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Surrounded by little girls and mocked at school when he first tried ballet, it took serious determination for Luca Abdel-Nour to become the first Egyptian prizewinner at the prestigious Prix de Lausanne.
The international competition in Switzerland has been one of the leading showcases for young ballet talent since it began in 1973.
<p>Abdel-Nour, 17, took three prizes, including second overall and the audience award, at the latest installment in February, and hopes his success can inspire more boys from the Middle East to overcome their prejudices about dance.</p><p>Born to a French mother but growing up in Cairo, he performed in dance and theatre shows with his school as a young boy.</p><p>But he didn't try ballet until he took part in a summer dance school in France aged 12, and an instructor told him to give it a try.</p><p>"I was like ummm 'I don't want to do ballet, it's for girls'," he said.</p><p>But his mother kept encouraging him and eventually he joined a class in Egypt. He soon realized this was his passion, even if he was the only boy in the group.</p><p>"I didn't really care if there were no boys," he said. "People at school knew because I was open about it. I would be called names but I didn't care. I used to tell them: 'You do your thing, I want to do my thing'."</p><p><strong>- Starstruck -</strong></p><p>Hard work helped him overcome his late start and by 14 he had won a year's scholarship to a dance school in Budapest.</p><p>The following year, he won a full-time place at the elite Zurich Dance Academy. This was where things became serious: he had to relearn everything from scratch, and overcome two leg injuries in his first year.</p><p>But the work paid off at Lausanne last month.</p><p>"When they announced the finalists, I couldn't believe it, I was on my way home from school on the train and I cried," he said.</p><p>Suddenly his phone was lighting up with messages from some of the biggest names in the business.</p><p>"Dancers who are now directors who I have watched since I was a child were texting me saying 'You did a good job, we're interested in you'. I was starstruck and honored," he said.</p><p><strong>- 'Worth it in the end' -</strong></p><p>His success has generated plenty of reaction back home in Egypt, with social media full of praise as well as the inevitable sarcastic and even hostile commentary.</p><p>"There are of course lots of negative comments and stuff, but there are a lot of people that have been really supportive of me doing it, saying I've inspired them to do ballet in a society where ballet is not really encouraged," he said.</p><p>"You got the positive, you got the negative, and you have to choose what you want to listen to."</p><p>Abdel-Nour has accepted a place in a company, but is not yet allowed to reveal which one.</p><p>"Every step of the way was hard," he said. "It's hard to leave your family and not see them for long periods of time but it was all worth it at the end."</p><p>© 2021 AFP</p>
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Meghan Markle's estranged father on Tuesday suggested that his daughter exaggerated racism in the British royal family during her interview with US chat show host Oprah Winfrey.
Thomas Markle told ITV the couple's two-hour chat with Winfrey was "way over the top" and suggested a royal family member could have asked a "dumb question" about her future baby's skin color.
<p>The 76-year-old Emmy-winning former lighting director was interviewed from his home in Mexico by one of Meghan's most vehement critics, the former tabloid newspaper editor Piers Morgan.</p><p>"They (Harry and Meghan) went way over the top with these stories with Oprah and should have waited, considering the Queen's age and Philip's age," he said of the CBS show broadcast on Sunday.</p><p>Harry's grandmother Queen Elizabeth II is 94 and her husband Prince Philip is 99 and currently in hospital recovering from a heart operation.</p><p>He played down Meghan and Harry's comments that an unnamed royal family member had asked how dark her baby's skin would be.</p><p>"This whole thing about color and how dark the baby is, is bullshit," said Markle, who is white while Meghan's mother is black.<br/></p><p>"I'm guessing and hoping that it's just a dumb question from somebody. I don't think the British royal family are racist."</p><p>At the same time, he said he was upset by his daughter's account of feeling suicidal after joining the royal family in 2018.</p><p>"Had I known she had psychological problems, I would have been there for her," he said. </p><p>But he claimed that Meghan had "pretty much ghosted" her family in the US and "she really had no one to reach out to".</p><p>Thomas Markle separated from Meghan's mother Doria Ragland when the duchess was young.</p><p>Raglan was at her wedding at Windsor Castle and has had tea with the queen but she dropped contact with her father soon after her wedding.</p><p>Thomas Markle declined to attend after he took part in staged paparazzi photos. He also cited forthcoming heart surgery.</p><p>"They didn't care if I died," he claimed, while saying he wanted to see Meghan, Harry and his grandson Archie, who are now living in California after quitting the royal frontline last year. </p><p>Meghan won a legal victory in February against the publisher of the Mail on Sunday newspaper after it printed a private letter from her provided by her father.</p><p>He said he released part of the letter because Meghan's friends were telling "lies" about him. </p><p>US magazine People cited Meghan's friends as saying she wrote she loved her father and was heartbroken by his behaviour. </p><p>The part he did not release was "horrible", he said. "The word love was never written by her for me."</p><p>Meghan told Winfrey in the interview that she had tried to protect both her parents before the wedding but felt "betrayal" when she found out he was cooperating with newspapers.</p><p>"I'm just trying to decide if I'm comfortable even talking about that," she added. </p>
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