Mille et une danses orientales

Moktar Ladjimi tells the story of eastern dance along with critics and creative performers (Leïla Haddad, Fifi Abdou, Nagwa Foved), illustrated with various extracts.

I’m not sure we should be delighted with the Western world’s current infatuation for oriental dance, considers Moktar Ladjimi, the director of this film. While this dance (whose golden age, particularly in Egypt, is a thing of the past) is now only really performed in shows of naked bodies intended for the international clientele of luxury hotels, its origin dates back to time immemorial. 

Surrounded by scholars, critics and creative and lucid dancers (Leïla Haddad, Fifi Abdou, Nagwa Foved), Moktar Ladjimi traces this history and illustrates it with many film extracts. Sacred in ancient Egypt, this dance, of which Salome is the key figure, was a powerful source of inspiration for Hollywood in the 1920s and 1930s: from Ruth Saint-Denis, Marlene Dietrich, and Rita Hayworth, to Loïe Fuller, whose intensive use of veils would become the Hollywood hallmark of oriental dance. In the 1950s, we return to Egypt with the success of musicals and the magnificent art of Samia Gamal with her interminable arms. Half a century later, it would seem that the future of oriental dance requires a return to its roots.

Source : Fabienne Arvers