[Lost] Stars of the 1970s: Sahar Hamdy

Known for her vulgarity/cheekiness (depending on your point of view), Sahar is one of those stars who's not well-known outside Egypt. I only heard of her because I saw Candi Bell performing a tribute to her last month. According to this rather moving (though hideously formatted) piece by Yasmin on Serpentine, part of Sahar's obscurity may be down to her battles with alcohol throughout her career -- which allegedly prompted her to accept a massive bribe from a wealthy religious extremist to retire in the 1980s.

Apart from her raunchy stage persona, Sahar's other claim to fame is that she popularised the lip-synching that has become one of Dina's trademarks.

Here's a tabla solo; it's the only clip I could find on YouTube that I'm certain is Sahar dancing:



And this may well be a convincing look-alike if it isn't Sahar, but who cares if it's not? This tiger-print catsuit really deserves a post in its own right!:

Stars of the millennium: Alla Kushnir (Leila)

Alla Kushnir (Leila) is a Ukrainian belly dancer with a trophy cabinet more stuffed than Ed Gein's. This is the clip that attracted all the vituperative YouTube comments that inspired this post. Make up your own mind:



Here's her winning performance from Ukraine's Got Talent. It's really hot -- especially that bald judge. Who IS he?



http://www.allakushnir.com/     LeilaHarem.com   

Facebook (it pains me to say it, but on the wrong side of NSFW) 

Monday Mind-Melt II: Prince Erkan Serce (redux)

This post elaborates on the greatness of Prince Erkan Serce, as previously celebrated on The Occidental Dancer.

When I found Prince Erkan Serce's DVD Prince Erkan Serce's Belly Dance Show on Amazon.co.uk I was blown away, and obviously compelled to buy The Last Copy Left for someone who I knew would truly appreciate it. When I received it, I found there were two discs: one a DVD, the other a CD.

That's right. Prince Erkan Serce is not just a stupendous dancer, he's also a pop singer. And the Belly Dance Show is just videos for the songs. Deliciously, the videos are like the photos on the sleeve to the power of ten, because they also involve (in no particular order):

• half-hearted folk dancing in Turkish national dress (not by the Prince, obviously)
• fountains
• harem scenes
• dancing by a pool with a plastic duck floating on it
• the choreographed slapping of female backing dancers
• costumes worth more than you'll ever earn over the course of your lifetime.

It looks like it came out in the 1990s, but a parallel-universe version of the 1990s in which Barbara Cartland is not only still alive but also Queen, and 25 December is International Liberace Day. In short, Prince Erkan's videos are really campy, perhaps to the point of bad taste. Also, they are awesome. My friend and I have decided that there is no one on the planet with a more singular commitment to his personal aesthetic than the Prince. Apparently he's also rather nice in person.

But why should my mate be the only one to enjoy the ever-so-slightly creepy stylings of a man who appears to have mugged a Lego minifig for its hair? I risked the ridicule of my colleagues -- and possibly also my job -- to scan the whole booklet for you as jpegs. Then I made The Man spend a Sunday afternoon Photoshopping them to correct the odd scanning angles. Don't mention it. Are you ready?

HAHAHAHA.

You're so not. But if you're feeling brave, you may as well travel to The Space Beyond the Jump. Good luck, little voyager.

Kerima picture special

Goubbiah...My Love with Jean Marais

A few days ago I promised you a picture special on Algerian film star Kerima, and here it is. True, she's not a dancer but it's so rare to find evidence of north African stars in Hollywood during the 1950s that I thought I'd make an exception. And, after all, she did play "The Belly Dancer" in a 1972 episode of short-lived UK TV spy series The Adventurer (one of her last roles).

Her career, based mainly in Italy, really seems to have petered out in the late 1950s. Even her IMDB entry is practically empty. Apart from the fact she was born in Algiers on 10 February 1925 I have no biographical information about her. En fait, if you speak French there's an article about her here, with some lovely pics of her visiting a mosque in Paris during a publicity junket for Outcast of the Islands.

From this I gleaned that she was studying medicine when fame came calling, that her father was French and her mother an Arab, and that she married Guy Hamilton, whom she met on the set of Outcast. (Hamilton went on to become a notable director in his own right, mainly of James Bond films including Goldfinger and Diamonds are Forever). Or, as the original puts it rather more poetically, "[Hamilton] too was smitten by Kerima's charm and beauty, and it was not long before they were man and wife." Aw! The writer then goes off on one about Kerima visiting a mosque without covering her hair and how she'd never get away with that today and blahblahblah.

