World Dance Heritage

Moving from the 1990s to the 2000s From the early 1990s, there has been a decline in the number of big Raqs sharqi stars in Egypt and the Middle East, for a variety of reasons, as discussed. Since then, Raqs sharqi has almost disappeared from Egyptian movies; many of...

Dance Sociological Analysis Looking at Table 31, there do not seem to be many new movements being developed in this timeframe. There are the oldest kinemes, plus the more recent ones that have, by now, become part of the movement vocabulary and various allokines. A...

About Mona al Said Biographical information about Mona al Said (منى السعيد ) is available from an article written by El Safy (1996) and from Mona’s own website (El Said, no date). She was born in Suez Canal and loved dancing folkloric dances at school. It was not...

Dance Movements Analysis Table 39 below summarizes the movements noticed in this time frame. The only new kineme I have noticed is the heel stomps, lifting and lowering both heels at the same time once, to stress an accent in the music. Most of the innovations instead...

Men Performing Raqs Sharqi I have not found any videos of men performing Egyptian Raqs sharqi to analyze, dating back to before the late 1990s/early 2000s. Back in the early days of Raqs sharqi, even though Badia Masabni stated that, in her troupe, ‘we also had men...

Non-Egyptian Influences As mentioned by Dina at the end of the previous section, the musicians, the feeling and the heart of Raqs sharqi are still in Egypt. This is why many Raqs sharqi practitioners (those who want to discover the roots of this dance) from around the...

Table 15 includes a comparison of the movements used by the three most famous dancers of the golden age. Kinemes All three use isolations of the hips, torso and shoulders and a clear movement vocabulary of Raqs sharqi is already established at this stage. Following...

1950s in Egypt and Egyptian Culture In the 1950s in Egypt, after the 1952 revolution, the government encouraged a renewed interest in Egyptian culture, particularly in the late 1950s. It was in this political and cultural environment that the Ministry of Culture...

Introduction to Naima Akef Naima Akef (نعيمة عاكف) was also an innovator in the field of Raqs sharqi, because of her training and background and she was very influential for future generations of Raqs sharqi practitioners. The famous Egyptian dancer Nagwa Fouad...