Suddenly during the workshop he separated three women and asked them to dance the last studied dance part. All other women should carefully take attention. The spectators tried to find out the specialities of the three dancers, maybe they notice mistakes, which they themselves will not do. Hassan Khalil is filled with enthusiasm: “Did you see? Did you notice it well? Each one of these wonderful girls (he named all his pupils “girls”) did it in her own way. Each one has her own personality, her own dance. I love you all !” and he hugs the woman just beside him. What’s that? Why does he insist to train the folklore step careful, why does he explain it again and again and repeat it? And now all the difference insists Hassan?

This is a workshop - in its purest meaning. Here something will be created, I have to work for something, I can make up my own mind. It think, Hassan Khalil had noticed, that the principal steps are understood, missing just to train it, and the situation of demonstrating makes the mistakes. Or I think, for Hassan the steps are not so important, of course they are the basis, but important are the complete expressions and the feeling of dance. I can also suppose, that Hassan wants to give after all this strain in the training part to the women some encouragement, praise and caresses. Maybe I am sure, that the seriously of the lesson and the effort to impart the different situations of dance, the styles, the regions, the mentality, for Hassan the pleasure of dance and the joy of life is the most important view.

Prof. Khalil is not a Beau, not Adonis. He doesn’t prefer the outer (fugitive) beauty. At his age he’s allowed to have a small belly. He owns warm friendliness, humour, and charm. If he shows the movements, they don’t appear as graceful as shown by a woman. But must a man move like a woman? He knows how the steps, the pose, the accents, the movements will appear in a woman’s body. And he knows how to make this knowledge understandable for workshop pupils. He also takes care for shy women in the last line. He knows the different difficulties of every woman. He demands and promotes.

Due to Karin Stöber, who teaches as Nesmah in Bad Nauheim, we are allowed to have profit from his dancing and human abilities every year. Karin Stöber is the good soul around, next and behind Hassan. She organises his workshops, accompanies and attends on him, translates during his workshop, offers him his medicine on time, she even dances his choreographs if he has to take a rest because of a former heart-attack. She relieves Hassan of work, so he can open his heart for the dance and the dancers.

I can learn a great deal of Hassan Khalil if I listen to him with great interest. I get to know a lot about oriental life, the history of the oriental dance, customs, traditions of the different countries and regions, the rich culture of a strange world. If I look and analyse carefully, I recognise many details of the dances, which makes them typical oriental, which provide the “typical “oriental feeling. If I am training with great pains, I get many combinations, or a whole choreography with traditional and modern elements, stage effects and pure oriental expressions. If I open my heart for him, understand his humour, value his unique pantomimic, I will get great pleasure in his workshop.

I am looking forward to them.

( roswitha möhl
translation: karin stöber)