The Farha Tour Festival

    The Farha Tour Festival set up in Newcastle was probably THE event of Summer 2007. All the people I met agreed to say so. The atmosphere was extremely friendly; the venue was ideal and the workshops were of high quality, not to mention the presence of live musicians in 9 of them. Hence my surprise to see that very few people had travelled from the capital or from abroad…The variety of workshops enabled people to deepen their knowledge as well as discover different aspects of the dance (veil, melaya, saidi, Reda style, classical oriental, drum solos, interpretation and even Burlesque). Kay had also the great idea to include ballet warm up sessions and classes based on ballet and jazz technique for people willing to open to other dance forms and include these aspects in their technique.
    I really enjoyed the worshops with Kazafy and Yasmina www.yasminaofcairo.com/. In my opinion, she is an unvaluable source of information as she has danced in Cairo for more than 10 years. She also gave us clues about interpreting the music, interpreting songs, the dos and donts, the ins and outs of fashion, the evolution of music over the past century and furthermore she was was very supportive and generous.
    Although the musicians were on a tight schedule, I found them very professional and very well-behaved (not chatting or messing about)They did as they were told and also gave us advice. They were fantastic at the Friday night Hafla and on the Performance night where they played for about 20 dancers. I think all of us raved about them !!!
    It was also a chance to see Yasmina and Kazafy perform with majesty and grace.
    A special mention to Yousry, the tabla player who has played for Yasmina, Lucy, Randa Kamal, etc, who is absolutely amazing and a humongous thank you to Kay Taylor www.faridadance.com/
    (pics of me only...sorry but that's all I was given !!!)