CAIRO (AP) – Ballet dancer Fady el-Nabarawy feels he can finally breathe again the moment he enters the gates of the Cairo Opera House after a commute from his ramshackle, poor neighborhood. This is where he and his fellow dancers practice, perform, love and create.
“Every day, I cannot wait to come here. My oxygen is here,” he said.
Ballet is in its own bubble in Egypt, removed from the surrounding society. The elite Western art form is far from Egypt’s own rich traditions of classical Arabic music and dance, let alone the electro-beat sweeping the Arabic pop music scene. The country has grown more conservative, and in the eyes of some Muslims, ballet is outright “nudity.” Social pressure to conform is overpowering, so the idea of someone dancing on stage in tights strikes many Egyptians as just plain odd.
Still, the young men who found their passion dancing ballet are hardly isolated elites. They’re firmly rooted in the middle and lower-middle classes, managing to carve out their own Bohemian zone of diversity and creativity.
Ballet’s audience in Egypt may be limited, but it’s enthusiastic. On a recent night at the Opera House, located on an upscale residential island in the Nile River, the Cairo Ballet Company brought a packed house to its feet with a rousing performance of “Zorba,” a ballet based on the same novel as the movie “Zorba the Greek.”