At the 37-day Pingtung Summer Carnival, staged by the Pingtung County Government, the TW-EGY (Taiwan–Egypt) Folk Troupe, which specializes in tradi­tional Middle-Eastern folk dance, put on 13 shows. Troupe leader Mohamed Mamdouh performed the Egyptian Tanoura whirling dance. He came on stage carry­ing a cloth-bound “drum” in his hands, but as if by magic it became two and then six in number. He lifted up a second skirt from his voluminous dance costume, and with his attire created the appearance of a rapidly spinning top with gorgeous colors. In an instant, Mamdouh then raised up his hands and with his right arm lifted the whirling skirt over his head, creating the appearance of a spiraling flying saucer in the sky. The audience responded with enthusiastic applause.

Meanwhile, at the “India from the Eyes of Taiwan Photography” exhibition jointly organized by the National Central Library and the India–Taipei Association, dancer Jennifer Hsuan Chen Liu, wearing a sari, performed an ancient Indian dance, the Mohiniyattam piece “Sacred Ganesha.” With her hands whirling, she elegantly moved around the floor with steady steps and a dignified demeanor, conveying the gifts of wealth, wisdom, and wellbeing brought by Ganesha.

Blending diverse elements

Chen Szu-wei, a musicologist who teaches classes such as global musical culture at National Taiwan University, points out that cross-domain borrowing and diversity are trends in performing arts around the world, and Taiwan is no exception. Taiwan is an immigrant society, and the different ethnic groups who have come here over time have brought the sounds and arts of their places of origin. As they have interacted with each other, naturally the collisions among these diverse elements have thrown up creative sparks.

From the late 1990s, with the rise of digital broadcasting, it became possible for people in Taiwan to hear even more crossover art forms.

Chen points to some examples: These days people not only listen to Bollywood music, they also study Indian dance, and those who study Middle-­Eastern hand drums also learn dance in order to master even more drumming techniques. Ma Jun Ren, a former war reporter, went to the Middle East 15 years ago to study Middle-­Eastern drumming from a teacher there. Since returning to Taiwan he has taught and performed for many years, enabling more people to appreciate Middle-­Eastern music, which they may then go on to study in greater depth. Meanwhile, with financial support from the Dream Community Culture and Education Development Foundation, many children in remote areas have studied Brazilian samba drumming. Examples like these illustrate Taiwan’s spirit of respect for other cultures and willingness to learn from them.

Mohamed Mamdouh and Fatema Chao hope to use Taiwan as a base from which to bring Egyptian and Taiwan folk dance to the world.

Conveying dance from home

As Chen Szu-wei says, music and dance originate within national boundaries. It takes a process of learning and guidance to understand and assimilate the traditional music and characteristics of each nation or region. Otherwise one may end up with only a super­ficial understanding of other cultures, or accept stereo­typical ideas about them.

For example, the Taiwanese dance company TW-EGY Folk Troupe, which was formed by an immigrant, originated in an experience of the troupe’s deputy director, Fatema Chao, when she went to Malaysia in 2013 to take part in a belly dancing competition. One of the judges was Mohamed Mamdouh, at that time a member of Egypt’s Elsharkiya Folk Troupe. His critique of Fatema was: “I can’t understand what she’s dancing.”

Chao, who had studied dance from a young age, privately asked Mamdouh for advice, and learned that in the eyes of this orthodox Egyptian dancer, the dance she was doing incorporated many elements of foreign dance and was not authentic Middle-Eastern belly dancing. Unwilling to give up her art, Fatema decided to go to Egypt and study under Mamdouh and the Elsharkiya Folk Troupe. In the end she brought Mamdouh to Taiwan.

Elsharkiya was founded in 1964, and Mamdouh’s father and uncle were both dancers in the troupe until 1969, when they left to fight in the Israeli–Egyptian War of Attrition. Mamdouh recounts that when he went to perform in Jordan in 2012, the organ­izer asked him whether he had any plans to form a dance company. It was then that the idea of founding his own troupe was planted in his mind.

Jennifer Liu performs the classical Indian dance “Poothana Moksham,” depicting the liberation of the demoness Poothana. (courtesy of Jennifer Liu)

The white costume with gold trim worn for Mohiniyattam classical dance is based on women’s clothing from the Indian state of Kerala. (courtesy of Jennifer Liu)

From the land of the pharaohs

Mamdouh now lives in Pingtung County’s Chao­zhou Township, and feels that this place, with its unsophisticated folk culture and mainly agricultural economy, is very similar to his hometown of Al-Sharkia. Agriculture was the foundation of the Egyptian nation. The vast majority of people were farmers, and the songs of farmers have been incorporated into literature, films, and dance. Cultivated land is concentrated in northern Egypt, and the name of the dance that represents Mamdouh’s hometown—the Fallahi (or “Water Bottle Dance”)—derives from the Arabic word fallahin, meaning “farmers.”

