Tahia Carioca remains to date the dancer of the Middle East's most mythical and more respected. By His grace, her beauty and fiery temperament, the brunette dancer gave acclaim to belly dancing and gained immense popularity with the Arab audience through cinema and television. His style, while slow and the sensuality stand out amongst its competitors often too vulgar or too restless: his career was of exceptional longevity (she left the screen in the late 80s) and the artist has left an imprint so strong in his discipline that is was difficult to achieve! More than a dancer of exceptional Tahia Carioca was also a talented actress and a woman of conviction.
Born in 1915, was very young Tahia Carioca devoted to dance to the despair his parents and very protective of his brothers. To escape their grasp, she ran away (12 years!) And settled in Cairo where a neighbor
she was spotted by Badeai Masabni leading figure in the eastern cove of and nightlife Cairo, who engages him in his tavern. The beautiful artist will quickly seduce the audience with his performances expertly mixing traditional dance and foreign influences including tropical rhythms, but always with the utmost elegance. His pseudonym Rio will also inspired by a pseudo Brazilian dance popularized by the first film of the couple Fred Astaire / Ginger Rogers. In 1936, the reputation of a young dancer was invited as the festivities accompanying the wedding of King Farouk (it is said in passing that the dancer would have paid the luxury of slapping the rascal king ... who had just drag a cube Ice in her cleavage!)
Soon Tahia is contacted by the film studios who offer him some appearances danced in several film productions: at the time, all Arab films were systematically disrupted by digital
ros dance belly that had more or less well integrated into the plot. Music songs and choreography were the best bridge between countries and regions sharing na not always the same dialect, which explains the popularity of musical films. Alas, it is terribly difficult these days to appreciate the talent of Tahia in his youth, his first films no longer broadcast by the media: the amateur yet she felt it gave his finest performance as a dancer . In the film
Li'bet al-Sit (1946) with the great Naguib el-Rihani (an ex Badei Masabni
she held for the first time the role of a vamp and manipulative seductress who will it stick to the skin.
The male audience is mesmerized by his choreographic prowess and beautiful is not insensitive to his fans: he will pay ... 14 husbands! Nevertheless, it has kept no affection for his various companions she described retrospectively bastards! In the table of this predatory hunting, there is one American officer ren countered during the Second World War
(with which the dancer had left little time to live in the U.S.), actor Rushdy Abaza (who married then her friend Samia Gamal another legend of oriental dance), the singer Muharram Fouad, screenwriter Falez Halawa (which will cause much anguish), Captain Mustapha Kamel Sedky who was arrested after the 1952 revolution and communist involved in a lawsuit), a pilot, a doctor and others ... But the public will never do it strictly for his love life for the less hectic! addition to its tumultuous love affairs, the star is known for his outspokenness and his political convictions: it does not fail to give his opinion at royal receptions in which it was invited, speaking in fluent year
lish and French . In 1953, it will even be arrested on the order of Nasser and jailed three months for communist activities.
The film's most memorable Tahia (screened at the Cannes Film Festival 1956) remains the leech S Abou Seif, neo-realist works brilliantly confronting the world and the universe urban villagers. In the role of a Cairene middle age who seduces a young student, Tahia shines through its slaughter and its strong presence: will be remembered particularly heavily evocative of the scene where the beautiful young man leads her to show him ( and with what efficiency!) she dance better than girls in the street. Everything in the room (kettle steaming, etc..) Seemed heated blank in one of the most sexually suggestive passages in the history of Egyptian film!
In 1958, his old colleague Tahia found and protected from the 40s, in the light Samia Gamal Al-Askari habibi: a summit meeting for the two most prestigious dancers of Oriental cinema
which applies only to the scenes of dancing two stars. In 1960, it provides excellent performance in the shores of love pretty romantic melodrama with the famous singer Farid el clip. She plays with skill and great emotion an old cabaret dancer whose daughter unaware of the identity. With such qualities actress, the actress has no difficulty in continuing his career away from musicals when she left the dance in 1963.
In the mother of the bride (63), family film very rhythmic, it is perfect mama Egyptian who watches over her household. The reputation of the artist was far from being limited to Arab countries and
Tahia Carioca was about to shoot a film in Hollywood when the 6 Day War was declared and that the star preferred to return home where she will continue her career . We note in particular
The Mirage (70) controversial film, which met a very big commercial success because Topic scabrous addressed: the Oedipus complex. It narrates the adventures of a young man (the excellent Nour El Shé rif) completely dominated by the image of his mother (played by Tahia), experiencing the worst difficulties
confront adult life . will also be remembered for his performance in Beware of Zouzou (72) regarded by many as the most successful comedy of Egyptian cinema of the 70s.
In the 70s, Tahia Carioca will continue his career in both film and on stage, directing a permanent troupe that bears his name and that a theater. She gets a very big success in a piece anti communist (Hurrah for the delegation) of great vulgarity. The siren of the seven veils of the 40s had changed over the years in obese matron, but nevertheless retains great verve and character. Very involved in the unions of Egyptian cinema, the actress did not have his tongue in his pocket and
its virulence was proverbial. In 1985, the actress takes a role as midwife in Farewell Bonaparte Chahine will present it to the Cannes festival. Always very
involved politically, she went to Athens in 1988 with some Egyptian intellectuals on the initiative of organizing the Liberation of Palestine who was planning to charter a ship Al-Awda, the repatriation of Palestinians to their homes and original land occupied by Israel.
In the late 80s, Tahia Carioca withdrew permanently from the artistic life. Now Veiled, the boisterous star of old ended his life in prayer, meditation and reading the Koran, devoting himself entirely to the education of his adopted daughter, but never deny her dancing career star.
Tahia died in 1999 of a heart attack. At a time when belly dancing is banned in Egypt in the plays "to avoid deterioration of quality theater," we plunge with even more delight in old movies Tahia Carioca (although little them have been reissued on DVD) that did dream so many generations.
