Women, Dance and Revolution: Performance and Protest in the Southern Mediterranean 9781350989863, 9780857726186

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For my mama Jo Martin I wish you were here to read this Peace Love Light

‘If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution.’ Emma Goldman

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ILLUSTRATIONS

Figures 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

Nadra Assaf performing I Matter (2010), image by Marc Khoury Tahrir Square in Cairo, a ‘hub’ of the Arab Spring uprisings in Egypt, image by Arnaud Stephenson (2014) Hala, image by Arnaud Stephenson (2014) Hala, image by Arnaud Stephenson (2014) Old Damascus, before the Syrian Civil War, image by Rose Martin (2010) Mey performing Zerstörung für Anfänger (Destruction for Beginners) (2013), image courtesy of Mey’s personal collection Palestinians from the West Bank queuing at the Qalandiya checkpoint, image by Arnaud Stephenson (2014) Nadia in the dance studio of the Popular Arts Center, Ramallah, image by Arnaud Stephenson (2014) Nadia jumping on the rooftop of the Popular Arts Center, Ramallah, image by Arnaud Stephenson (2014) The separation wall near the Qalandiya checkpoint in Ramallah, Palestine, image by Arnaud Stephenson (2014) ‘Just dance in Ramallah’, a wall in Al-Tireh, Ramallah, image by Arnaud Stephenson (2014) Noora standing among the olive trees in Beitunia village, Palestine, image by Arnaud Stephenson (2014) Photo shoot in Beitunia Village, image by Amber Hunt (2014) Downtown Amman, image by Arnaud Stephenson (2014)

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Illustrations

15 Dancers at the International Dance Day Festival Lebanon 2014 perform on the pier of the Byblos waterfront, image courtesy of International Dance Day Festival Lebanon (2014) 16 Rania, image courtesy of Rania’s personal collection 17 The back streets of Khan el-Khalili Markets, Cairo, image by Arnaud Stephenson (2014) 18 Dalia El Abd at home, Agouza, Cairo, image by Arnaud Stephenson (2014) 19 Dalia El Abd, image by Arnaud Stephenson (2014) 20 A Cairo apartment block, image by Arnaud Stephenson (2014) 21 Dalia Naous in the streets of Montmartre, Paris, image by Arnaud Stephenson (2014) 22 A still of the woman smoking in the street intervention from Cairography footage, image courtesy of Dalia Naous and Kinda Hassan (2013) 23 Dalia Naous, image by Arnaud Stephenson (2014) 24 Dance workshop at Bourj el-Barajneh Palestinian Refugee Camp, image by Rose Martin (2009) 25 Nadra in the Jbeil souk, image by Rose Martin (2010) 26 Noora, image by Arnaud Stephenson (2014) 27 Sunset in Ramallah, image by Arnaud Stephenson (2014)

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Plates 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

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Amman Citadel, image by Arnaud Stephenson (2014) Al-Hussein Mosque, Khan el-Khalili Markets, Cairo, image by Arnaud Stephenson (2014) Dalia Naous in These shoes are made for walking by Nancy Naous, image by Mohamed Charara (2013) Colourful façade in Raouche, Beirut, image by Rose Martin (2010) Nadia Khattab performing at Birzet Nights, image by Shadi Baker (2012) Nadra Assaf performing in her production of I Matter, image courtesy of Lebanese American University (2010) Noora Baker and Thais Mennsitieri in Sensored by CACTUS Performance Art Collective, image courtesy of CACTUS Performance Art Collective Al-Manara by night, Ramallah, image by Arnaud Stephenson (2014)

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Acknowledgements

I arrived in Beirut in November 2009. It was my first time in Lebanon, and my first encounter with a Middle Eastern location. I spoke no Arabic and was naïve about the nuances of cultural practices. Little did I know how much would change over the next six years – that I would find myself spending more time between Aleppo and Marrakesh than at my home in Auckland, New Zealand; that I would be teaching dance in locations as diverse as the Cairo Opera House and Bourj Buragneh Palestinian Refugee Camp; or that I would be dodging Israeli security over and over again to visit Palestine, a place where I found great love and great hope. I owe Associate Professor Nicholas Rowe a great deal; without his guidance, encouragement and sheer genius I would never have got on that plane to Beirut in 2009. It has been the immense courage, humility and intellect that Nicholas has shown as a doctoral supervisor, academic colleague and friend that has encouraged me to strive to become an adventurer, a risk-taker and someone who is working to leave the world a better place in some small way. Thank you. Thanks must also go to the wonderful colleagues I have worked alongside throughout the process of researching and writing this book: Associate Professor Ralph Buck, Sarah Knox, Sarah Foster-Sproull, Dr Krystel Khoury, Gwenalle Chaboud, Dr Nadra Assaf, Noora Baker, Ata Khattab, Rebecca Camilleri, Diana Sabri and Leyya Tawil. I would also sincerely like to thank Professor Sherry Shapiro, Dr Joseph Gonzalez and Dr Toni-Shapiro-Phim for their mentorship. Also thanks for the lively and thought-provoking discussions with Dr Naomi Jackson, Dr Karen Barbour and Professor Eeva

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Acknowledgements

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Antilla, at meetings, conferences, workshops and working group sessions around the world, and my students at the University of Auckland for listening to my stories along the way. Several organizations have assisted this project – the University of Auckland, Dancing on the Edge Festival, Lebanese American University, El-Funoun Palestinian Popular Dance Troupe and Freeway Dance Studio Amman. The generous funds from the University of Auckland FRDF award and a PBRF grant have allowed this research to come to fruition. To the wonderful friends and family, at home and in the field – Pip, Uli, Sophie and Dani (for being the best); Amber and Cookie (for the fun, adventures and images); Sarah K (for unwavering support, love and for reading drafts); Sarah F, Georgia and Brige (for the wine, friendship and escapades); Noora, Nadra, Nadia, Hala, Dalia N, Dalia E, Mey and Rania (for generosity, trust and belief); Edmee and the Ramallah crew (for showing me another side to life in the West Bank); Azza, Rosie, Sarah H, Gina, Tanya and Maxeem (for being my Amman dance family) – thank you. To my fiancé, Needham, thank you for your love, for providing words, and for persevering with me through the process of pulling the manuscript together. Chris/Dad, thank you for teaching me to dream big, seek change and challenges and, above all else, for never questioning my decisions and offering so much love. To Tim and Kate – you have provided me with so much fun on this journey, thank you. To little Sebastian Jo, I hope that one day I can tell you all of my adventures in the field, and may you have many, many adventures of your own.

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Figure 1: Nadra Assaf performing I Matter (2010) Image by Marc Khoury

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‘Yet with all the changes and upheavals, life basically stays the same. People love, hate, kill and die. People sing, dance and write’ (Hammad, 1996/2010)

‘Things don’t change.’ Sarah looks me directly in the eye and speaks very calmly as she says this, though she is tired, or has said this many times before. ‘It drives me crazy here. I feel alone. I feel like I am the only one doing this and people think I am mad.’ We sit opposite each other at a table wrapped with a plastic covering, in a restaurant on the first floor of an old building in Al-Balad, downtown Amman. Black and white images of Arab singers and film stars from years gone by create a patchwork effect on the walls; they are now all tinged yellow with cigarette smoke. Across the table Sarah crosses her arms and purses her lips ever so slightly. I sit back in my chair and wonder if we should continue the conversation or change the subject. I’d chosen to focus on contemporary dance practices in places with a suspicion of dance. Dancers talking about their work, especially women dancers, sometimes found themselves forced to recognize how tough it was. This could be uncomfortable. Before I have the opportunity to say anything Sarah speaks. She says, ‘Do you know what it feels like to have everyone judge you? Look at you? “Oh, there is the dancer.” I ignore it, yes, but you know that you’re being talked about.’

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Sarah was a good friend, and we’d had these sorts of conversations numerous times over the years we had known each other. I often initiated the discussions, curious to understand the culture and context of dance in this region. This curiosity led me to have conversations with other dancers, teachers, directors, choreographers and also those who were removed from the dance scenes across the Arab region. I heard debates, contradictions, questions and reflections on dance, gender, alienation, transformation, education, politics, censorship, society, religion, artistic integrity and cultural hegemony. It is these themes that now permeate this book. Within the following pages eight dancers’ stories are shared in intimate detail. These dancers live and work in Ramallah, Cairo, Amman, Beirut and Damascus. All are women who have had diverse experiences teaching, learning, performing and creating dance through occupation, civil war, political uprisings and/or revolutions. As a researcher abroad, I met with each of the women several times between December 2009 and July 2014. They have become my friends. I care about and respect them deeply as artists and individuals, as proponents of change and as activists for hope.

Meeting dancers Finding people to interview and include in a publication is not always easy. It can be difficult enough in your hometown, a place you know well where you speak the common language. However, it can be extraordinarily challenging when you are seeking a very specific group of people to talk to, in a very different location to the one you are used to, and where language, social customs and politics are extremely different to what is familiar to you as a researcher. I began researching dance in the southern Mediterranean region in late 2009, and throughout 2010 and 2011 I conducted a large number of interviews, talking to over 100 dance practitioners in the region, gathering data for a co-authored book entitled Talking Dance: Contemporary Histories from the Southern Mediterranean (Buck, Rowe & Martin, 2014) and for my PhD studies (Martin, 2012). When the time came to interview women for Women, Dance and Revolution I felt confident in my interview techniques, I was more familiar with the environment and I had established contact with many of those who feature in this book. Nevertheless, this did not necessarily make it any easier, and challenges and limitations surfaced throughout.

