This week’s diatribe has its genesis in my propensity to appreciate the golden age of Egyptian cinema, namely the period between the 1940s and 1950s.
These classy films, featuring glamorous ladies in voluminous dresses and dapper, tuxedo-clad men sporting manly fezzes, whose courting of them was punctuated by the dramatic modulations of a string orchestra, responded to the popular imagination, with most falling into predictable genre of dire straits followed by a happy ending, with a few oriental dance routines featuring undulating bellies and rippling muscles under soft skin thrown in for good measure.
It was while looking for one particularly antiquated belly dance scene on the internet, that I came across a posting which stated: “Can anyone provide me with the name of this movie? I think that the belly dancer is my Greek great grandmother and that she changed her name and appeared in this movie without her parents’ knowledge?” That great grandmother, as it turned out, was Farida Mazar Spyropoulos, a Syrian-born Greek who, absorbingly, was a pioneer in the popularisation of Oriental dance in Eastern film.
Having performed in a number of early Egyptian silent movies in 1893, she appeared at the Egyptian Theatre on the World’s Columbian Exposition Midway in Chicago as part of a show entitled ‘The Algerian Dancers of Morocco’ at the attraction called ‘A Street in Cairo’ which included Spyropoulos, though she was neither Egyptian nor Algerian, but Syrian. Spyropoulos was billed as Fatima, but because of her size, she had been called “Little Egypt” as a backstage nickname. Spyropoulos stole the show, and popularised this form of dancing, which came to be referred to as the “Hoochee-Coochee”, or the “shimmy and shake”.
At that time the word ‘bellydance’ had not yet entered the American vocabulary, as Spyropoulos was the first in the United States to demonstrate the dance of the belly, first seen by the French during Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt. Subsequent to this performance, several women dancers adopted the name of Little Egypt and toured the United States performing some variation of this dance, until the name became somewhat synonymous with oriental dancers.
Asserting her identity as the true Little Egypt, Spyropoulos performed her trademark dance at the 1933 Century of Progress in Chicago at the age of 62. Other performers of Greek background also tantalisingly pepper the history of this most ancient art. Nelly Mazloum, an Egpytian actress, dancer and choreographer whose origin was from Asia Minor, taught ballet, modern dance, folkloric Egyptian dances and artistic oriental dance and looms large on the Egyptian scene. Known for her sense of humour, she is famous in Egypt for her role in the movie Ibn Hamidu. Born in Alexandria, to an affluent family, Mazloum suffered from paralysis of the legs at the age of two and walked again after years of loving care by a paediatrician and his wife, a ballet teacher. At the age of five, she auditioned at the theatre and started a dance career as a child prodigy, from 1939 to 1945, working in two shows a day, all year: in Alexandria in the summer months, in Cairo during the winter. She also danced at the famous Opera Casino, run where the oriental dance greats of the day generally launched their careers, performing for King Farouk. In 1939 the 10 year-old Mazloum appeared on her first film, I Prosfygopoula, a Greek language movie starring Sophie Vembo, followed in 1940 by Ben Nareen. During the 1940s and ’50s Mazloum reached the apogee of her career, starring in about 17 films.
She also ran a successful ballet school, which provided young artists for the National Opera of Cairo. Nelly Mazloum also made lasting contributions to Egyption ethnography and folkloric studies. As her daughter relates: “My father was very rich, the owner of a candy factory. He didn’t want my mother to dance, so she stopped performing and concentrated on research. Although her main training was in ballet, she never missed a chance to learn Egyptian dance forms. When I was small I remember we visited my father’s sweet factory and when there was a festivity, we watched the girls dance to music from the radio. Outside the building there was a cul-de-sac where these poor people always held their weddings, borrowing the tables from the factory.
Moreover, she took the car and chauffeur and went around to watch people in their original surroundings, Bedouin marriages in the desert etc… “She travelled the whole country for many years, from the desert to the villages, souks, cities, always looking for new dance movements.
During her visits to the rich Egyptian ladies, on the other hand, she would watch their dance too: a different sort of dance, more refined… “She absorbed it all. An avid reader, she never visited a bookstore without coming home with 30-40 books. She once took a whole year to study books in the National Egyptian Museum, looking for descriptions of dances and costumes in ancient times.” During the sixties, Mazloum explored and pioneered such experimental dance styles as pharaonic dance and veiled “desert dance”. In 1962, her company participated in the Helsinki International Youth Festival, where she was awarded the Silver Medal for her folkloric dances Al Ghazl, representing the weaving of the bridal veil. She became the official choreographer of the Cairo Opera, for opera and operetta productions, choreographing, among others, Mahr el Aroussa (The bride’s dowry) in 1963, the first all-Arabic classical operetta. In 1964 a change of government policy and a slander campaign in the press saw Mazloum leave Egypt and migrate to Greece, founding the Athens International School where, again, she taught ballet and modern dance and died in 2003. Nonetheless, her contribution to oriental dance and its study is incalculable.
Other remarkable and yet largely forgotten Greek- Egyptian women have also made contributions in related fields. Marina Papaelia was Miss Egypt and represented Egypt in the 1953 Miss World pageant, whereas Antigone Costanda, representing Egypt, was the winner of the Miss World beauty pageant in 1954. Winning the competition further assisted her to reach the top of her profession, becoming a successful model in the Middle East, France, Italy and Greece. Her career in later years moved into interior design; she ran a company designing the interior of business buildings and was one of the judges at the Miss Egypt 2006 contests. What is most fascinating about the careers of these remarkably talented women is that they emerged and wove their web of mystery at a time when their sisters in Greece were comparatively unemancipated and generally unable to aspire to similar pursuits.
Contemporaneously, Greek female migrants in Australia were struggling to find their place within the context of broader Australian society, and reconciling that with the traditional values and prejudices as to their role, transplanted from their homeland. In Egypt, we see a foretaste of what other migrant Greek communities can become: a fully integrated population, able to aspire to and achieve the pinnacle of any chosen path, and that, in the fifties. If there is a cautionary note, it is that, as the case of Egypt proves, the vicissitudes of politics and realpolitik and the inexorable dance of time, can spell an end to such endeavours more stealthily than can be imagined.
Until next week, an exhortation from the diatribist to keep dancing and this from Nelly Mazloum: “Archaic Dances still influence our moving center for they are rooted in the cosmic memory of our planet. They may disappear into the past but always find their way back to us through research work and spiritual identification.”
Dean Kalimniou is a Melbourne solicitor and a freelance writer.