To quote the Egyptian proverb: “Life is like the Ghawazee, the Gypsy dancers from Upper Egypt, who dance but an instant for each and all.” Leila Haddad, the high priestess of oriental dance, traces the steps of these little-known dancers, so wise in the ways of life. Accompanied by Gypsy musicians from the Nile, she treads in the paths they wandered, which lead from India to Egypt, sweeping on into the legends of memory in Turkey, Greece, Iran, Jordan, Lebanon, Bulgaria, Spain, and North Africa.

Dance is a traveller, setting out from Rajasthan in Northern India some time in the 4th century AD. The routes it took crossed in Upper Egypt, where it drew deeply on the mythical Nile as a source, before moving on to nourish the roots of all the world’s profane dance forms – including modern dance, which surged forth in the early twentieth century.

The Gypsies of Egypt go with the wind, driven by the original, travelling spirits of Dance and Music. Yet today’s world seems to deny the large Gypsy presence in the Eastern Mediterranean and its immemorial ties with music and dance.

In this new creation Leila Haddad stages a dialogue between two of dance’s staging posts on its travels over time. They are the Ghawazee dances of Upper Egypt and those of the Kalbeliyas in Rajasthan. The roving subconscious of the epic Rom voyagers has woven its far-flung invisible fabric.

Accompanied by seven Egyptian Gypsy musicians, Leila Haddad has created a work that takes the form of a challenge between dance and trance.

Improvisation only guides the music of the virtuoso masters from Upper Egypt, who hover on the brink of the ecstatic trance state known as tarab, which suddenly breaks through when least expected. Leila Haddad’s pure, deeply learned solo performance follows the music’s twists and whims in a choreography that shifts like the spirit presiding over each evening’s performance.

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