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Returning to locations across the southern Mediterranean region multiple times involved making numerous 30-hour journeys from New Zealand to places such as Amman, Ramallah and Beirut, along the way negotiating the intricate and challenging change of social nuances and expectations as I attempted to gain the most insightful stories from the women that I could. My home became wherever my suitcase was. I became used to transition. I would teach in Auckland during the university semester, and I would venture to locations far away from my home on a regular basis. Through multiple returns these places became my ‘homes’. This was due in part to my growing professional research interests and networks in these regions. It was also due to my craving for adventure, and personal experiences of great grief and great love that motivated me to return to these different parts of the world over and over again. It was the complex layers of making, developing and sustaining relationships that led me to meet many of the women who are featured in this book. Some I have known for several years. I first met Noora Baker in December 2009 at the Dancing on the Edge Festival in Amsterdam, and over the next few years we worked together with the El-Funoun Palestinian Popular Dance Troupe. Over this time we found that we experienced many of the same things, which drew us closer on a personal level – most significantly, we had in common the desire to make change and to challenge existing conventions within society. I met Nadra Assaf in April 2010 to interview her for the Talking Dance book; we walked through the streets of Jbeil and then talked for hours over numerous cups of tea. Nadra and I continued to keep in touch and professional activities such as dance festivals and conferences kept us connected over the years. Dalia Naous and I met each other at a dance education symposium in Turkey in July 2010 when we danced on the shores of the Mediterranean. We reconnected in Paris in 2014, wandering cobbled streets but talking of the landscape of Lebanon. I first met Mey Sefan at Café Downtown in Al-Jazzari, a suburb of new Damascus, in early 2010, well before the horrors of the Syrian Civil War had begun and this part of Damascus was gentle and well-to-do. We met again throughout 2010 and into 2011 at dance festivals and symposiums outside Syria, often sitting up late into the evenings talking over glasses of red wine and too many cigarettes. I met Dalia El Abd and Hala Hassan Imam through an academic colleague in Cairo the very first time I visited in 2010. I stayed in touch with both throughout the tumultuous Arab Spring uprisings that began in 2011, and reconnected with them in Lebanon and Turkey when Cairo was too unstable to visit. In January 2014 I returned to

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Cairo for the first time since the Arab Spring uprisings began in Egypt. We spent time in Dalia’s dance studio and Hala’s apartment drinking tea and eating sandwiches and sweets. Others I met more recently. I arranged to meet Rania Kamhawi after she contacted me through Facebook in 2013. While I had heard about her work in Jordan, and had previously tried to arrange to meet her in 2010, our paths never crossed until I was in Amman in November 2013 when I visited the Performing Arts Center that she directs. Nadia Khattab was a dancer I taught in the El-Funoun Palestinian Popular Dance Troupe in Ramallah; we would go out dancing on Thursday nights at the Beit Aneesh bar. We quickly became firm friends. For the recorded interviews, I would meet with the woman I interviewed in cafés over cups of coffee, other times in the dance studios or offices they worked in, or in their houses, apartments or large family homes, often drinking tea or eating a delicious meal that frequently appeared in front of us as if by magic. Then there were informal conversations that occurred around these meetings. We travelled in taxis, sat in cars, ate out at restaurants, gathered at friends’ houses, drank red wine at hip bars, shopped for shoes or rested in the dance studio. The conversations during these moments were perhaps the most significant. While they were not recorded, ‘off the record’ and therefore not documented verbatim in this book, they were the moments that gave depth to what was discussed in the recorded interviews. It was these conversations that sparked ideas and ‘aha’ moments, where dots were connected and thoughts solidified. They were where trust was developed and an understanding on a more personal level was built. Essentially, we became friends and the stories flowed.

Why women’s narratives? So many queries arose from the intersecting vectors of locus, culture, politics and dance: censorship, surveillance, occupation, restrictions, suspicion, borders, freedom, choice, and the presence of the female dancing body within the context of the southern Mediterranean, all through the experiences shared by individual women. Choosing to focus only on female dance practitioners’ experiences was a conscious decision made early in the research process, in part to provide parameters for the study but also because of my prior relationships working with these women. Women were also selected as the participants in this investigation because as a female

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researcher I found it was easier to meet and develop relationships that were perceived as culturally acceptable by many people.1 It can be noted that to a large extent past scholarship and the popular media have frequently offered simplistic, stereotyped images of women in the southern Mediterranean region. Frequently portraying women in this region as passive victims, there has often been a desire from Western media sources, scholars, anthropologists and writers to ‘liberate’ these women. This research intends to avoid falling into a narrow viewpoint, such as ‘misery research’ and ‘dignity research’ (Tohidi, 1998, p.277), while also taking care to avoid moving too far in the opposite direction, where a onesided understanding is overcompensated and generalizations are made. Scholarship (Boxberger, 1998; Hoodfar, 2001; Tohidi, 1998) has provided refreshing and more nuanced understandings of the issues women in contemporary southern Mediterranean societies are contending with. Mainly I listened and watched with an open mind, and I report on that here within the pages of this book. The women who have shared their narratives and opened up their dance practices to scrutiny in this research have all had diverse dance experiences taking place in varying locations, with a chronology spanning the past four decades. This publication focuses on the stories that these women chose to reveal to me. Their experiences are told, as much as possible, in their words. The multiple interviews have been developed into narratives to illuminate their experiences of dance in relation to politics, gender, religion and socio-cultural issues. While this book is an independent project from those mentioned previously,2 it builds on them and has been informed by and overlaps with the voices of other dance practitioners from the southern Mediterranean who shared their experiences as part of other research and teaching activities I have been involved in. The themes of censorship, surveillance, occupation, borders, freedom, choice, an the presence of the female dancing body within the context of the southern Mediterranean emerged strongly after several interviews for this publication, seemingly nagging to be pursued. This, coupled with the observations I was making as I immersed myself in local dance communities of the southern Mediterranean, led me to seek out the narratives of women who had negotiated complex cultural and political frameworks within their practices as dancers, choreographers and teachers. I became particularly interested in the themes of politics and presence that many of the dance practitioners I met shared with me. The idea of doing the artistic practice of dance in isolation from the wider surrounding cultural environment became

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a fascination, so that key selection criteria when choosing research participants for this study were not that they were ‘Arab’ or ‘Muslim’, but rather that they were located in places somewhat suspicious of dance (Karayanni, 2004, 2009; Shay, 1994, 1999, 2002, 2006, 2008; Suweileh, 2011).

Why the southern Mediterranean? The region of the world geographically situated to the south and east of the Mediterranean Sea has been given numerous names, some of which are highly contested (Davison, 1960). Possible descriptions include ‘Middle East’, ‘Arab World’, ‘Near Orient’, ‘Near East’, ‘North Africa’, ‘Southwest Asia’, ‘Maghreb’, or ‘Levant’. However, several of these terms are politically charged; they are often Eurocentrically loaded in nature, lingering as a result of colonial interventions across the region, and descriptive of the region only in its relation to Europe or the West (Said, 1978). Alternatively, a term such as ‘southern and eastern Mediterranean’ is longwinded and cumbersome. Therefore, the southern Mediterranean is a term that I propose to describe the geographical region stretching across North Africa and the Levant, with narratives drawn from Jordan, Syria, Egypt, Palestine and Lebanon. The area of the southern Mediterranean has been selected for this study in part to provide parameters for the research. It has also been chosen as there is limited documented research investigating contemporary practices of dance or women dancing in this region of the world, and few accounts of personal stories and narratives from those dancing within this particular geographical location. This geographical area incorporates vast social diversity and can in no way be considered homogenous. However, it has also been selected for the somewhat common cultural, linguistic and historical understandings. It is relevant to highlight the relationship between the geographical locations this research focuses on and the emerging discourses surrounding the Arab Spring uprisings that began in 2011.3 These uprisings have taken place across the southern Mediterranean region, stimulating social divisions and tensions regarding East/West relations. The uprisings have exacerbated hostility over the exchange of diverse knowledge, while bringing into question the role of the ‘native intellectual’ (Fanon, 1961/1967, p.35) within post-colonial societies. Some think the youth of the southern Mediterranean initiated the Arab Spring as a revolutionary gesture. Others

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comment that these events have been brewing for a number of years, or have been orchestrated by the world’s superpowers. The uprisings are fluid and ongoing, and there has been a shift from these events being the ‘hot topic of the moment’ to ‘yesterday’s news’. One just needs to look towards Syria to see how the hope and potentiality that existed at the beginning of the Arab Spring uprisings have turned into bloody violence, censorship and military putsch. Dance does not often feature in current, dominant accounts of the uprisings, yet dance and dancers in the region are inevitably affected by these events and ideas. Rana Moussaoui (2011) explains how significant political contestation is within dance. Through their creative work performers echo debates that are pertinent to the political uprisings of those in the region. These might be the articulation of freedom (social, political and artistic) within society,4 or might question notions of self or national identity.5 This research inevitably touches on issues related to governments and subsequent rebellions: at times there is a focus within the narratives and the subsequent analysis on dance and the Arab Spring, at other points the focus reflects more on the realities of artists’ lives under autocratic regimes, living under occupation or within a civil war context. It can be acknowledged that representations of women dancing in the southern Mediterranean have been subject to much misinterpretation within literature and neglect by dance scholars, often succumbing to distorted, romanticized, exoticized perceptions, understandings and images when being investigated or presented (Shay & Sellers-Young, 2003). Some accounts of dance in the southern Mediterranean region tend to reiterate Orientalistic stereotypes of both the dance practices occurring in the region and the generalizations about women dancing in the region (for examples see: Al-Faruqi, 1978; Buonaventura, 1983, 2004, 2010; Helland, 2001). While there are some valuable resources on dance practices and experiences in the southern Mediterranean (Karayanni, 2004, 2009; Kaschl, 2003; Rowe, 2007a, 2007b, 2008, 2009, 2010; Shay, 1994, 1999, 2002, 2006, 2008; Van Nieuwkerk, 1995, 2001a, 2001b), none of these investigations focus specifically on contemporary dance practices in the region, and nor do they examine the intersections between politics, performance and the female dancing body in the southern Mediterranean. It is hoped that this publication contributes to a more nuanced understanding of dance and specifically of women dancing within the southern Mediterranean.

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Making stories My time in the field for this research involved spending months travelling throughout the southern Mediterranean region meeting dancers, teachers, choreographers and others within a variety of arts communities, teaching and participating in dance classes and workshops, observing performances and becoming as immersed as possible in the diverse cultures of the region. Place itself gave colour to my fieldwork experience. My ‘office’ took the form of cockroach-infested hotels, friends’ apartments, cafés filled with the sweet smell of shisha, local dance studios and theatres, trains, buses and airplanes. Within a multi-sited ethnographic method this research has focused on the individual narratives of dance practitioners. Edward Bruner (1997) notes that ‘ethnographies are guided by an implicit narrative structure’ (p.264). With this in mind, the narratives gathered in this study have been purposefully developed as central features. A narrative can be an ‘oral, written, or filmed account of events told to others or oneself’ (Smith, 2000, p.328), with the study of the narrative being viewed as an investigation of the multiple ways in which people experience the world (Barthes, 1966; Connelly & Clandinin, 1990; Richardson, 1990). Time and place become essential within a narrative, as do settings and descriptions of context (Connelly & Clandinin, 1990). Laurel Richardson (1990) explains the concept of the narrative in qualitative research in the following statement: Narrative displays the goals and intentions of human actors; it makes individuals, cultures, societies, and historical epochs comprehensible as wholes; it humanizes time; and it allows us to contemplate the effects of our actions, and to alter the directions of our lives. Narrative is everywhere; it is present in myth, fable, short story, epic, tragedy, comedy, painting, dance, stained glass windows, cinema, social histories, fairy tales, novels, science schema, comic strips, conversation, and journal articles. (p.117) The transformation of narrative accounts into research requires complex decision-making. As Catherine Reissman (2005) explains, narratives do not speak for themselves, ‘they require interpretation when used as data’ (p.2). The researcher’s role is to interpret the underlying themes and concepts of the interviewees’ stories (Riley & Hawe, 2005), with these interpretations relating ‘to the purposes of the inquiry which, at the time of writing, may

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have evolved from the purposes originally conceived for the project and in terms of which much of the data was collected’ (Connelly & Clandinin, 1990, p.11). Within dance research, several scholars have used narratives as a means to explore the rich and complex experiences of dancers, teachers and choreographers (for example see: Bond & Deans, 1997; Fortin, Long & Lord, 2002; Risner, 2000; Wainwright & Turner, 2004). While narratives can offer the meaning of experiences, narrative inquiry has a somewhat contested history with a range of approaches being drawn from diverse disciplines with ‘no one unifying method’ (Reiley & Hawe, 2005, p.227). There has been some debate over the problematic nature of narrative, with some scholars stating that there is the risk of writing fiction or deceiving readers (Connelly & Clandinin, 1990). Others have shared concerns regarding speaking on behalf of a certain group, or alternatively pretending to offer an authentic voice on behalf of a particular group of people (Atkinson & Delamont, 2006; Reissman, 2005). Within this research I do not intend to claim the narratives shared by the dance practitioners are more ‘authentic’ than other methods of representation, nor do they sit outside of their own socio-cultural contexts. Instead, they provide snapshots of memories and reflections of particular times in individuals’ lives, valuable despite the intersubjectivity of the inquiry and the multiple ways in which the events and experiences shared could be organized, viewed and interpreted. Stories from interviews form the focal point of this research, illuminating the dance practitioners’ lived experiences. Within these accounts, reflections on wider socio-cultural issues in relation to dance emerged. This information was collected through individual semi-structured and conversational interviews. I chose to interview eight women because I was seeking depth rather than breadth in their stories of experiences. My interview methods draw strongly on an ethnographic approach. Ethnographic interviews differ from other styles of interviews, and questions have been raised over what exactly makes an interview ‘ethnographic’ (Heyl, 2001; O’Reilly, 2009). As Barbara Sherman Heyl (2001, p.369) explains, ethnographic interviews take place in a research situation where: Researchers have established respectful on-going relationships with their interviewees, including enough rapport for there to be a genuine exchange of views and enough time and openness in the interviews for the interviewees to explore purposefully with the researcher the meanings they place on the events in their worlds.

