Local dancers collaborate with choreographer Tomeo Verges for D-CAF

While sitting in downtown Cairo’s Studio Emad Eddin, Tomeo Verges says laughingly, “I am a butcher’s son. I am a doctor. I am also a choreographer.”

The leading Catalonian choreographer was finalizing three performances which premiered in Egypt through the Downtown Contemporary Arts Festival.

“I have spent my life dealing closely with flesh, meat and movement, all of which can be seen within my productions,” explained Verges, while telling the dancers to “take five”— performance code for “take a break.”

“Traffic,” which showed in a shop vitrine on Mahmoud Basiony Street playfully explores the relationship between the individual and the group, with performers mechanically repeating gestures and movements typical of traffic police. The audience were left to wonder if the traffic guards would ever be able to organize the chaos.

“Traffic” featured four local dancers, Mohamed Fouad, Sherine Hegazy, Raafat El Bayoumi and Ahmed El Gendy, all of whom are known to be budding artists within Egypt’s contemporary dance scene, particularly for their work within public spaces.

For his second performance “Only Happiness?” Verges worked with two local performers on a localized adaptation of the performance, which features Sandrine Maisonneuve.

The 35-minute performance is based on a monologue from the play “Interior Murders,” where a woman performs, repeats and transforms a sequence of daily actions into a metronome rhythm. Although caught up in a “social straitjacket,” the woman fights back and forth with an image she imposes on herself, causing an onset of cliches and the emergence of grotesque images, until she reaches utter exhaustion.

“There is no direct message in this piece,” explains Verges. “It is open to the spectator’s interpretation and associations.”

Read more of our interview with leading choreographer Tomeo Verges here. 

Quick on the Draw with Amro Selim

Amro Selim is not the first Egyptian cartoonist, and he certainly does not want to be the last. In addition to his continuous creative outpouring, Selim has almost single-handedly paved the way for a new generation of cartoonists to blossom and rise to the forefront of the scene.

With the re-launch of Al-Dostour newspaper in 2005, Selim, along with the paper’s former editor-in-chief, Ibrahim Eissa, triggered a boom at a time when the state’s security apparatus tried to maintain its strong grip on all media outlets.

Here, Selim talks through the developments of cartooning in Egypt and the fine line cartoonists navigate between revolutionary positions, a controlling political regime and a culturally sensitive public.

Read the rest of our interview with political cartoonist Amro Selim here. 

Tok Tok launches its seventh issue

“Tok Tok,” Egypt’s first magazine dedicated to comic book art for grown-ups, recently launched its seventh issue at the Townhouse Gallery’s Factory Space. The theme of the issue was women, and subjects ranged from domestic violence, sexual harassment and rape to desire and the consumerist lifestyle of a new type of middle-class Egyptian.

The theme was a welcome but perhaps unexpected one for a publication, and indeed a genre, mostly dominated by male artists.

The event also celebrated the publication of the fourth issue of “Ninth Art,” a newspaper-sized monthly bulletin of comics art.

Unlike previous “Tok Tok” launches, which have involved video, gigantic poster versions of selected frames from the comics stories, collaborative drawing performances, and an “Are You Ready, Mr President?” peep-through board, this occasion was a quiet affair. Fans queued to have their copies personalized by the artists, who often depicted the main character of their story speaking to the fan in question, or drew other fantastical scenes and messages inside the magazine.

By: Jenifer Evans

Cartoons by: Tawfik

Photos and video by: Nadia Ahmed