In the plays, films, and operas she writes and directs, Laila Solimon combines documentary with fiction, and history with events recent enough that the 45-year-old Cairo native could have lived through them. With the elliptical The Story of…, she did. A few years ago, Solimon gave birth to a child who only lived four days, catapulting her into that tiny invisible tribe of new mothers who have nothing to celebrate and for whom there are no public forms of mourning. She developed this solo with the belly dancer Sherin Hegazy, whose idiom of trembling belly and rolling hips has traditionally celebrated female fecundity. But here—with video projections, Solimon’s ruminative script, and fellow Egyptian Nancy Mounir’s haunting soundscape of misplaced ambient noises—Hegazy turns the dance against itself. —Apollinaire Scherr