The dance of the seven veils
Last night I lived one of my biggest dreams. I saw skivvy belly-dancing. The Rough Guide outlines a handful of the cheap belly-dancing clubs in Cairo. Their recommendation was Palmyra, promising limited con tactics and a moderate amount of rhythm.
(Photo of the cafe we went to after the club)
Overall the experience was not dodgy enough for my tastes. The “hostesses” left us alone, focusing instead on the big spenders in the front row, no one tried to charge me for using the bathroom and only one person got thrown out for touching the dancers.
The Club was one of those awesomely crap experiences that Cairo excels in. It was by far the best display of sad old men I have seen yet in Cair. They were eating cheese trays displayed in a tinfoil tree, petting street cats and holding hands with the “hostesses.” Every once and a while the sad men would get onstage with a dancer and “shower” her with a few five pound notes, as they pranced around her barely moving, incredibly bored body. It was more about the buxomy cleavage than any kind of dancing.
Onstage was chaos. All the dancers were less than enthusiastic and everything about the place felt like open mic night at the townie bars. The first dancer merely swayed side-to-side, sometimes stopping to blow her nose in a tissue she was carrying. She got a money shower once, earning her 3.75 LE. Nice catch. Another dancer dressed in silver sparkles got two showers, probably netting her twenty pounds and the dancer of the week award.
The hostesses would just wander onstage and start talking to the band in the middle of a song. The audio system was crap, and the MC unintelligible. The only words we could make out were when he would be introducing the audience to other members of the audience.
“This is Ahmed from Boub al louq.” “This is Mike from Pennsylvania.”
Gradually the dancers became more attractive, and the outfits more revealing, but while is failed to meet my sleaze standards, it outmatched my previous Sad Cairo experiences.*
Last night was also a right of passage for Karim. Many young Egyptian men check out a sleazy belly-dancing club as a pack in their teens, our sweet Karim did not. Leave it to us to gutter his tastes up a bit.
All in all I give it a 6/10. Averaging 2/10 for effort, 8/10 for last nights in town points and 5/10 for creepiness.
*Cairo is broken up into districts- Downtown, Islamic Cairo, Coptic Cairo, etc. I figure, Sad Cairo should be a official zone, and all the streets/building/rooms in the city that are filled with sad people entertaining themselves in sad ways should be pinpointed for easier navigation. Sad Cairo is most definitely my favorite place to spend a Sunday night.
(Photo of the cafe we went to after the club)Overall the experience was not dodgy enough for my tastes. The “hostesses” left us alone, focusing instead on the big spenders in the front row, no one tried to charge me for using the bathroom and only one person got thrown out for touching the dancers.
The Club was one of those awesomely crap experiences that Cairo excels in. It was by far the best display of sad old men I have seen yet in Cair. They were eating cheese trays displayed in a tinfoil tree, petting street cats and holding hands with the “hostesses.” Every once and a while the sad men would get onstage with a dancer and “shower” her with a few five pound notes, as they pranced around her barely moving, incredibly bored body. It was more about the buxomy cleavage than any kind of dancing.
Onstage was chaos. All the dancers were less than enthusiastic and everything about the place felt like open mic night at the townie bars. The first dancer merely swayed side-to-side, sometimes stopping to blow her nose in a tissue she was carrying. She got a money shower once, earning her 3.75 LE. Nice catch. Another dancer dressed in silver sparkles got two showers, probably netting her twenty pounds and the dancer of the week award.
The hostesses would just wander onstage and start talking to the band in the middle of a song. The audio system was crap, and the MC unintelligible. The only words we could make out were when he would be introducing the audience to other members of the audience.
“This is Ahmed from Boub al louq.” “This is Mike from Pennsylvania.”
Gradually the dancers became more attractive, and the outfits more revealing, but while is failed to meet my sleaze standards, it outmatched my previous Sad Cairo experiences.*
Last night was also a right of passage for Karim. Many young Egyptian men check out a sleazy belly-dancing club as a pack in their teens, our sweet Karim did not. Leave it to us to gutter his tastes up a bit.All in all I give it a 6/10. Averaging 2/10 for effort, 8/10 for last nights in town points and 5/10 for creepiness.
*Cairo is broken up into districts- Downtown, Islamic Cairo, Coptic Cairo, etc. I figure, Sad Cairo should be a official zone, and all the streets/building/rooms in the city that are filled with sad people entertaining themselves in sad ways should be pinpointed for easier navigation. Sad Cairo is most definitely my favorite place to spend a Sunday night.
1 Comments:
Shirley and Lars came back home and described it as "an experience", without actually praising anything.... and through their descriptions I could just tell it was one of those overwhelmingly crappy, dissapointing Cairo experiences - the belly dancing equivelant of the nasty street shawerma, I guess.....
i guess i didnt miss much?
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