MIDDLE EAST TIMES

The Caracalla Are Good, Very Good

CAIRO - “Make no mistake about it,” says a London press review, “the Caracalla are good, very good”.

Chimed The New York Times, in its appraisal of Lebanon’s Caracalla Dance Company’s tour of the United States: “Fast-moving professionals, colourful costumes, food-looking and engaging dancers.”

This celebrated company, formed by Abdel Halim Caracalla, got its start at Lebanon’s famous, but no longer extant, Baalbeck International Festival in the 1960s. In 1972 it made its international debut at Japan’s International Fair in Osaka.

Rich in style, panache and glamour, the Caracalla Dance Company has packed audiences around the world with successful tours in Africa, the Soviet Union, Europe, South America, the United States and the Middle East.

The company makes its first appearance in Egypt this week at the Hotel Semiramis InterContinental’s Cleopatra Theatre with performance of its folkloric Echoes on 27 and 28 November.

Under the guidance of Abdel Halim Caracalla, and with the assistance of American choreographer Bert Stimmel, the Caracalla are much more than a folk-dance pageant. They are genuine dance-drama and a sincere attempt to say something new in Arabic terms. If the company has a Western-style flair for dramatic theatricality, it is a profuct of Caracalla’s training in Paris and with the London School of Contemporary Dance.

Despite the modernity, the Caracalla do no violence to the legacy which they represent. The dances and their rhythm happily combine that which is excitingly contemporary with traditional folklore.

This is a production that ought not to be missed.