Mahmoud Reda

Mahmoud Reda was a swimmer in his youth and won several Cairene and Egyptian national titles before the age of 16. Finding the sport too repetitive, he then took to diving, but injured himself and then switched to gymnastics. It was in this sport that he was finally chosen to represent Egypt at the 1952 Helsinki Olympics, where he had a best individual finish of joint-105th (with Zdzisław Lesiński of Poland) in the floor exercise and was 16th with the national team.

As a student of Political Economy at Cairo University, Reda encountered an Argentine dance troupe, which he was invited to join. This solidified the career path that he would take for the remainder of his life: that of a dancer. After touring Egypt, Rome, and Paris, he worked as an accountant for a short time to save money and then started his own Egyptian folkloric dance troupe, The Reda Troupe, in August 1959. Within two years, he and his group had starred in a movie and become well-known across the country. They starred in two more films and expanded their performances across the world over the next decade. Although Reda stopped dancing in 1972, he continued to choreograph and direct for many years thereafter, and taught classes and workshops into his 80s.