Awalem Dances

At the first half of the nineteenth century, the dancers were danced inside the palaces only and they were sitting with the society elite and the Mamluks, speaking with them in various of subjects. During this period the dancers social status were in the highest extent. They were thin bodies, their clothes were a very high-quality of fabric and very chic. Also their dancing were famous for with swords, the sajat and the tambourine, until the Muhammad Ali's Castle massacre at the first of March 1811 - which Mohammed Ali managed it to get rid of the Mamluks and the society elite and spent them all, Which led the dancers to escape of the palaces later to the streets of Cairo to the absence of whom was saving their life and looking after them.

The dancers started to have a contact with Gypsies then had been living with them.

'Al Awalem' are plural of 'Almah' word, which it means a popular dancer who dancing to the public and not in a specific place. The 'Awalem' always dancing in the street. The onset of the 'Awalem' was in the second half of the nineteenth century after the removal of Mohamed Ali to the Gypsy and Guazy of Cairo and Alexandria. Most of the 'Awalem' lived in Mohamed Ali Street in Cairo because of its fame With so much of the stores that sell the musical instruments and also for the accommodation of a lot of bands and singers and also because this street was not far from the princes and the Mamluks houses and palaces.

The dance steps of the 'Awalem' in this period was characterized by roughness and violence in their movement. Their faces were characterized by vexatiousness and vulgarity as a result of a link of them and the Guazy and the Gypsies. They were fat women dancing without shoes and their clothes were not covering all parts of their bodies which leading to the sexual arousal of the Public, and the drawings reveal to us late at the second half of the nineteenth century, the Gypsies in Assiut, Luxor and Karnak, with the bee, the Pottery and the stick dances.

Tamer Yehia Aziz