Magda Saleh: A short biography of Egypt’s first Prima Ballerina
by Shahinda Abdalla
Born to a Scottish mother and an Egyptian father, Magda Saleh was raised in Cairo during a very special moment in Egypt’s cultural history where the state sponsored the arts in government-funded schools encouraging many cultural exchange programs between Egyptian artists and those from other countries. During her teenage years, Saleh was part of such a program. In the late 1950s, her young and budding talent was spotted when teachers from the Soviet Union arrived to hold classes at her school which was a new government-subsidized school affiliated with the Cairo Ballet. Saleh was then invited along with four other teenagers to study in Moscow at the Bolshoi Ballet Academy. Saleh trained there from 1963 to 1965 after which Saleh along with the other young Egyptian women returned to the Cairo Ballet. In 1966, they performed their inaugural performance of the Soviet ballet “The Fountain of Bakhchisarai” which tells the story of a Polish princess who was abducted by a Tatar chief and killed by the jealous harem favorite. This performance was immensely celebrated and considered such a success, it not only put Saleh on the map starting her on a very successful career trajectory but placed the Cairo Ballet company in an esteemed position that would continue to garner funding and support from the state and abroad as well. In Egypt, Saleh became something of a cultural celebrity. The Egyptian press gave her the title of Cairo’s first prima ballerina. Abroad, Saleh became a guest artist with several Soviet ballet troupes — the Kirov in Leningrad, the Bolshoi in Moscow’s Kremlin Palace of Congresses and others in Novossibirsk and Tashkent.
Magda Saleh and the four other girls in front of the Bolshoi theatre: Diana Hakak, Aleya Abdel Razek, Maya Selim and Wadoud Faizy. (Image Credit)
Saleh performing in “Don Quixote” with the Bolshoi Ballet in 1971
Despite all the recognition and accolades, Saleh’s main aim was always to make ballet more accessible and expose people from all social classes to it. Saleh continued to perform for the Cairo Ballet until the tragic fire that burned down the Khedivial Opera House in 1971 and left not only Saleh in tears but the entirety of the Egyptian cultural scene. In an interview with Al-Ahram in 2016, Saleh explains that while the tragedy remains a mystery, the opera’s burning affected many aspects of life in Egypt going far beyond art and culture. She says, “My mother suggested that I should look for an alternative path, such as academic development. I had to put my prima ballerina career to one side and reinvent myself as a student. While many of my colleagues departed to Moscow to continue their graduate studies, I obtained a scholarship to study Modern Dance Techniques and Choreography at the University of California at Los Angeles. Of course, I hadn’t had a faintest idea of what modern dance was as we hadn’t really had a chance to see it in Egypt.” After obtaining her master’s degree, Saleh went on to New York University (NYU) in 1979 to complete her PhD with a thesis entitled “A Documentation of the Ethnic Dance Traditions of the Arab Republic of Egypt”. The work was accompanied by a documentary called “Egypt Dances” which is an ethnographic documentation of the wealth of Egypt’s dance traditions with 17 samples of folk movements from various cultural areas.
Saleh in an exhibition held by the American University in Cairo in 2019 for her life’s work (Image Credit)
In 1987, Saleh was appointed founding director of the new Cairo Opera House and helped set up the institution until its launch in 1988. Some conflicts and clashes with at the time Minister of Culture Farouk Hosni led to her dismissal. Saleh filed a lawsuit which many years later she won. Following her bitter experience at the opera, Saleh returned to the Academy of Arts where she stayed for a year before asking for a sabbatical to go to the United States where she was invited as a visiting professor at NYU’s Department of Dance. During this time she met her husband, Jack Josephson, an American businessman who became a renowned art historian and authority on ancient Egyptian sculptures. They married in 1993. Saleh remained in the United States and became active in helping to bring Egyptian performers to the United States. After her husband’s death in 2022, she returned to Egypt to be with family. Saleh recently herself passed away on June 11, 2023. Magda Saleh will always be remembered for the impact she made on both Egyptian and International dance communities. She was a pioneer in the arts in Egypt and a patron for aspiring Egyptian artists abroad. In Saleh’s own words as she reflects upon her life and career, “It was a special confluence of time, place and circumstance that made this possible. A career like that would be possible neither earlier nor later and I was very lucky in this respect. In a sense, I have a good life and I am blessed. My career as a dancer was very brief, followed by dynamic academic development. Things didn’t necessarily go the way I foresaw them but this is how it happens in life. Despite all the obstacles I experienced at the Academy and new Cairo Opera, my intention was always to give back to Egypt even if the circumstances didn’t always make that possible. Though I might not be physically in Egypt, wherever I go, Egypt is certainly within me. Maybe it is a romantic way of looking at things. But it keeps me going.”
Saleh in 2018 (Image Credit:Vincent Tullo for The New York Times)