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Heyl’s view of ethnographic interviews (that they take place in the context of established research relationships) could be seen as somewhat idealistic. The reality of fieldwork means that it might not always be possible to have enough time with each person to discuss their views or particular ideas fully or develop the openness of relationships required for ‘genuine’ exchanges, with some people naturally being more willing to share information and converse than others. However, in this research I sought to develop situations similar to those described by Heyl, where mutual trust, respect and understanding are fostered and there is a genuine exchange of thoughts, experiences and ideas. I chose to use ethnographical interviews that were informal, conversational and semi-structured in design (Davies, 2008; Patton, 1990), allowing the interviews to be flexible in format and style. Semi-structured interviews offer the researcher opportunities to ask questions in a different order or wording for each participant and for new topics to be introduced if and when they are required (Davies, 2008). The semi-structured interviews for this research built on diverse experiences I had while ‘in the field’. From watching some of the women teach, rehearse or perform, I would see things that I then wanted to ask them about in an interview. Through my participation in the dance classes or workshops that some of the women facilitated I found I developed a more embodied sense of the work that they were engaged with, and I feel that this in turn led to richer conversations about their dance practices. The informal off-the-record conversations throughout the research process were key to helping to develop interview topic guides, understand context and direct discussions in the interviews. I conducted at least two audio-recorded semi-structured interviews with each of the women. These varied in length between one and three hours. Beyond the numerous informal conversations with the women that we had while squished into the back seats of taxis, sitting in local restaurants eating manaesh and drinking cold lemon and mint, or in dark theatre auditoriums while waiting for a rehearsal to begin, we also had conversations by telephone, over Skype or by Facebook chat and e-mail. Informal conversations through these modes allowed for the details of an individual’s story to further emerge, which gave me, as the researcher, the ability to probe for more information if required and to have a sense of informality during the conversation, which often allowed the participant to relax and feel more at ease. Such informal conversational interviews have been referred to as ‘conversations with a purpose’ (Burgess, 2006, p.302).

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The interviews were all conducted in English. I have very limited Arabic language skills and while I have become more competent to hold a basic conversation in Arabic, and to be able to comprehend much of what is being said around me, I quickly discovered that learning the language was hard. Even though over the years I had acquired a basic level of the language, this did not always help me in interview situations; the phrases I knew were more suited to conversations about the weather (‘El gaw gamil al youm’ – ‘It’s beautiful weather today’), or alternatively could get me into awkward situations (‘Yalla atini borsa’ – ‘Come on, give me a kiss’). Despite only being able to understand and communicate in Arabic on a basic level, I felt that it was imperative that I try my best with the language to further immerse myself in my research environment. I have continued to study Arabic on a regular basis, taking language intensives at Al-Quds University and working with tutors. However, I must admit I have learnt the most from friends while out at dinner or during long evenings of drinking on rooftops. It has been noted that learning the language(s) of the location(s) being investigated is valuable to the research process. Charlotte Davies (2008) explains: ‘for the ethnographer attempting to understand another social world, the process of learning the language in which that world is lived out of is fundamentally insightful’ (p.87). All of the women interviewed for this book spoke English, but some preferred to speak in Arabic or French during the semi-structured interviews. During our informal conversations, however, they all spoke in English. During some of the semi-structured interviews I relied on local interpreters, some of whom were from the local dance communities, while others were acquaintances I met on my travels who were recent university graduates or who worked as translators for local agencies such as the British Council. Having a translator present during some interviews proved to be vital. It allowed questions to be explored in Arabic, English and sometimes French, with the opportunity to discuss translations with the translator for clarification of meanings during the interview process. Where two languages differ as much as English and Arabic, translation from one to another is no easy task. Even within the variations of colloquial and classical Arabic there are multiplicities of variations that further contribute to the challenge of translation (Baalbaki, 1993). Translations must to some degree be free, yet in this free translation, nuances may be lost, and indeed, ideas may unintentionally suffer distortion. In this book Arabic words have been kept to a minimum, transliterated and only used where it is considered essential.

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All interviews were audio recorded and transcribed in full. I sought further clarification on translations where required. The transcribed and typed interviews were returned to the individuals for review, where they were given the opportunity to clarify, change, add or delete any information, while being offered the chance to reflect on their experiences further. From the outset of this research it was decided that the women’s real names, rather than pseudonyms, would be used. The decision to use their names was made to provide a sense of authenticity to the women’s experiences and narratives, rather than remaining concealed behind false names, while also giving them ownership of their stories and words. This was outlined in the consent process, with any potential participant who did not want their name to be used having the option to decline from being involved. A formal ethics process for the research to be conducted and the interviews to take place was sought and approved by the University of Auckland Human Participants Ethics Committee in advance of the study commencing.

Meaning making From the millions of words produced through hundreds of hours of audiorecorded interviews and from the multiple notebooks I filled with observation notes, musings and personal stories, meaning had to be made. From the multitude of words, anecdotes shared by the interviewees had to be found within lengthy transcripts through a thematic analysis process. I then selected, organized and entwined these anecdotes with personal observation, notes and reflections. This process took a significant period of time. I became attached to stories. I was often tempted to include more of an interview rather than less, or to use more words to describe an observation. I had to restrain myself, and often had to step away from the transcripts, narratives and notes, to return with a fresh set of eyes and a clear head to edit a little more ruthlessly. In editing the interview transcripts I worked to engage with a critical perspective. I tried to interrogate my own assumptions of what were interesting or significant moments and pieces of information shared by the women. I sought to balance the voices of the interviewees with my own as the author. There was often so much I wanted to say around a particular anecdote shared by one of the women, but I had to remind myself that these were their stories, and that their words often said things with much more

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clarity than my own ever could. The integrity of the interviewees’ experiences became the site of motivation first and foremost, and within this I was conscious of how much each wanted to share about their journeys and simultaneously what might be of most interest for readers to be drawn into the narratives and ideas being explored. I returned to my research intentions throughout the shaping of the collected interviews into narratives. The broad research intentions were to illuminate the relevance of dance in the southern Mediterranean to its wider socio-political environment and to highlight the diversity and dynamism of women dancing within the region. In the next sections I will explain the process of shaping the narratives to make meaning, critically reflecting on how I have approached dance in the southern Mediterranean. Through the experience of editing narratives for other publications I was aware that there is the potential for certain stories to be very powerful within the actual interview; however, when written down on the page details can be lost. This was often simply due to the loss of body language or a certain tone of voice not being easily transferable into writing. At other times, stories and descriptive details that during conversation seemed inconsequential stood out to be significant when transcribed. What seemed like the most important comments in an interview at the time were often not the key moments in the narrative. As I went through the interview, transcript, narrative journey over and over again I came to realize that this process is by no means linear, nor is it in any way predictable in terms of what the final outcome might be. Like identifying moments within the interview transcripts where the interviewees’ ideas would be of interest to this book, I followed certain cues and approaches to elicit stories within the interviews. Within each interview I was focused on finding the ‘story’. This meant I actively tried to move interviewees away from moments of generalization, opinion and summary. There were also key ‘aha’ indicators when I could tell that a story was likely to emerge. Often these ‘aha’ moments were reflections that began with ‘I’ rather than a reference to a broader ‘we’ collective identity. Frequently tangible details that described a specific event, character or environment provided something concrete within the interview account. Other ‘gems’ I would often look out for were the moments of dialogue. Sometimes this was the retelling of a conversation. Other times it was a question or thought directed by the storytellers at themselves. Like previous studies I had engaged with which involved in-depth interviews, internalized dialogues were helpful to reveal personal journeys. I found that this was particularly useful when

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the interviewee was reflecting or considering something quite embodied and visceral in relation to dance. In presenting the interviewees’ narratives on the page I added words of my own. These words are sometimes sparse, merely linking the interviewees’ ideas together. Other times they are lengthier, giving descriptive observations or recounting my own anecdote. Within this approach I have tried to preserve the intention of the storytellers and the integrity of the stories. While the interviewees’ transcripts were shaped into narratives which merge two or three interviews together, the narratives themselves remain, as much as possible, entirely the interviewee’s own words. However, I edited elements of the interviewees’ speech that might impede a reader’s access to the actual stories. I removed habitual gap-filling words and phrases, such as ‘like’, ‘you know’, ‘anyway’ and ‘okay’, which stand out as disruptive, irrelevant or annoying on the page. ‘Filler’ words such as ‘then’, ‘and’ and ‘so’ were removed when they stretched sentences across multiple and not always associated ideas, or filled space when an interviewee was contemplating or considering their next sentence or words. The editing process tidied grammar and corrected minor details like the tense of verbs. This was out of respect for the interviewees, since all except for one had spoken in a second language during the formal interviews. Often the interviewees requested that I fix any grammatical errors they might make during an interview. It became difficult to make editorial decisions when content was being removed from the raw-narrative transcribed interviews. Within the spon­ taneous process of talking in an interview it was not unusual for the interviewee to become confused or to change focus mid-idea, especially during the process of recollection. It was also not unusual for my questioning or responses as the interviewer to also change focus unexpectedly, or to illustrate moments of confusion. If anything, this simply highlighted the natural ‘messiness’ of spoken conversations. There was the intention that the interview process was relaxed and allowed for the tumbling-out of ideas, rather than a recounting of the individual’s life in a chronological, almost autobiographical form. This approach sometimes resulted in conversations that contained nonsensical fragments, partial statements, pauses and changes of direction. Sometimes the stories were retold again, once the interviewee had considered what they wanted to say and how they wanted to say it. Out of respect for the interviewees, these partial statements, the messy moments and the confusion in conversation have been removed. The aim of this book is to present eight dancers’ stories. However, there was never any intention for these stories to speak for the entire dancing

