Dance ‘til you drop with PVA
The Modern and Contemporary Dance Workshop at the American University in Cairo (AUC) is offering a new form of art for all students to enhance their creative skills.
Organized by Tarek el Akkad, an adjunct instructor in the PVA, the workshop is aimed at creating multi-media productions, that incorporates visual arts, theatre, dance and film at AUC.
The workshop, which began on April 1, is taught by Karima Mansour, a dancer and choreographer who has her own contemporary dance company, MA’AT.
“This workshop aims to combine different artistic elements such as film, dance and painting in order to create a multi-media production,” said el Akkad.
He said that the idea came to him watching stage productions during his travels. During that time he realized that some shows combined one or two artistic elements but that he hadn’t seen a show that combined all of them.
Mansour has been dancing since she was five years old. She formed MA’AT in 1999 and the company put on its first performance in 2000. Her last performance in Egypt came in 2004 and she now works mainly abroad, including Barcelona, where she performed two weeks ago. She has taught many other contemporary dance workshops for both professionals and non-professionals.
According to Mansour, her interest in such workshops, especially for non-professional dancers, comes from seeing the change in the students and how far they have come. That gives her a sense of self-fulfillment and satisfaction, she said.
The workshop includes students from many different majors such as political science, theater, journalism and mass communication and electronic engineering; it also includes both sexes and varied dance backgrounds.
A handful of students said that they were taking the workshop to complement their acting classes and to enable them to audition for musicals.
“I think [the workshop] is necessary for the PVA department; dance is an integral part of art and theatre,” said Yuseph Bashat, a theatre freshmen.
Some students, however, decided to attend the workshop purely for pleasure. Salma al-Sayyad, a political science senior, said that she found the workshop “liberating, as it had no particular steps or boundaries.”
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