Gabi

Woo - so much better. I do believe part of what I don't like about her dancing is her upper body, shoulder, spine and neck - it's rigid.

Aisha Azar

Dear Group,
Gabi's is an astute observation since Nagwa Fouad has had spinal surgery and has some fused bones in her spine. She has a rather largish dent in her upper back from it.
Regards,
A'isha

Gabi

Son of a drum !!! That totally explains it including what I felt where kind of awkward transitions from one position to another in the first clip.

I'm impressed with the surgery and her ability to keep going, g

Moon

That indeed is hard to see!
Thanks

Mariesaffron

I love the music in this clip, I am asking if some one knows the name of the artist or the song, I am reffering to the first clip, it is a classic, thanks Yasmine for this wonderfull piece. Marie

Aisha Azar

Dear Mari,
If you mean the first song in the original clip, it is called Ali Lows. I can't remember who does it, if I ever knew.
Regards,
A'isha

sedoniaraqs

I have never quite figured out if I like or dislike Nagua's dancing. I guess I really like certain things she does, but don't care for her overall presentation. In the second clip where she is in the white costume, I really don't like her intro at all. Those arabesque steps just seem, as someone said, clunky and graceless. I tend to like her more in the middle of her performance where she perhaps forgets about her over the top theatrics and gets down to some dancing. I also like her back and forth shimmies -- still trying to produce one of those A'isha when you get those down pat you can come up here and teach me

Another thing I have noticed about Nagua is that her arms are extraordinarily long in proportion to her body. Watch when she has them straight out or down to her sides.

She is also extremely one sided, probably the most extreme of all the Egyptian dancers, to the point that it looks to me like she cannot even do a simple hip drop on her non-dominant side, or even maintain the integrity of a hip circle -- they always poop out on the non-dominant side or she just doesn't finish them.

Sedonia

Shanazel

Judging a dancer from the mid-twentieth century by the tastes and standards of today does both the judge and the dancer a disservice. If you watch movies of Olympic Gold ice skaters from the 1940s-1960s, you will see some of the same things in them that are being mentioned about Nagwa here, including a kind of gracelessness and lack of polish that we have come to expect in both modern belly dancers and ice skaters. In order to truly appreciate a dancer (or ice skater) from another era, you have to take into consideration the era itself, and where the art form was at that time, what things were important to dancers and audiences then, as opposed to what is important now.

Gabi

This is very true, however, I find her to have certain attributes that I don't like compared to other dancers of her era - that's much personal taste I would think *shrug*.

She may indeed be qualified to judge dance and this also, as we have seen in figure skating and gymnastics can be wildly varied in the final opinion. Regardless of the judging ability or qualifications I would hope for a dignified and polite demeanor without arbitrary body language or other comments.

sedoniaraqs

Just for clarification, I'm not judging her against the Dina, Jillina, or the belly dance superstars. However, to me, in comparison with her contemporaries (Mona el Saiid, Sohair Zaki, Fifi Abdu, just to mention a few) she often looks graceless. I have never seen Fifi or Mona look graceless.

Sedonia