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population of the southern Mediterranean, or for women dancing in this region. These stories are of a certain time and place. They belong to individuals who chose to express themselves in a certain way, with their own subjective lens and way of filtering, shaping, extending and describing events, feelings, places, people and encounters. To highlight the perspectives shared by the interviewees, I have favoured an approach where individual narratives of the women have been shaped into their stories, each being a chapter of this book. This has allowed the interviewees to develop as characters and to share their narratives in depth. Although the eight dancers’ stories are contained within their own distinct chapters, many of the narratives refer to common themes. There are a number of stories shared by the women that highlight censorship, surveillance and occupation and how this impacted on various dance practices the individuals engaged in as teachers, dancers, choreographers and administrators. There were many narratives that expressed the frustration, fear, inspiration and control elicited by borders, freedom and choice in relation to teaching, making, producing and performing dance. Many of the interviewees illuminated their own personal insight of the presence of the female dancing body within the context of the southern Mediterranean. There were overlaps; dancing within censorship can be seen to be entwining with dancing under occupation; creating dance in locations with sensitive surveillance impacting on performance overlapped with ideas of freedom and choice. I was increasingly intrigued to see such diverse stories of dance practice in relation to politics and place. Illusionary borders between styles, contexts and nationalities dissolved within the common experience of trying to gain control over one’s own moving body, over one’s artistic practice, and over one’s place as a performing artist and educator within an environment that many would abandon for an easier climate, where even the hardiest of individuals might grow disillusioned due to the antagonistic perspectives of dance. Sometimes lengthy narratives shared an experience, offering context, detail and reflection. However, there were moments when a story was told in a single line, or concisely contained in a paragraph. The significance of these shorter extracts might have become lost if they were integrated into other larger stories, or their profundity might have appeared over-emphasized if they stood alone on the page. This is where the intersection of my own voice as the author, and at times the use of scholarly literature, has weaved the pathway between multiple stories and ideas. At points the stories merge

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with images on the page, allowing a visual connection for the reader to reflect on in light of the reading of the narrative. The majority of the images were gathered over several weeks when photographers Amber Hunt and Arnaud Stephenson travelled with me across the region. As a trio we met with the women featured in this book and talked with them about the locations where they felt most comfortable having their photos taken. For some this was in the dance studio. For others it was in their home. One of the women, Noora, chose to be photographed in her family’s olive grove in a small village near Qalandia checkpoint in the West Bank. Another woman, Nadia, decided that she wanted to be jumping high on the rooftop of the dance center in Ramallah that she worked in – including the juxtaposition of a mosque in the background in some shots and an Israeli settlement high on the hill in the distance in other images. Extra images of live performances, creative work or studio practice have been sourced from the women’s private collections, and the photographers of these images have been acknowledged throughout. Through each chapter and each story shared contradictions and tensions surface, and juxtapositions form. I have not sought to resolve or conceal these in any way. Rather than drawing definitive conclusions about the meanings of dance in the southern Mediterranean and how women are experiencing this, I hope that this publication can invite ongoing interpretation, discussion and analysis. As the epigraph from Suheir Hammad (1996/2010) of this chapter illuminates, dance exists among life, and dance can potentially reveal insights into complex politics, tensions, beliefs, arguments and perspectives. Through the narratives shared by the eight women over the following pages, the notion that dance does not exist except within life is reiterated time and time again.

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Politics and performance entwine

The Arab Spring1 uprisings that have swept across the southern Mediterranean region have been perceived as a ‘delayed defiance’ (Dabashi, 2012, p.2) of colonialism and the postcolonial aftermath. It is widely documented that the Arab Spring ‘began’ in December 2010 in Tunisia when a 26-year-old street vendor, Mohamed Bouazizi, set himself alight in protest against the confiscation of his produce cart – his livelihood – and the harassment and humiliation that he endured from police and municipal officials. However, rumblings had been occurring well before this time across the southern Mediterranean region (Dabashi, 2012; Ghonim, 2012). From Tunisia, protests swept into Algeria, and then by January 2011 the uprisings moved into Egypt. On January 25 2011, an Egyptian national holiday dedicated to show appreciation and support for the national police force, tens of thousands of Egyptians poured into their streets, denouncing the Hosni Mubarak regime and calling for a ‘day of rage’.2 The goals of this popular uprising in Egypt were focused on regime change, but also concerns around human rights, free and fair elections, the state of emergency laws, police brutality, corruption, high unemployment and freedom of speech. Some of these concerns have been addressed through the actions of the uprisings, while new anxieties (such as fundamentalist perspectives, exacerbated gender inequality and unstable governments) have emerged as a result of this civil action and the political reverberations. The methods and characteristics of the uprisings in Cairo specifically involved civil disobedience and resistance, demonstrations and marches, protest camps, internet activism (most notably through Facebook and Twitter), urban warfare and violent riots and clashes.

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Figure 2:  Tahrir Square in Cairo, a ‘hub’ of the Arab Spring uprisings in Egypt Image by Arnaud Stephenson (2014)

The Arab Spring events in Egypt could be viewed as a civil revolution, with multiple layers that have ebbed and flowed in various ways since 2011. Within this, dance has played a role. Dancers themselves have been active in public protests, the wider public has used dance in demonstrations, marches and in online media, and dance makers and performers have also used dance work as an artistic medium to express their ideas, worries, inspirations or beliefs about the uprisings, revolutionary moments, political climate or sociocultural atmosphere.3 It should be noted that the Arab Spring uprisings are by no means over. Egypt is still in a state of flux and finding its dancing feet again. The repercussions of these events are rippling and fluid, open to multiple interpretations. It is of importance to clarify that this chapter is not attempting to explain Egypt, its people, its dance, or the events of the uprisings; rather, it aims to construct a ‘layered account’ (Clair, 2003, p.56) of dance, hegemony and change before, during and after the revolution through the voice of one Caironese dancer, Hala Imam, who shares her story of dance, life and politics in Cairo.

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Hala’s story I met Hala at the Tea and Coffee Leaf Café in Zamalek, Cairo. It was late January, but Cairo was warm and the sun was out, creating a magical haze over the Nile. The last time I was in Cairo was four years prior, before the revolution and the words ‘Arab Spring’ had become synonymous with the city. I felt that there was a change in the mood in the Egyptian capital. There were subtle differences in the aesthetics. More graffiti and street art covered walls, fewer shops were open and not nearly as many street stalls were operating. The streets felt quiet, and the people who were out and about moved with urgency rather than strolling at a leisurely pace. Another presidential election was brewing, the third in four years. Teenage boys loitered around Tahrir Square selling posters and t-shirts with the face of Sisi,4 the favourite candidate in the 2014 presidential race. I had not seen Hala for about four years. The last time we met was at a dance pedagogy symposium in Bodrum, Turkey. At that time she was teaching at the Cairo Modern Dance School and performing with the Cairo Modern Dance Company under the direction of Walid Aouni. When I interviewed Hala in 2010 she had been frustrated with many of the systems and structures in place that she felt inhibited her from pursuing dance in the ways she imagined. With all that had taken place between then and now I wondered how she was feeling post-Mubarak and post-revolution, in a Cairo that was supposedly ‘reborn’. Before Hala began recounting her experiences since we last met she offered me a disclaimer. She stated: My story is only my story. This is my personal point of view. I don’t want to say, ‘these people are wrong, these people are right’[…] this is just my experience. She then sank back into her chair. Folding her arms across her chest she took a moment to think. Looking intently at the dark wooden table we were sitting at, she said quite firmly to me: You know my story. Before 25 January 2011, I was working with Walid Aouni, I was directing his school, I was dancing with the Modern Dance Company. At the time I thought it was bad, I was not happy. But to tell you the truth, compared to now it was okay. I personally liked Walid Aouni, and I liked and enjoyed his work.

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Then January 25 2011 happened, and I hated it. I hated it not because I didn’t want Egypt or Egyptians to change. I hated it because as much as it appeared to be an uprising from the people, it was really not in many ways. It is not a coincidence that the Arab Spring has been happening across the Middle East, that all of the locations, all of these people decided to act at a similar time. It is perhaps not as simple as saying that everyone wanted democracy and that is why the Arab Spring happened, we are puppets, and there are world powers manipulating all of this. I was against the Mubarak regime, and I was against 25 January. I think neither has led to positive change. I personally think that change should come from individuals; people have to take responsibility themselves. For example, people need to encourage kids to read and write. Very basic things can change a society. This is where dance can be involved, individuals can choose the medium in which they want to make change, dance might be that medium for some people. I was interested to know Hala’s views on what had changed in relation to dance since the revolution. During the early days of the revolution I tried to follow from a distance what was happening in the dance environment in Cairo. I heard small stories from friends. I read online articles from sources such as the Guardian, Al-Ahram Weekly and Daily News Egypt. I followed blogs, Facebook and YouTube posts from dance practitioners in Cairo such as Adham Hafez, Shawn Renee Lent and Ezzat Ismail Ezzat. I eagerly read the Basic Rights for Egyptian Dance Artists – A Manifesto as soon as it was released in early 2014. However, as circumstances became more complex it became unclear what the conditions for teaching, learning and performing dance in Cairo were like. It was challenging to filter fact from fiction in the anecdotes I was reading and hearing. One moment it would seem that something new in the Caironese dance scene was happening, and the next moment there would be no more talk of it. I perceived that some involved with dance in Cairo were essentially ‘over’ talking about and defining their work in relation to the revolution. Hala explained to me what she observed during the initial period of the revolution: During the revolution the dance scene all stopped, the companies, the dance schools, the Opera House – all stopped. It was like ‘the Opera is closed, do not come tomorrow, there is no more class, no more rehearsals, nothing, nothing, nothing’.