There is also a dance called Nubia, which is accompanied by Middle-Eastern drums. The costume for this dance is decorated with a striking sawtooth pattern. Mamdouh smiles as he explains that the sawtooth motif represents the teeth of the closed mouth of a crocodile. In the land of Nubia, located on the upper reaches of the Nile and home to Egypt’s southernmost city, it is auspicious to hang a mummified crocodile head on one’s door. Mamdouh, who has played Middle-Eastern drums in a collaborative project with Paiwan indigenous musicians, says that the crocodile-tooth motif, like the hundred-pace snake pattern used by the Paiwan people, is sewn or carved onto the clothing, homes, household utensils and statuary of high-ranking families. Thus the two peoples share strikingly similar cultural practices.

The Tanoura, which is often the finale at performances, has the meaning of linking heaven and earth. The colorful dance costume symbolizes a great coming together and fusion. Some dancers even attach torches or LED lights to their attire to make the performance more exciting and eye-catching.

The Egyptian Tanoura dance is difficult to perform, but it has a very positive meaning: touching the spiritual and receiving heaven’s blessings.

A world dance tour

Many of Mamdouh’s students were previously belly dancing teachers, but today in addition to belly dancing they have also begun to teach Egyptian folk dance, enabling Middle-Eastern dance to flourish in Taiwan. In 2019, for the first time he took with him 15 troupe members as he realized his dream of making a global performance tour.

In December of 2019 he took troupe members on a visit to Jordan. However, just before the performance began, a dance of Taiwan’s Amis indigenous people that was included in the program had to be canceled because the dancers’ costumes revealed their bare arms, which was not acceptable according to local customs. After some quick discussion, it was decided to stage the Hagalla, which is representative of the Bedouin traditional culture of the Middle East and North Africa. At the end of the performance the Jordanian audience gave the troupe a standing ovation, because this was a dance that the many Bedouins in attendance could comprehend.

Recalling this performance, Fatema is choked with emotion. “Dance really is a kind of soft power, because despite the different cultures and customs, after a difficult discussion we were able to go onstage and win thunderous applause.” After coming off the stage, all the dancers surrounded Mamdouh in tears, because their performance had won the approval of the local people. Fatema says: “The people at the show might not remember the name of this troupe, but they will remember that we were from Taiwan.”

While visiting India, the TW-EGY Folk Troupe performed a traditional dance of Taiwan’s Amis indigenous people. (courtesy of TW-EGY Folk Troupe)

The Egyptian Shamidan dance represents passing along and extending tradition.

Mohamed Mamdouh, who is skilled at a variety of Middle Eastern drums, inserts drum performances into the shows of his dance troupe. The photo shows him playing a doumbek, also known as a darbuka or goblet drum.

South Asian dance and culture

Indian culture is much more than just Bollywood. Jennifer Hsuan Chen Liu, who has studied dance in India for ten years, has introduced students to the graceful and harmonious Mohiniyattam classical style of dance, as well as the meaning of classical mudras (hand gestures), through her workshops here in Taiwan, thereby enabling people to better understand Indian culture.

Liu says that classical dancers are like storytellers, relating the stories of deities and everyday philosophy to audiences. In particular, the Indian classical dance form Mohiniyattam must be performed with the correct mudras.

Liu is one of the few dancers from Taiwan to make a living in Bollywood, in the Indian city of Mumbai. She has performed Bollywood dances in six films, including “Dhaani Chunariya” in the film Super Nani and “Lucky Tu Lucky Me” in the film Humpty Sharma Ki Dulhania.

But she didn’t want to get lost in a crowd of dancers, so she went to Kerala Kalamandalam, a school for the performing arts in India’s Kerala state, to learn Mohiniyattam classical dance. She discovered that there are many links between Kerala and ethnic Chinese people. For instance, Kerala has snake-boat races, which are similar to the dragon-boat races in Taiwan in summer. There is also a great deal of Chinese-style architecture. She consequently organized a Taiwan Film Festival in Kerala, which she hopes to use as a base for developing a Taiwan arts festival in the future.

Liu also got together with some local artists in Kerala to form “Kala Taiwan” (kala means “the arts” in Hindi). She hopes to combine traditional Taiwanese tales like “The Legend of the White Snake” with classical Indian dance to create hybrid dance dramas that can be performed in Taiwan and India.

As The Geography of Creativity, a report produced by the UK’s National Endowment for Science, Technology, and the Arts, points out, artists are searching for catalyzing places “where people, relationships, ideas and talents can spark each other.” Mohamed Mamdouh, who has come to Taiwan from another land, and Jennifer Liu, who has spent a decade traveling between Taiwan and India, have both found places where they can make optimum use of their skills and make artistic fires out of such sparks. 

Indian dance uses facial expressions and hand gestures to express a wide range of emotions.