Seductions with an Eastern flavour. This is the click of the journey between Maghreb, Egypt and the West of Djamila Henni-Chebra, an Algerian who moved to Villeneuve-Saint-Georges in France at the age of two, tied to her world of origin by a visceral need to recover the memory of her past.
Year 1973: Djamila Henni-Chebra comes into contact with the European Association of Algerians, through which she begins to attend courses in folk dances from her country. In this context, she participates in the first shows, a debut that acts as a stimulus towards a broader dance education. Djamila dives headlong into the study of techniques belonging to the West, her adopted world. She studies classical with Yves Cassati, Joëlle Mazet, Monique Mallo, Huguette Massin; jazz according to the Matt Mattox method; modern with Russillo and Peter Goss, perfecting her Graham technique at the Lambert School in London.
1983: Djamila signs her first choreographies and from the increasingly frequent Arab inflections it is immediately clear that, beyond her Western training, the future choices of the Algerian dancer will be different. A year later the Compagnie danse Arabesque is born and soon after Djamila Henni-Chebra embraces a type of show that takes her straight back to her lands. She does not leave France, but from 1988 she begins to travel between Egypt and the Maghreb to discover the traditional dances of Algeria, Tunisia and Egypt. Cairo is her favorite destination in the 90s, home of the masters of the so-called Egyptian oriental dance of today: Mahmmoud Réda (founder of the Réda group, one of the most famous Egyptian folk dance ensembles), Ibrahim Akef (of the Akef circus family, author of numerous cabaret shows and dance interventions for Egyptian cinema), Raqia Hassan (expert of the “baladi” style).
Subsidized by the FAS, Djamila Henni-Chebra begins to invite, year after year, a dancer-choreographer from the Maghreb or Egypt to work and sign a show for the Arabesque group.
Together with Leïla Haddad, already a guest last year of Oriente Occidente, Djamila Henni-Chebra has earned the title of “militant” artist in France.
Both fight for the recognition of the value of belly dancing, a dance whose origin they claim is oriental (it comes from India) and sacred, linked to the cult of the mother goddess and fertility rites. The undulating movements of the belly are a sign of a gesture pervaded by cosmic symbolism, which reconciles the woman with her own fertility, celebrating and sanctifying the generative power of motherhood. <the show on stage at Oriente Occidente compares different variants of the musical and choreographic repertoire of Egyptian oriental dance practiced today in Cairo. A repertoire that mainly hinges on the “Sharqi” style, developed on the more popular “baladi”, on the “Saidi” style (Upper Egypt) and on the dance of the Alexandria region. With a special emphasis on that communication between dancer and audience, which for Djamila Henni-Chebra is the only way to breathe new life into oriental dance. To restore dignity to belly dancing, Leïla Haddad claims that it should no longer be practiced in cabarets. For Djamila, however, those are the places to start from to restore the right meaning to this celebratory dance of femininity. “Oriental dance,” says Djamila, “can only regenerate itself in cabarets, with the dancer hypnotizing the audience and the orchestra.” A contact that the Algerian dancer naturally seeks also in the theater.
