Quote:
Originally Posted by adiemus
A'isha, I don't think it's the costuming and music - although the music influences the dance - looking at what people here are saying, and reviewing some of the videos, it seems to be more than that. I think it's that 'modern' seems more of a 'performance', although having said that, the majority of YouTube footage of earlier dancers is from movies, and I wonder how choreographed their work is.
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Yes, you can put on a full skirt and bra and some Mohamad Abdul Wahab but the resulting performance may not be in the classical style. Ditto, mini skirt and bike shorts won't turn you into Dina.
One of the drawbacks from trying to learn by YouTube! Basically classical Egyptian is Golden Age ie pre 1952 - therefore basically only known through their movie clips. Some continued to dance in this style for some time. There are a number of DVD collections out there of Golden Age dancers eg Hossam's "Stars of Egypt" (TM
) and one starting with "m" - Moti? which I think has a better range of material.
Now these guys were all about "performance" - they were performing for a camera after all (and with at least choreographed entrances and exits - although some were more tightly choreographed) - so I'm not sure how Modern Egyptian is
more performance orientated. If anything, you seem to get more internalized emotion - but I'm, working from videos and DVDs so the selection of pieces compared with YouTube might be very different.