The Michigan Daily - Thursday, June 2, 1983 Page 9
Orientale troupe presents 'Rites'
By Ellen Rieser
SATURDAY EVENING, June 4th,
Huron High School's auditorium
will be taken over by the sights and
sounds of live Arabian drummers,
women clinking finger cymbals,
flashing swords, and exotic chants. The
occasion will be the annual performan-
ce presented by Troupe Ta'Amullat,
one of the nation's foremost Danse
Orientale troupes.
The performance will celebrate the
tenth anniversary of the Rites of
Spring, an annual festival of perfor-
mances and workshops sponsored by
the Ann Arbor-based company.
A collage of the best dances staged
and choreographed by Troupe
Ta'Amullat over the past decade will be
presented along with the premieres of
three solo dances. Three nationally
noted ethnic dance guest artists will-
also be joining troupe in performance to
present favorite dances from their own
repertoires.
Troupe Ta'Amullat ("Reflections")
was formally organized in 1976 in Ann
Arbor. The 15-20 members of the com-
pany perform all forms of Danse Orien-
tale as well as folk styles of dance from
the Middle East, North Africa, and the
Mediterranean.
Troupe Ta'Amullat is dedicated to
keeping Danse Orientale a living art
form. To this end, each year the com-
pany presents a large repertoire of
dances in various styles. More impor-
tant, members of the company also
choreograph original dances using the
Danse Orientale vocabulary of steps.
The troupe maintains active national
and local performance schedules.
Troupe Ta'Amullat recently performed
in Chicago, Toledo, and Lima and at
several Michigan folk festivals. In the
local area, they were the hit of last
week's Detroit Arab World Festival on
Hart Plaza.
However, Troupe Ta'Amullat saves
its best efforts for its home audience.
The annual Rites of Spring performan-
ce, with its premieres of original works
and the appearances of guest artists, is
considered by the company to be its
major theatrical presentation for the
year.
For this year's Rites of Spring, the
troupe will present dances from Moroc-
co, Algeria, Tunisia, Lebanon, Yemen,
North Africa, and Egypt.
Cynthia Adams, the company's
historian and a dancer with the troupe,
described "Oulid Nail," one of the most
interesting dances that Troupe
Ta'Amullat will present.
"A range of mountains in Algeria
separates civilization from the desert.
Women from this area go into town and
dance for their dowery money. They
don't dance again until they have
daughters to teach. It was French
Foreign Legion men who saw, these
women with their phenomenal control
over involuntary stomach muscles and
named the dancers 'belly dancers.'
This is where the name comes from.
These women would dance naked for a
price... In public, however, they usually
wear everything they own and all their
jewels - every coin and every bauble,"
said Adams.
As performed by Troupe Ta'Amullat,
"Oulid Nail" wil be a dance drama with
mime elements. Adams will dance the
role of an older woman who acts as the
presenter of two girls (danced by long-
time company members Nancy Goings
and Mary Weed).
During the course of the dance
drama, Adams will perform a sword
dance with real swords. At a recent
rehearsal at Artworlds, Troupe
Ta'Amullat's home studio, Adams
could be seen enthusiastically wielding
her flashing weapons as other dancers
carefully watched from the sidelines.
Rehearsing since February with the
company and at home for the upcoming
performance, Adams has survived
some early "close encounters" to
master this dance convincingly.
"Achouch," a Moroccan Berber dan-
ce with choreography by Nancy Goings,
will also be presented on the program.
Inspired by traditional line dances in
marrakesh when she was there a few
years ago, Goings has created a line
dance composed basically of one step.
"Its beauty and its intricacy come
from its geometric patterbis... Eight
people are strung out in a pinwheel. It
needs a large stage!" said Adams.
Patricia Cranmer will also do a solo
in the Pharonic style with a pair of
small lit lamps. This style of dance was
developed at the turn of the century by
Ruth St. Denis to represent formal an-
cient Egyptian dancing.
The dances presented by the guest ar-
tists are to be announced. However, the
illustrious backgrounds of the three
should guarantee some show stopping
numbers. One of the guest artists,
Ibrahim Farrah, is a Danse Orientale
specialist -who has performed at Car-
negie Hall, Lincoln Center, the Ken-
nedy Center, and the Riverside Church
Dance Festival.
Phaedra, the second guest artist, is a
principal dancer with Farrah's Near
Eastern Dance Group. Aside from
frequent performances across the
United States and abroad, Phaedra
teaches Danse Orientale at Carnegie
Hall in New York City.
Malini Srirama, the third guest ar-
tist, is a locally-based dancer from
Madras who teaches classical Indian
dance. At last year's Rites of Spring,
Srirama was the hit of the show with
her exciting "balancing" dance in-
volving a brass jar and a tray. Her con-
tribution to this year's performance
promises to be equally as beautiful and
interesting.
Some very funny business.
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Starts Friday, June 10th at a Theatre Near You.