Still, great photos, like this one:

"Gazing at herself in this large platter, Kerima evokes the Orient of the 1001 Nights."

More glamour after the jump.

Happy birthday, Bob Dylan

Robert Zimmerman is 71 years old today. You're right -- that doesn't have much to do with raqs.

However.

This is a rough-cut of Bob Dylan's You Ain't Going Nowhere, complete with improvised lyrics and music, that some charming soul has created a video for. I have no idea who the dancer is, but although that costume looks familiar I'm guessing she was a burlesque artiste. Otherwise, just what do you call this sort of dancing? "The Bad Posture Shuffle"? "The Leg Flash Mash"?:



Oh Lor', Ma, I could see her knickers!

via Dangerous Minds

Happy birthday, Joan Collins



Today is the 57th anniversary of Joan Collins' 21st birthday. Happy birthday Joan!

While not a belly dancer, like many of us Joan certainly likes a bit of animal print and lippy (see Exhibit A, above). And she has certainly rocked a good harem dancer's costume in her time.

In 1955, 22 year-old Joan starred in Land of the Pharaohs as greedy Princess Nellifer. The whole back story involves a highly fictionalised account of the construction of the Great Pyramid of Cheops. Nellifer sets out to become the second wife of King Khufu (Cheops), who is known to be amassing a vast fortune in the bowels of the funeral pyramid he's having built for himself. Once married, Nellifer sets out to kill Khufu's first wife, Queen Nailla, and his son and heir.

Along the way, Nellifer is caught cheating on Khufu with his captain of the guard. As punishment, she is whipped:

For some reason, this scene has been looped and put on YouTube. Never mind the flagellation -- that bra looks like punishment enough, don't you think?

With a special treat in the form of subtitles for our Portugese-speaking readers, here's Joan's final scene (so, yeah...spoiler alert!), in which it finally dawns on the hapless Nellifer that the pyramid's architect has tricked her into paying for her misdeeds in the most fitting way possible. It's a technical marvel, but alas there is no dancing.



Land of the Pharaohs is available on DVD as part of the Cult Camp Classics(!): Vol 4 Historical Epics series.

Don't worry, I'm not a total tease! Here's the dance scene, and it's not what we're used to. Still wildly historically/culturally off though.



As an aside, even though this was a Howard Hawks production (he who was to blame for The Conqueror) and made during a time when no one thought twice about "blacking up" Caucasian actors (check out Joan's mahogany hue!), Queen Nailla is actually played by a north African. Unfortunately, Algerian actress Kerima is all-but forgotten now (her last-ever screen credit is from around 1972), but her debut Outcast of the Islands -- in which she plays Aissa, the mute female lead -- has recently been re-released on DVD and she's terrific in it. There'll be a picture-special post on Kerima in the next few days. 

Not harem dancing: Durra in "Where the Spies Are"

I've posted so many scenes of harem dancing (i.e. not belly dancing by not belly dancers) in old movies, that it's easy to forget that from time-to-time I may find myself looking at real raqs. Meet Durra and her brother Edmund:



Here's the synopsis left by The Caro Van on this clip:

"From a 1965 film [Where the Spies Are] which starred David Niven as a doctor turned unwilling spy. The bellydancer in this scene is Durra. Originally from Baghdad, Durra was self-taught. After moving from Iraq she was UK-based and appeared in the Beatles movie Help and in an episode of the series The Sweeney. [In Cockney rhyming slang Sweeney Todd = police flying squad] The male dancer at the end of the clip is Durra's brother, Edmund.

Many thanks to Theresa, who is Durra's granddaughter, for supplying the information on her grandmother who was one of the pioneers of Middle Eastern dance in the UK."

For those of you who haven't enjoyed Octopussy's adorable attempt to bring Bond into the age of The Female Eunuch, here's the climactic battle scene. If you can spot Durra in the midst of this incredily hot mess, holler in the comments! (There is no prize, soz.) It goes without saying that Octopussy is Jilly the Belly Dancing Colossal Squid's favourite Bond film.