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Figure 3: Hala Image by Arnaud Stephenson (2014)

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The Cairo Opera House was a hub of dance in the city prior to the revolution. The first time I visited the Opera House complex I recall being surprised at how this location, an artistic hotspot, contradicted much of what an ‘outsider’ might perceive about dance and arts in Egypt. I took a class with the ballet company. Walking into one of the many dance studios at the Cairo Opera House for the first time, I was struck by how similar it was to every other dance studio I had ever been to during my dancing life. The cool air-conditioning contrasted with the dry and dusty afternoon heat outside. The dancers lounged casually at the periphery of the space wearing an assortment of dance attire; some chatted to each other while stretching out muscles, others talked on their mobile phones or listened to their iPods, some lay on the studio floor, eyes closed for a brief moment of rest. When the class started, I stood in the very top corner of the studio, trying to remain as inconspicuous as possible. As the teacher began to take the group through a series of exercises based on Graham technique,5 I thought back to my own dance training in New Zealand where I too performed similar routines. It was when the teacher suggested that the class should ‘pretend you are in New York’, perhaps to encourage or motivate another ounce of enthusiasm from the students, that I was led to wonder about dance experiences between locations and cultures. Cairo and New York seemed to me to be very different cultural contexts, yet for the duration of this dance class I felt like there was nothing, besides the smattering of Arabic words shared between the dancers, which indicated that we were in Cairo. It was a stark contrast to the chaos of Cairo outside of the walls of the Opera House complex. During my time at the Opera House I met several dancers who were also part of an independent dance scene. Through informal conversations, often over multiple cups of Nescafé in the onsite cafeteria, it was revealed that conditions for those working as independents were quite different to those working within the state-run Mubarak-supported companies within the Opera House complex.6 I wondered if these discrepancies and distances between state vs. independent dance experiences had changed at all postrevolution. Hala explained her thoughts on this: The independent dance scene started to mimic the Egyptian people; ‘we want to get rid of Walid Aouni […] we want to get rid of people at the Opera’. It was like what was happening in Egypt was happening on a smaller scale in the dance community – a revolution. The independent dancers were saying, ‘let’s take the

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company, the school, the festival […] we will work together, we are one hand’. These actions incited change to the dance environment in Cairo. The changes seemed radical and dramatic, much like the changes that were occurring in the wider socio-political context. Some who held leadership positions in the Opera House companies were dismissed, and the companies disbanded for a period of time before new leadership was appointed. While many perceived this ‘cleaning out’ of the old Mubarak factions to be positive, and an opportunity for the state and independent dance practitioners to work together in a more functional and supportive way, there were also doubts about how easy or not this may actually be to achieve. Hala revealed her concerns: I was like, ‘we are one hand?’ We may be one hand now, but soon everyone will be a dictator because for 30 years in this country we built dictators, we are the sons and daughters of Mubarak. I was born in 1977, so that makes me a daughter of Mubarak. I hate it, but I am a dictator, it is in my blood. I have the same bad manners, I give money to people to give me a document, if I know someone somewhere that can help me get something done I will call them and ask for a favour. It is a corrupted society, the people here are corrupted and I am corrupted. It is just how we are, and it is inevitable that this will affect our dance organizations. Hala reflected on how the changes that occurred in the dance environment post-revolution brought about instances of cultural hegemony. Hala explained a particular case at the Cairo Contemporary Dance Center (CCDC), an institution established in 2012 and led by an experienced Egyptian dance practitioner who had returned after many years abroad during the Mubarak regime. Hala shared: When I heard all the teachers at CCDC were foreigners I was upset. This individual [who took up the position of Director at CCDC] was supposed to be the leader of the revolution for the dancers, she left the whole world to come back to Egypt to hold the hands of the Egyptian dancers. When the faculty of the CCDC was announced there was only one Egyptian teacher in

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the school. What is strange is that the person making these choices is Egyptian, this is not a foreigner doing this. I have spoken to foreigners and some say they do not want to bring the culture of Europe to Egypt; rather, they want to find ways to use the Egyptian movements and identities. The Egyptians are bringing the foreign ideas; I think this is weird. I do think about why we might teach or perform certain dance ideas here, I think anything we do needs to have some relevance to both the people doing it and the people watching it. Hala often questioned how certain dance practices have relevance in Cairo. It appeared that she felt irritated with the replication of foreign dance ideas that had little relevance in the cultural context she worked. These frustrations perhaps fuelled her desire to develop culturally relevant dance practices involving a socially sensitive approach with anti-hegemonic ideals. Hala explained: A challenge for artists working in and with different cultures is understanding what is accepted and what is not. Even for me, there are some things I watch that are just out of my cultural comfort zone. For example, Dalia [a friend and colleague] and I went to a performance in Holland. It was all in Dutch so we didn’t understand it, there was nudity and at the end it turned really sexual and the performers were touching each other. I have no problem that people do this […] but I had a problem to watch this in a performance. I wake up every day and I see veiled people and this reflects on me. If you take me and you put me with nude people I cannot easily accept this. During this performance I left part-way through, and about five minutes later Dalia also left. I said, ‘Dalia, why did you leave?’ She said to me, ‘I couldn’t watch it, it just makes me too uncomfortable.’ After the performance people from the audience, who were Dutch, came up to us and were like, ‘Aw, Egyptian girls […] .’, as though we were inferior, prudish and conservative. Dalia wanted to argue with them. I was like, ‘Dalia, it is totally fine, we are not inferior […] it is just that we are different, we are just not used to this, we are used to something else.’ What I notice now, though, is that here in Cairo some performers and choreographers are

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mimicking these more European approaches. The distance between performance culture and the actual wider social culture then just becomes greater. Your regular Egyptian person already might feel alienated from what goes on in dance or theatre performances, and then approaching it as though you are performing to an audience in Amsterdam, Paris or somewhere like that is even more alienating for people. While cultural hegemony and cultural relevance is by no means a new concept in relation to dance, or to dance in an Egyptian context, Hala’s perspective demonstrates how different cultural groups might perceive particular dance practices. As we talked I noticed how the subject of dance in Cairo obviously brought Hala much frustration, just as it had years earlier. During our conversations she would often throw her hands up in the air and say, ‘I just don’t know what’s going to happen here […]’ or sigh despondently over the subject being discussed. In these moments the focus of our conversation would shift. We would take a break from talking ‘dance’ and instead chat about her day job as a furniture designer or my teaching work in Palestine, or share stories of mutual friends and what they were up to. Inevitably the conversation would be drawn back to dance at some stage. Throughout our discussions it appeared that the frustrations that Hala felt, post-revolution, were frequently related to the reorganization and restructuring of dance in Cairo: Before [the revolution] all I got to do was dancing. Now there is no [modern dance] company so we do our own marketing, we have to find our own classes to keep fit. There is no place to perform, there is no place to practice, no money. Dalia and I talk, we have ideas, but after we make a performance where will we perform it? Where are we going to get money? There is no funding, no state support, and the money we want is not even to pay ourselves, but money for the programmes, for the costumes, to hire a space to perform. So essentially we are asking, how are we going to do this, and is this even possible with no support? Along with organizational and structural shifts in dance practices and the dance environment, Hala shared that since the uprisings, philosophical and motivational shifts had occurred in the way she understood dance. Hala

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noted how her dance practice had moved away from an aesthetic agenda driven by the enjoyment and beauty of dance, to a dance practice that was motivated by a schema of social justice: Before 25 January 2011 I was enjoying dance as dance, I always loved ballet, and I enjoyed the beauty of dance. Now I have totally changed. Now I don’t want Egyptians to see the beauty of dance, I want Egyptians to see the beauty of themselves through dance – by doing it, by watching it, or both. When I look at ladies in the streets they are not even aware they have bodies. I want people to see their own bodies, to appreciate their bodies, their soul, their hair. If you look at Egypt from the time of the pharaohs until the 1960s or 1970s, the way that women dressed and the way they walked was so different to now. Even if you think about a folkloric woman carrying a child on her hip, the way she walks, the way her jellabiya7 moves – it is like she is dancing. Now when you watch women walk in the streets it is like they are ashamed – ashamed of their breasts, of their eyes, of their faces. You can tell from what they wear, the way they do their makeup and their hair. For me it’s not a matter of wanting to do beautiful dancing any more, now the concept is that I want to give energy and to encourage people to see the beauty in themselves. I don’t want to leave Egypt to dance, but if I want to stay here and perform I will not be performing Swan Lake or the Nutcracker. At the same time I do not want to make performances about the revolution, the army and those sorts of things. I want to be involved in work that reflects people and their lives here [in Egypt]. I am not a choreographer, but I want to be involved in work that is about feelings, not about watching a beautiful girl doing beautiful dancing. I do not want to perform only on theatre stages any more. Now I wish I could perform in the street – it is a dream, I doubt it will ever happen. Hala cited a specific performance she was involved with, Wesh w’Dahr,8 that explores themes such as gender, cultural stereotypes, taboos and identity ‘that reflects people’ in a wider Egyptian context. As Hala talked about the work her eyes lit up. She shared with me the details of her favourite moments

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of the performance and the parts that she feels could have further developments. It was clear that Hala felt that this dance work was paving new ways for social issues to be discussed in post-revolutionary Cairo: Wesh w’Dahr was about two caricatures, the prostitute and the veiled girl. The initial image of the piece is astonishing, a prostitute next to a veiled woman, wow! I think it shocked people and got their attention. But we have to remember that this dance work was taking polar opposites – talking about religion versus prostitution. There is then everything in between that might be subtler. Obviously, though, the caricatures can show how these two images might visually seem so distant but are actually quite similar – both are putting on a façade of how women get categorized by men here [in Egypt], and in turn how they then categorize themselves. For example, if I wear a hijab but high heels and tight pants I am still considered a veiled woman, a good woman. If I wear a turtleneck sweater and jeans, but no hijab, well, I may as well be a prostitute. That’s what some people think – it is messed up. As Hala discussed the changes to her motivation for dancing and the work she was engaging with I thought back to a comment she had made to me in a conversation four years earlier. Hala described how she felt when dancing. She explained: I enjoy the moment when I go on the stage, I open my eyes, I find all the audience looking at me, and I’m dancing, I’m dancing, I’m dancing. And I say to myself, ‘This is a beautiful moment. I can die now.’ I wondered how she felt now – did she feel the same way? I reminded Hala of this comment, explaining how it had stuck with me over the years. Hala laughed a little. She unfolded her arms from across her chest and placed her hands on the table, palms down, either side of her coffee mug. She shared: I do remember saying that, and honestly that is still how I feel when I perform – perhaps that’s the magic of it all. But now my reasons for doing the dancing have changed. Now I want to give people energy through my performance, energy about

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Figure 4: Hala Image by Arnaud Stephenson (2014)

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women, religion and Egypt. I love Egypt, I will never leave this country, but it is hard right now to be a dancer here, harder than ever I think. I am living near the Egyptian University9 and I hear guns every day. I come to Zamalek and it takes me two hours to get here to take classes, and I can’t go home and take a nap between the classes and work. People start telling me, ‘Why don’t you think about going somewhere else, you have languages and money?’ But why should I? I love this country. I just think that people here [in Cairo] do not pay attention to dance. They have other issues to deal with, and they see dance as an insignificant thing. This will not change quickly; it’s a cultural attitude. We will keep going, inshallah.10 It’s not the end. A few nights later Hala, some friends and I sat in her apartment. We were celebrating a mutual friend’s birthday. The group was dispersed around the large lounge room, and Hala sat cocooned in an armchair that she had designed herself. The television played a repeat of the famous Turkish soap opera Noor, with Arabic dubbed over the top. The group paid close attention to what was going on. Those of us who did not speak fluent Arabic guessed what the storyline was about, and the Arabic speakers in the room filled us in on the moments they considered to be important or funny. As the episode drew to a close the room came back to life, conversations continued and people moved to the kitchen to prepare food. Hala turned to me and said, ‘Now, if only the Egyptian people would come and watch dance with the intensity and commitment that they can give to soap operas.’ We both laughed and returned to sipping our tea.

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Surveillance weaving through body, mind and performance

The themes of dance and the Syrian Civil War1 may seem to be worlds apart. Some might even ask if it is appropriate to be dancing or talking of dance while such horrific conflict, war crimes and human rights violations are occurring. But dance in Syria has been happening throughout the initial uprisings and the war that then developed. In 2011 a collective dabke was performed through the streets of the western Syrian city of Homs in defiance of the al-Assad regime. It was captured on film and circulated around the globe through social media. Numerous articles were written about the event (Ketz, 2013; Silverstein, 2012). Where the street dancing in Homs originated from is vague, although one theory is that it began after security forces confined protesters to narrow streets. The choreography illustrated in the fuzzy video stems from traditional dabke2 movements, adapted from the usual circular formations into dancing in long lines more suited to mass demonstrations. Sometimes the dancing resembles a stadium wave, a sea of bodies moving rhythmically, other times it is more theatrical, with the thousands of people captured in the short clip first shaking their fists, and then clapping while singing. This is not the only documentation of dance occurring within the Syrian Civil War. There are other clips of protestors dancing dabke over a portrait of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The portrait is defaced with a blood-red ‘X’ painted over it and tossed on the ground so the group can stomp rhythmically over the image. There are also moments where the al-Assad regime has used dance to show the ‘normalcy’ of life in Syria, or to celebrate the re-election of the al-Assad government, hiding the hideous reality of what the country has been enduring.

