment, but OTOH, sometimes fluffy entertainment is the only way to get a real message across when censors abound.
There's also a subplot about a lecherous butcher who wants to marry the fiancee of one of the young men. He's already got three wives and families but says he is willing to cast them all aside for the new woman's sake. Her mother wants her to marry the butcher, saying yes, he's gross and I'm sorry, but I want you to be financially secure, that's more important than love. Doesn't take much to read social-political commentary into any of that, things like upholding responsibilities even when faced with shiny new toys, not selling out your ideals for money.
I'm currently working my way through the very long Egyptian movie "A Man in Our House" about the revolution against the monarchy. It's a big classic of Egyptian cinema. I will have a lot to say about that one.
