2022/03/03
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She lived in the city of art and culture, Alexandria, the picturesque coastal city that provided art with many talents. In addition, she lived among a family that loved art.
All these ingredients made Nelly Mazloum one of the most prominent Egyptian stars in the field of show and rhythmic dance, and she was one of the few who excelled in this art, and she was Egypt’s ambassador abroad for this fine art.
Her full name is Nelly Catherine Mazloum-Calvo, she was born in 1925 in Alexandria, her father is Italian from Naples and her mother is Greek from Asia Minor,
Her father founded a jewelry gallery, her mother was a pianist, and the family owned a hotel on Alhambra Theater Street.
Nelly grew up loving art and music, but she suffered from paralysis in her legs when she was two years old,
She walked following many years of care and attention from the pediatrician and his wife, the ballet teacher, who later taught her to dance.
At the age of five, she tested in the theater and began practicing dancing, as she was considered a child prodigy. During the period between 1939 and 1945, she presented two shows daily throughout the year, a summer show in Alexandria, and a winter show in Cairo.
In 1939, Nelly participated in the first international movie, and it was a Greek called prosfygopoula or “refugee girl” with the Greek singer Sofia, and following that experience she entered the field of acting and dancing in Egyptian cinema.
With her love for dancing and acting, the Greek dancer refused to present her dances in cinematic shows; Where the movie was filled with a large number of dances,
Of this, her daughter, Mariana, says: “At that time there were more than 300 dancers who might perform for five pounds, while Nelly’s fare was 100 pounds; Because she was the only one who offered modern dance, so why waste her talent and distinction!!!
Nelly also danced in the famous Casino Opera, which was run by the great artist Badia Masabni, where she began performing belly dancing, and she presented an evening show for families at eight in the evening and another show at midnight.
After her performance ended, Nelly would stay to watch the performances of other artists such as: Samia Gamal and Tahia Carioca, who were trained by an Italian choreographer to teach them to perform special movements.
Nelly learned quickly and was chosen to perform in front of King Farouk in the same segment as Samia Gamal and Umm Kulthum, due to her excellence in classical dance and ballet, and she was greatly admired.
It was discovered for cinema by director Abbas Helmy in 1964, and presented it on the screen for the first time in the movie “Sahib Palin”, and her artistic roles continued, until her artistic balance reached regarding 17 films in Egypt,
The most famous of them (the character of Latania) – the movie “Ibn Hamido” with Ismail Yassin and Ahmed Ramzy, and she was able to compete with Tahia Karioka and Samia Gamal in rhythmic dance,
Then her talent gradually developed until she became a choreographer for the Royal Opera House, and established a school to teach dance in Cairo.
Nelly has been married 6 times throughout her life, and one of her most famous husbands was a rich Egyptian-Greek named Andreas Roussos, the father of the famous singer Demis Roussos from an ex-wife, and Nelly Mazloum took care of the child Demis for a long time.
Her husband asked her to quit dancing and devote herself to her married life, but she only stopped performing and continued her training and choreography,
She did not leave any place in Egypt, north or south, without traveling to it. She used to enjoy attending the wedding ceremonies of each country and tribe, and learned from them the local and folk dance.
After her separation from her husband, she returned to dancing and to the management of the ballet school to prepare to create her own group of amateurs.
It was also rumored that she married Dr. Atef Sedky, the former Prime Minister of Egypt, in the government of former President Mohamed Hosni Mubarak from 1986 to 1996, but this rumor has not been proven true so far.
The movie “The Student” in front of Shadia was her last artwork, and she did not dance in it at all, as she was 32 years old at the time, and following that she decided to immigrate to Greece,
After her emigration, she established a school to teach contemporary dance there, and in recent photos that were circulated to Nelly Mazloum before her death, she appeared with a significant change in her features and appeared very overweight, unrelated to her previous images and mental image in the minds of the public as a graceful ballerina.
The show dancer, Nelly Mazloum, passed away on February 21, 2003, at the age of 73.