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Figure 5: Old Damascus, before the Syrian Civil War Image by Rose Martin (2010)

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Interviewing Syrian dancers prior to the uprisings was not easy. Those I met with were often under government scrutiny and negotiating a difficult political climate. I recall meeting one young dancer in Damascus in early 2010. As we sat in a crowded café and talked he explained his efforts to avoid the compulsory military service that would cut his dancing career short. As he spoke about this he lowered his voice to a whisper. Looking around the café and out toward the street he said very quietly, ‘I just have to be careful, there are spies everywhere.’ It was near impossible to interview dancers after the Civil War in Syria started. As someone living outside Syria I found that making contact with individuals in Syria was often not possible; emails and Facebook messages would go unanswered. I was also aware that along with those who were among the innocent civilians killed in the conflict, many dancers were displaced inside Syria, arrested, or forced into exile. The following story, from dance practitioner Mey Sefan, predominantly focuses on her experiences of dance in Syria prior to the Civil War. This is in part out of a need to protect her and her family. I would have liked very much to include the experiences of other Syrian female dancers, of which there are many, in this publication. However, I just have to hope that one day, in more peaceful times, I can return to Syria and talk with them to allow their voices to be included in the dialogue of women, dance and revolution.

Mey’s story It was 2010 – before the Syrian Civil War had commenced, before the alAssad regime slaughtered thousands of innocent civilians, and before a humanitarian crisis of epic proportions engulfed Syria. I had arranged to meet with dancer Mey Sefan. It was 11am on a warm spring morning, and we had decided to meet at Café Downtown in Al-Jazzari, a suburb of new Damascus where an eclectic array of people mingled in the streets and spilled out of cafés, boutiques and restaurants. I had spent the previous day wandering the claustrophobic maze-like streets of the Old City, and now, surrounded by the wide boulevards and well manicured gardens of AlJazzari, I felt like I had ventured to another planet. A colleague in Egypt had put me in touch with Mey by email, and after hearing about her work from other dancers in the region I thought it would be wonderful to include her in my research. I sat in the corner of the busy café keeping my eye out for

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Figure 6: Mey performing Zerstörung für Anfänger (Destruction for Beginners) (2013) Image courtesy of Mey’s personal collection

someone who could be Mey. I always felt a little nervous meeting a new interviewee for the first time, unsure if they were genuinely willing to share their story with me or were only meeting with me out of politeness. I fretted over whether they would have to leave our meeting early and I would never see them again, or if they would be short with their answers to my questions and annoyed at my request to follow them through their day-to-day life, teaching, performing or creating dance. I must admit I always felt more relaxed after that first meeting was over. I flipped through my notebook, pretending to read. I occupied myself momentarily with my mobile phone, acting as if I was busy sending imaginary messages to imaginary friends. Noticing that it was 11.15am I was getting nervous that I might be in the wrong café, or perhaps I had got the time wrong. I was still new to this part of the world and made the novice mistake of turning up on time for everything – without realizing that lateness is part of the cultural fabric, part of the ‘inshallah’ mentality that society operated by.

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At about 11.30am a woman with short dark hair, with flicks of auburn embracing each curl, walked up to the large glass doors of the café. Before coming inside she rummaged through her bag and then proceeded to light a cigarette, casually exhaling the smoke, slowly tilting her chin upwards giving me a sense of guarded arrogance to her presence. I was quite certain this was Mey, and I went over to meet her. As we began the first interview, sipping on iced mint and lemonade drinks in the café courtyard, I quickly realized that she had a lot to share and was very open and forthcoming with her experiences. The impression of defensive arrogance I perceived at first glance was unfounded; rather, I discovered that she was a woman who was direct and honest, keen to bring me into her dance world in Damascus. We met several times during my 2010 visit to Damascus and again over the next year, in Bodrum and Beirut. In Damascus we sometimes would meet for formal interviews, and at other times I watched her teaching or rehearsing students at the Higher Institute of Dramatic Arts (HIDA). Then there were the times when we just chatted in the evenings over many cups of coffee. Mey was instrumental in introducing me to those involved in the dance scene in Damascus, taking me to visit the Dance Department at HIDA on a number of occasions and allowing me an insight into the environment she was working in and the challenges she has encountered as a dancer, teacher and choreographer in Syria. Mey was born in Damascus, and recalls performing when she was in kindergarten, explaining, ‘I loved to dance and they always gave me the solo parts in the performances in the kindergarten.’ Her eyes would light up as she recalled how in 1987, when she was six years old, her mother enrolled her in ballet classes twice a week at HIDA, almost as though this moment was a turning point in her life. When I inquired why it was ballet and not another dance form that she studied, Mey explained, ‘For a middle class family like mine ballet was quite popular back in the 1980s; because of the Russian influence here they used to get teachers from Russia to visit and do exams and a full programme and everything.’ Mey’s parents encouraged her to continue dancing throughout her childhood, and in turn Mey began to take more ballet classes and occasionally folklore or jazz classes too. Mey explained that her family was very open and liberal towards her being involved in such activities: ‘In this society, there are sometimes issues about women dancing – taboos and stuff – and of course my family was the biggest support for my dancing; if they were not behind me it would have been impossible to dance.’ The assistance she received from her family regarding her involvement in dance was something

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that she brought up frequently during our conversations, explaining that she perceives this to be somewhat unusual in her home environment of Damascus. After finishing her general education Mey continued her studies at HIDA where a full-time dance programme had recently been established. Mey explained that she felt the decision about where she should train was, at this point, decided by HIDA: When I finished my school I was thinking, ok, what to do now. It wasn’t clear if they would send us – the government, the country – if they would send us to continue outside [of Syria] and give us scholarships to continue, or if they would open the Higher Institute here so it was full-time training. So, there were two possibilities: we could get scholarships to study outside and come back, or there would be the Higher Institute. They set up the Higher Institute and I got told that I would be training there. After our first meeting, Mey asked if I would like to visit HIDA and see some of the work they were currently doing there. I was eager to become further involved in the dance scene in Damascus, and without a contact at the Institute I was excited that Mey would be able to take me there. Thinking that this visit might be in the next day or so I got out my diary to schedule an appointment. Mey looked at me and said, ‘We can go now, it will be no problem.’ We left the café and stood on the dusty pavement waiting for a yellow taxi to come by that was willing to take us the short trip across town to HIDA, situated in the grounds of the Dar al-Assad for Culture and Arts. Mey explained that it was within walking distance but in the midday heat the walk would not be particularly pleasant. Once inside the taxi the heat appeared to be even more overwhelming, with the warmth of the black vinyl interior of the car at first mildly uncomfortable and then all consuming. I think Mey could sense how I was struggling with the heat and this is perhaps why she kept talking to me almost non-stop, keeping my attention and making the journey go a little faster. She explained how for a long time she had felt that HIDA was like a second home for her, spending much of her childhood and adolescent years there. Hearing her speak of the Institute so fondly, I wondered why she had gone abroad to Germany to further her training. Later, I asked Mey about this and she explained that after her first year of full-time training at HIDA she was unhappy; she felt that she was alone in her studies, without peers to challenge her dancing and she was uncertain how pursuing her training in Syria might lead to a professional career in dance:

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I started at the Higher Institute [of Dramatic Arts] full-time when I finished high school […] but I felt that it was not quite right and it was not really going anywhere for me. I was questioning what I would do when I finished [training] and how I would make a career as a professional. I finished my studies at [high] school, I was like 17, and I was thinking, do I go on with this? I mean, the questions start much earlier because almost all of my friends [at high school] – not almost, all of them – they stopped [dancing], I was the only one that continued. I felt like I was the only person who wanted to dance and no one understood why I wanted to do this. That’s hard, and it’s hard when you are in a class with maybe one or two other people and you want to learn new things and improve. I think that’s what sort of planted the seed for me to go abroad. Although Mey’s experience of full-time training at HIDA took place in the late 1990s, similar concerns were expressed by some of the young dancers I met who were currently engaged in full-time training at HIDA. A group of five students in their first year of full-time training sat in the cool corridor outside one of the dance studios. Slouched against the concrete wall and surrounded by their dance paraphernalia – water bottles, extra tracksuits, bags, dance shoes – they began to share their concerns about their future outside of the institute. They mentioned that they were afraid that they would not be able to make a living from dancing when they graduated; others explained that they were unsure how they would be able to pursue their dance practices outside of the institutional environment provided at HIDA; and some felt that they needed to leave Damascus, to travel abroad to further their training. When I asked these students why they felt the need to pursue training abroad they spoke of needing to improve, of wanting to fit in and dance in a location where people ‘got’ them and their work. For Mey, the feeling of isolation and the question over future dance directions she could take in Syria propelled her to begin exploring the opportunities that might be available to further her training abroad. Mey explained how she had approached several foreign embassies, cultural centers and institutions in Damascus inquiring about scholarships and the possibility of receiving dance education abroad. Mey applied and received a Goethe Institute Scholarship for Performing Arts to cover her tuition fees and living costs in Germany for three years:

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I managed to get a scholarship from Germany, from the Goethe Institute, because I heard that they give money for training. Otherwise I never could have gone, it would have been too much money, there was no way that my family could afford it, and this scholarship was for three years of training. I wasn’t that keen on Germany, but I couldn’t turn down the scholarship – a chance to have a dance career – so I went to Germany when I was 18. This was another taboo, a girl, who was 18, out of the country, alone, studying dance. Mey had initially wanted to continue her ballet training when she was abroad; however, after watching videos of Western contemporary dance she explained that she felt that this might be something that she would like to pursue instead. This form of contemporary dance appealed to Mey because of its ‘energy’. She explained, ‘I was so excited to just see something a bit more real and, you know, quite physical – like strong.’ This encounter with contemporary dance directly influenced the institute she chose to study at: Up until I went to Germany I had been studying ballet, but I wanted to study contemporary dance, because I saw something here [in Damascus] about Martha Graham, Matz Ek and Alvin Ailey and I thought, ‘Oh great, this is contemporary dance!’ So that’s why I decided to study at the Frankfurt University of Music and Performing Arts [Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst Frankfurt am Main]. It was on the list of schools I could choose from and I saw that they had contemporary dance, but they also had folklore and classical ballet, so I thought, ‘Oh, it’s a nice mixture.’ I didn’t know much more, I was a bit pressured with time, and there is no one to help you so I just went with my gut instinct. Then I went to Germany, I was struggling with the ballet, and then there was all this new contemporary dance which I had never seen before […] After a while I was becoming more interested in the contemporary dance. I was like, ‘Hey what is this?’[…] I had been thinking, ‘Oh I have to do ballet, that’s why I’m here’ […] but then also at the same time I was thinking, ‘This contemporary dance could be interesting.’ I did not think that immediately, but after some time.

