«Little is known about the Copts and their relationship with the sea. Even their Egyptian ancestors were more occupied with the Nile and the delta than with the sea and navigation. (...) Some of the greatest hermits and the humblest monks of the Mediterranean – Saint Anthony, Saint Pachomius, Saint Macarius – are fruits of the Coptic tree.»
Predrag Matvejevic, Breviario Mediterraneo
In Le Port de l’Orient, which is the second full-length title presented in Trento by the Egyptian company, a story unfolds that could be drawn from One Thousand and One Nights. In the midst of the desert, a traveler lost among the sandy dunes sees a great door through which he seems to glimpse an ancient dervish. This is Galal El-Din El-Roumy, the great Sufi poet who invites him to dance beyond the threshold of the door. As symbolic compensation for such an act, the traveler will be magically taken on a journey through the space and time of the East: an allegory of knowledge as an initiation into the idea of movement and the dance of the universe as a truer liberation.
Lebanese dancer Walid Aouni began his career in Belgium in the 1980s: his group, Taneet group for theatrical dancing, participated in the inaugural performance of the Arab World Institute in Paris in 1988; later, he worked as a set designer for nine years with Maurice Béjart, with whom he visited Egypt in 1990. In 1993, the Egyptian Minister of Culture asked him to found the first modern theatrical dance group for the Opera Theater. Between 1993 and 2010, he directed more than twenty-five performances and collaborated with musicians and film directors, winning international awards and recognition.
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