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Gilded
Serpent presents...
Photos of Gala Show for
Raqia
April 21, 2007
Veteran's Hall
Redwood City, Califronia
Photos by Carl
Sermon
Photo prep & page layout by Michelle
Joyce
Excerpt
of previously posted review
by Rebecca Firestone--
On
Saturday night there was a show at the Veteran's Hall.
The Show was: Big on technique; sometimes a little
too studied. The soloists were selected mostly for
being Raqia's students. I would have liked to see
a little more troupe work, since other than the Hala
Dance Company the evening consisted entirely
of soloists, and with one exception all the soloists
did modern cabaret style Egyptian dance. I suppose
it would have been inappropriate to put some Turkish
or Greek dance, or even Tribal, in there with Raqia
as the guest of honor - or maybe not... With the right
people, it could have added more variety to the evening
without in any way lowering the standard. It's also
hard for a soloist to fill a stage at an institutional
setting without either a spotlight to condense the
space, or a stage set to provide a sense of place.
The
showcased stars of the evening were Tamra-Henna
and Mohamed Shahin, both of whom
traveled into town just for this show, with additional
performances by local dancers that I knew: Hala,
Ahava, Marcela, and Debbie Smith.
Additional performances were by Catarina,
Karawan, and a lovely dancer from Los Angeles
named Meera. According to the bios
in the program, most of the dancers had either studied
with Raqia herself, or were proteges of other Egyptian
teachers from the Mahmoud Reda school. (Raqia Hassan
originally was dancer and choreographer with the Reda
Troupe.) |
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Ready
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is incredibly bold, excellent in stylizing and format… it
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5-15-07
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