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During the first few months of her training in Frankfurt, Mey initially thought she might change schools: ‘In the beginning I thought I was completely in the wrong place and I have to change, and maybe I’d go to the Stuttgart Ballet or something.’ She elaborated on why she felt this way: I did 11 years of very hard Russian school [in Damascus], and then I went to Frankfurt, and it’s one of the best schools in Germany – but at the time I didn’t know that. In the first class the ballet teacher came in and explained to us how we are to stand in the first position, and the second position, and how to do a tendu and a plié, and I was like, ‘What the fuck is this? I’ve already finished with the ballet repertoire.’ I always wanted to go en pointe or en relevé and she [the teacher] always said to me, ‘No, don’t relevé, just keep everything flat.’ I couldn’t understand why the teacher wanted us to do something; I thought, ‘This is not a real dance school.’ I felt that I had wasted those 11 years learning ballet if this is what was happening, that it was too relaxed, like the teacher was a bit lazy, but I suppose it was just not what I was used to. But then with time I realized that the teacher wanted to achieve different things – not just do the steps, but understand them too, to understand the ballet technique in a different way. Mey explained how during the first months of her studies in Frankfurt she began to reflect upon her learning experiences in Damascus: Some of the teachers I had in Syria, they never explained things, they just said, ‘You are so bad, you are so bad!’ – it’s all about doing more and more. We had one Russian teacher in the Frankfurt school and she was always like, ‘People, cheat, cheat for the audience, always show the foot that is to the audience straight but this one has to be like 90 degrees,’ and this was quite funny to discover that there is like another way of looking at things. I was like, ‘Oh yeah, I could cheat this movement, do it a different way and it’s ok.’ For me it was like discovering everything new and again, and to have a new understanding of everything. At the beginning I was against it a bit – reluctant to accept that there might be more than one way of doing something, because you know, you are doing it one way for such a long time. But over time it was realizing that for once it was not

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about doing millions of turns, kicking your leg high – it was more about how are you doing the turn? Do just one but think about it […] This was like really new for me. The confusion over the teaching style Mey was experiencing was not only in ballet classes, but also carried through to other classes and learning environments during her first year in Germany. It also emerged through our discussions that the material being taught was somewhat alien for Mey, with little explanation or direction given to assist her assimilation into her new learning environment. She explained this experience within the following statement: In the first year I was there [in Germany], there was this class where we had to lie on the floor and do strange voices and feel the floor, and feel the air between your body and the floor, and to imagine yourself as all sorts of things, like imagine that you are an eye, and then next thing you are a rabbit, and then you are like a falling – I don’t know what – and I was just starting to learn German and I was like, ‘Heh?’ I was looking at my friends and just imitating something, just to do something. I was always like, ‘Oh, I have stomach pain, oh, I have headache, oh, I cannot go, oh, I’m so tired’ […] Oh god, I really hated it. But what was really horrible for me was improvisation in general, because when they come and give you a task and then you have to do something for two minutes on your own – this was horrible, really horrible for me. Mey also shared that she had specific expectations of the classes and dance forms she would be learning in Frankfurt, explaining: We had contemporary class, I thought I was going to be doing Alvin Ailey, then we were doing Alexander technique on the floor and I was like, what is this? Where’s my Alvin Ailey? I wanted contractions, hinges and tilts. Language issues also made the new learning environment confusing and complicated. Mey expressed this within the following statement: I had many difficulties to read some words, I was like, ‘con-tac-t im-p-ro-v’ […] and it was in German too, and I was just starting

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with German and it was handwritten so it was even harder to read, and I remember that I was there thinking, ‘What is “con-tac-t im-p-ro-v”?’ I spent two or three days thinking, what the hell is this? I had no idea, nothing. The teacher was just like ‘blah, blah, blah’ in German and I’d just understand a word here and a word there, and the rest of the time I was like sleeping – I spent a lot of time avoiding having to talk or ask any questions. I’d copy my friends, I had no idea what I should be doing, I didn’t understand the teacher or what he wanted me to do […] This was not in every class, but a lot of them. But, you know, this contact improvisation was a no-no, a real taboo, it was just not something I could understand at first – why are we doing this? I was sure that they were just crazy, because you know, the way they taught was less strict. I felt like we were not being taught anything because of this […] this was really different for me, it was so different at first from what I was used to in Syria. Along with the language issues that Mey spoke of experiencing, she also shared her feelings of the culture shock she was encountering, both inside and outside of her learning environment. She explained how this felt: Everything was so strange there at first, the teachers were so strange, the people treated me differently because I was from Syria, and the country was strange to me. People, they’d ask, ‘Do you come from Arabia?’ […] ‘Are you living with camels and in a tent?’ Yeah, sure, and I brought my camel with me to Germany […] This made me feel bad, I was embarrassed and angry. I felt like I was out of place, I felt like I was from another planet. I became ‘the Syrian girl’, that’s who I was to people. I wanted to always scream, ‘I’m more than that!’ However, over time Mey explained how she began to feel more comfortable in her new environment and started to enjoy her time studying and the new ideas and concepts she was learning: So, with the contemporary I started a little bit to feel it, to feel what it was about. We worked with one choreographer who I just clicked with, and it was like this experience got me into

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thinking about dance in a different way. Over time I sort of felt more like I knew what was expected of me to be like a professional; I started to realize why some of the things were being taught and how they were connected to each other. Mey also recalled a specific performance that shifted how she perceived dance and the dance education she was receiving in Germany: I remember there was one moment in a choreography that we did with this choreographer – this was the first time I danced and really enjoyed it; I was not thinking about what comes next, so I was really there, and I was just dancing it and I remember exactly this up and down movement, and then I switched off and I was in a trance, I was really in a trance, I was really somewhere else. I remember I couldn’t feel anything – it was so strange – the music became so strange, and the hall felt so big and I just felt my body from the inside, like every single muscle in me and every single cell in me – everything – was alive; everything was like bigger than real life, and so light […] I was really in a trance. And then when I finished I was like, ‘Wow, what is this? Wow!’ I remember this moment so well, this was the ‘aha’ effect, you know, this is what I was looking for. I didn’t know up until then what I was looking for – and this was it. This was like opening my eyes – so this was after maybe one and a half years of studying there [in Germany] and then I really started to go, ‘Ok – let’s understand this more. I want to feel this dance thing, take it to a deeper level.’ What is quite funny, now anyway, is that my work is really based on things like kinesiology, Pilates and Alexander technique, all those things I found really hard to get my head around at first. After a while in Germany, it was like the Alexander technique clicked, the Pilates clicked, and all of this Alexander technique made me feel as though I could do anything, my legs were spiralling, I felt really grounded but light. Mey described how in late 2002, after completing three years of training in Frankfurt, she made the decision to come home to Damascus. She explained that she had assumed throughout her time in Germany that she would return home to Syria once her training was completed. Her decision was also fuelled

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by the desire to form a contemporary dance company in her home environment. However, after arriving home the expectations and pressure in her home environment as someone who had ‘trained abroad’ became overwhelming and she returned to Germany a year later. During our first meeting Mey did not divulge further on why she returned to Germany; almost as if it was a taboo topic she quickly changed the subject, lighting up another cigarette in haste. It was only during later conversations that she began to reveal that there were particular motivations that pulled her back to Germany. The first was to reunite with a boyfriend who she then married, and the second factor was the feeling that she needed to learn more about her dance practices to be able to teach, perform and choreograph in such a way that she would feel creatively satisfied within her home environment. Mey shared this experience of going between Syria and Germany in the following statement: I came back [to Damascus], I was like 22 when I came back. I’d never considered staying abroad for a long time, or permanently. The whole time I was in Germany I felt like I had a life back in Syria that I had to come home to. There was this sort of expectation from my family, from the Goethe Institute […] I started to organize a small group here to teach them things and to do stuff – that was really why I wanted to come back too – I was naive and I thought you could just make a dance group and it would work. Also the Higher Institute asked me if I could come and teach, so I went there and taught a couple of classes, but I felt that it was too much pressure, too many expectations […] to come back and everyone is looking at you – like, what is she doing, what is happening? Waiting for me to make any small mistake so they could attack, and I felt under so much pressure, and I felt like I was just repeating what I had learned in Frankfurt, I was not sure of myself as a teacher – I felt like when I left Germany I was just starting to understand what sort of dance I might want to make. I didn’t feel strong enough to stay here […] I went back again to Germany – there was also an old love story, you know, and I got married. When Mey returned to Germany in early 2004 she started to choreograph her own work and initiate cross-cultural collaborations between Syrian and German dance practitioners. This led her to establish the dance company called Myosotis, where collaborative works between artists from both locations,

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Germany and Syria, were devised and performed in Europe. She was also teaching a variety of dance and somatic practices and continued to engage in performance work across Europe. In 2008, after being back in Germany for four years, Mey decided that it was time to return home; this time she cited homesickness as the driving force. She also explained that she felt that she had gathered new knowledge that could be applied in her home environment: I was always visiting once or twice a year, or sometimes even three times a year. I always felt that I really, really wanted to be here [in Damascus] now, like I always felt pain when I left Syria. So, at a certain point in Germany I said, ‘Ok, I need to go home, I miss it.’ I felt that it was now or never. I could have stayed in Germany but I would have got stuck, and by that stage I felt that I could do something here [in Damascus], that I could bring something home. I came back and I was like, ‘Ok, so I am here, now what?’ I thought, ‘Ok, I will start a company.’ A company was something I always wanted to do, make my own work, influence the dance scene here. Mey started Tanween Dance Company with a group of four dancers and also hoped that she could continue her teaching practice. However, Mey explained that on arriving home and re-establishing herself, she felt somewhat alienated from the local dance community. She explained, ‘I felt like everyone was afraid of me, the people at the Higher Institute [in Damascus], everyone was afraid of their position, like thinking that “she might come and take my position”.’ Mey also shared her frustrations about establishing a small dance company with limited resources in an environment that presented several challenges to those involved in the performing arts: ‘With no funding you can’t pay your dancers, when you do a performance no one wants to know about it, only your friends come, plus even finding dancers willing to work with you in your way is hard.’ These difficulties led Mey to make the decision to place her ambitions for a dance company on hold and to pursue something that she felt might actively generate interest around contemporary dance within the wider community. This led Mey to start a contemporary dance festival in association with others in the southern Mediterranean who were involved with similar projects. When explaining her experience of establishing and running the Damascus Contemporary Dance Platform in 2009 and 2010, it seems that Mey’s expectations of what contemporary dance might be and how it should

