Houriya Mohamed 1949

From the 1949 film Fatma wa Marika wa Rachel (Fatma and Marika and Rachel) about a man, played by Mohamed Fawzi who is in love with three women of different religions. Fatma is an Egyptian muslim, Marika is Greek Christian and Rachel is Jewish. In this clip the dancer is Houriya Mohamed a wonderful golden era dancer. This choreography was created by choreographer Ibrahim Baghdadi, according to the film credits. In the beggining of the clip, the silhouette is of a woman reading the coffee grinds in a coffee cup. Then the dancers actually come out of large coffee cups. The song is Wad Ya Asmar. ( Brown skinned guy) and it's about someone who was able to see her true love in a cup of coffee grinds.
Houriya in arabic means a beautiful heavenly woman. Houriya Mohamed began dancing at a very young age and by 1933 she was already the best dancer at Fathya's Garden and was garnering much attention from the press. That same year she left Fathya's garden and began working for Badia Masabni. It did not take long for her to become the leading dancer at Casino Badia. In 1935 she appeared in the musical film "The Victims" where she performed several dances and was given top billing along with Leyla Mourad and Bahiga Hafez. By 1936 she had left Casino Badia and began touring Egypt with her own troupe. They performed in such important clubs as Casino Monte Carlo in Cairo and Casino Alf Leyla in Alexandria. Houriya Mohamed was already the star dancer at Badia Masabni's club when Taheya Carioca arrived there as a young teen. A rivalry quickly ensued between the two girls that would last a lifetime. Houriya Mohamed realized that Taheya Carioca quickly became popular with the club's patrons and it is common knowledge that Houriya was so jealous that she once destroyed one of Taheya's dance costumes prior to a performance. (Others say that it was really Houriya's mother who destroyed the costume and not Houriya. Either way, Houriya sent her mother back to the countryside after the incident) On another occasion Houriya was so upset that choreographer Isaac Dickson was training Taheya Carioca for a raqs sharqi solo that she complained loudly to Badia Masabni, who responded...."The door is wide open for anyone who wants to leave" But Badia didn't want to upset her star dancer so she asked Isaac Dickson to train Taheya in a non-raqs sharqi dance number that she could perform without antagonizing Houriya. He came up with the brilliant idea of teaching her the carioca dance from the 1933 Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers film Flying Down to Rio which had become immensely popular in Cairo at that time.
Rivalry aside, Houriya Mohamed's contribution to Egyptian dance was important too and she was indeed one of the loveliest and most graceful dancers of the golden era.