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be appreciated sometimes conflicted with others’ understandings and expectations of contemporary dance: I tell the dancers at the Higher Institute that I’m doing this festival and that Sacha Waltz is coming, and of course nobody knows Sacha Waltz, and I say that they are staying five days here and they don’t have a lot of things to do because they have to wait for the stage to be built and things, so they [the students at HIDA] could come to the Old City and talk to her – and they are like, no […] They are not interested. I couldn’t understand why. I just thought this is so strange – you are a dancer, don’t you care? I think certain choreographers’ works need to be seen here. I think that people should know about these people’s work and the importance of them within the contemporary dance world. This is how we are going to develop our work here, how we are going to produce better, more sophisticated work. There are other people here who don’t think it’s so important, they don’t care about some dance company from Europe in the same way I do. Mey was also questioning how her dance experiences in Europe might be adapted within her home context. She stated, ‘I don’t know what I should do sometimes with what I learned in Germany, and sometimes me – as a Syrian – teaching Western contemporary [dance] here is not seen to be a positive thing, people would rather foreigners teach it.’ This feeling that ‘foreigners’ might be more accepted as teachers of Western contemporary dance practices was also reiterated within Mey’s following statement: The Higher Institute Director is like, ‘We have a teacher from Holland and we have another teacher from Greece,’ and he is telling this to everyone […] So what! You can immediately feel the complex, I mean he is not saying we have a teacher from this and this school, or she was teaching at this and this school, or she was working with this and this company, just the country – so what! It is this complex – from abroad – it’s always this complex and it’s so awful. Teaching in her home environment was often a topic of conversation that Mey spoke about extensively. She would often question what she should

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teach, how she should teach and the repercussions of teaching particular ideas, concepts and movements in her home environment. She gave an example of a recent encounter at HIDA, where her assumptions about what should be taught and how did not necessarily fit with the expectations of the students she was teaching: I hadn’t taught these students for a while, and we started with these workshops and I told them, ‘People, ok, it’s been six months [since I’ve last taught you], we will do something easy.’ I did one hour on the floor Pilates – very easy – just like to starting to feel muscles again, we didn’t even do any standing work or release work, just an easy Pilates class. But it’s Pilates, so moving the inside muscles, thinking more about feeling muscles, bones, sensations, listening to the body […] They were a bit bored, though, I could tell as I was teaching them […] I was wondering how I could get them more interested in the exercises and ideas. But the funny thing is that the next day nobody could walk. I didn’t feel anything, I wasn’t sore, nothing, and I’d had six months off. Nobody could walk and they [the students] were like, ‘What did you do to us? Why do we have to do this? How is this going to make us better?’ and I was like, ‘Moving your muscles […] the right muscles […] the muscles you need to dance.’ For me it was obvious. Maybe I didn’t explain enough to them all about Pilates and how it is connected to dance, but I thought, that’s it, we have very different ideas of what you need to do to train to be a dancer. For me a dancer has to be dedicated, be able to perform technically, physically well – for me this is the technique, and that is what we don’t have here – and then everybody wonders why they have damaged knees and injuries and they are like 20 and they are already damaged. This teaching here was hard. Looking back I had to learn more about how to be an actual teacher, and a teacher in a Syrian environment […] Now the environment is just part of my teaching. It’s not even something I think about – I just know. I can’t teach contact here like I would in Germany, but it’s not like I’ve sat down for hours and thought about how to do it differently here. Like, I know this place. For me I know my home, I know what works, what won’t. Here I can’t just get them to roll all over each other at first, it just won’t happen, that’s just how it is.

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The role of Western contemporary dance in a Syrian context was something that Mey and I discussed on several occasions. Mey explained how she felt that particular dance groups based in Syria were drawing on Western dance practices under the guise of presenting folkloric dance. She explained that while she did not necessarily like or agree with the artistic work that some of these groups were presenting, she felt that exposing a wider audience to these dance practices had enabled her to pursue her own artistic practices with more ease: I tell someone that I am a dancer, they are like, ‘Oh, do you know Enana?3 You must go and dance with them.’ So, in a way the work that groups like Enana do is good because it puts dance out there and gets people to see it, and, you know, thinking about it, thinking about the body […] so it is very important, and I could never do this work without that new understanding – I mean, people would come to my performances and think, who is this crazy naked woman? [laughs] However, Mey expressed how censorship in her home environment has at times restricted the work she feels she can create or share publicly: I have to think about the work I make in relation to the environment – the censorship that goes on. I have to do this, there is no choice – you could be in a lot of trouble if you just went ahead without considering this. Like, in the Festival [Damascus Contemporary Dance Platform] I had planned on showing various films on Pina Bausch. Everything had been arranged so far and the programmes had even gone to print already. We had gone to extremes to get all these films, among others Café Müller, Die Klage der Kaiserin and Coffee with Pina. In Syria you have to submit all the films prior to showing to the censorship of publications board for permission. Shortly before the festival I received an angry phone call from the Ministry of Culture claiming that Coffee with Pina had been produced in Israel […] After that, nothing could be shown at all […] In the end I was even threatened with going to prison. Working in Damascus has also sometimes led Mey to feel guilty about dancing, and to question the relevance of Western contemporary dance in

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her home environment. She illuminates these feelings in the following statement: Sometimes you really start thinking, ‘What are you doing? Why are you doing contemporary dance in such a fucking society?’ Sometimes doing contemporary dance here you really start doubting it – what am I doing? I learnt the dance I do in Europe; I can’t just stop doing it this way because I’m home. But this is my dance, this is part of who I am. But at the same time I think, am I living in a balloon, a bubble? You know, I go to the Opera House and do some contemporary dance and talk about kinesiology and stuff – when there are people who are like […] I mean, you are in a war zone – ok, so there is no direct war here, but you are living in a war zone – I mean, it’s tension. But I want to use that tension as a way of making my statement towards the issues we are facing. Mey and I met again in April 2011 in Beirut at the Arab Dance Platform. The Syrian uprising was becoming heated and she had arrived a few days late to Beirut and had cancelled the performance she had planned on presenting. Her home environment was bubbling with tension, the cracks in the Syrian government were beginning to show and violence against citizens was becoming more frequent as the al-Assad regime fought to maintain control over the Syrian people. Mey’s face looked drawn as we stood outside the Al-Madina Theatre after a performance. She kept her eyes lowered as fellow dance colleagues who were in Beirut for the festival filed past. Mey explained that she was concerned about how she would continue her creative work during this turbulent time, but she stated that she felt it was important to remain in Damascus and that there was an urgency to speak out about current issues within her home environment through creative work. Over the following years Mey and I tried to keep in touch, but this became more difficult as the Civil War became more serious. Being able to voice opinions, even through emails or social media, was unsafe for many Syrians, and access to communication through the internet became increasingly problematic.4 I lost contact with Mey in mid-2012, and only in late 2013 through a mutual friend in Amsterdam did I discover that she had left Syria for Dubai briefly and then had returned to Germany, the country that was her second home.

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Occupation, to occupy and to be occupied

I waited, showing a calm façade. Using all my energy I remained as cool as possible, considering each gesture I made, the way I placed my hands, my feet, how I sat in the uncomfortable plastic chair. I thought to myself, ‘Do not let them see. Do not show on the outside what you are feeling on the inside. Use your years of working your body to work it now. Fool them!’ This was my seventh visit to the King Hussein/Allenby Bridge1 in the space of four years. The bridge forms the border that allows movement between Jordan and Occupied Palestine and it is controlled by Israeli security. The first couple of times I crossed the border I felt confident that my naïve narrative of visiting Jerusalem for a few days’ break from my time in Amman would suffice. This story was starting to wear thin. It was getting much harder to lie now I understood the systems and consequences of my actions more clearly, and my concerns about the occupation2 were stronger. My relationships with those in Occupied Palestine were growing on professional and personal levels and so were my concerns for them living under occupation. I would answer the security guards’ questions as nonchalantly as possible. I would hear myself say, ‘No, I do not plan on going to the West Bank’, ‘No, I know no one here’, ‘Yes, I am going straight back to Amman in two days’ time’, trying with all my might not to give away that I was petrified and that I was lying. On this particular occasion I was ushered from the passport control desk to a closet-like office, back to the waiting area, then to another tiny

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Figure 7: Palestinians from the West Bank queuing at the Qalandiya checkpoint Image by Arnaud Stephenson (2014)

office, and then into another waiting area. Each time I was asked the same questions, with the same tone, but by a different female security officer. Each time I was careful to offer the same answers, remembering the advice I heard long ago that less is more when giving information; they will ask if they want to know more. I sipped from my drink bottle. I told myself repeatedly to act naturally, don’t look around too much, appear a little aloof, as though you do not care that they have made you wait for more than four hours and searched the entire contents of your suitcase, unravelling your underwear, looking inside your socks and flipping through every page of your notebooks. You do not care. Repeat, you do not care. A young woman with long curly hair, too much make up and a drab navy and white uniform walked towards me. She waved my open passport in front of my face. ‘Rosemary?’ ‘Yes.’ I looked at her as casually as possible.

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‘We have one more check. Come with us.’ She limply gestured for me to follow her to a small unmarked door to the side of the waiting area. I stood calmly, picked up my bag and followed her; I guessed it was time to sit in another small office and wait for a while longer. She looked at me and then at my passport. ‘You teach dance?’ ‘Yes.’ I offered nothing more. Her eyes narrowed as she sat back into her chair. She appeared suspicious and said, ‘Tell me about this dance.’ I also sat back into my chair and said as calmly as possible, ‘Well, what do you want to know?’ ‘Well, I just want to know about it. So why are you doing this?’ I began slowly, letting the lies slip through my teeth and ripple out onto the page as she took notes frantically. As I spoke I looked at the square Hebrew script on the paper in front of her and wondered what she was writing. When she asked me ‘What is contemporary dance?’ I offered to demonstrate in the small office. She declined my offer and looked at me as though I was a little crazed. I continued explaining my work to her. About 10 minutes later, after I delivered what I think was one of my best lectures, I was handed my passport and allowed to leave. If they only knew where I was going or what I was intending to do. With a feeling of relief I collected my rummaged-through luggage and stepped outside the arrivals hall into this painfully beautiful place. Once again I was in Palestine. As an ‘outsider’ I have witnessed the Israeli occupation of Palestine with the freedom of a New Zealand passport and the ability to come and go almost as I please. However, even as an outsider this occupation can become embedded within your thinking and work the longer you spend in a location such as Palestine. This environment perhaps fosters the bondage that poet Mahmoud Darwish (2011) explains as ‘the necessary condition for Palestinian creativity’ (p.97). Along with this effect of forcing creativity, the occupation creates frustration, desperation, inspiration, nothingness or numbness and ‘an absence dense with presence’ (Darwish, 2011, p.89). It creates a population frustrated by oppression and a refusal to be defined by it. It is inescapable and unimaginable – as Nadia, a young dancer from Ramallah, revealed to me during a conversation in early 2014.

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Nadia’s story It is mid-December 2014 when I write and re-write Nadia’s story. As I work on this chapter I find out that her younger sister Lina has been arrested and is being held by the Israeli Army in detention. Lina is just 18 years old, a student at Birzeit University and a dancer in El-Funoun Palestinian Popular Dance Troupe. The circumstances around Lina’s arrest are unclear, and my colleague Nicholas Rowe (who also knows Lina, Nadia and their family) and I sit in my office in Auckland piecing together the bits of the story we have heard. Lina was arrested on 11 December 2014 during a demonstration in Beitunia, a small village on the outskirts of Ramallah and a popular site for clashes between Palestinian civilians and Israeli military forces. Images and footage are circulated online of Lina being taken away by two Israeli soldiers, and also of her performing just a few days earlier in the new production by El-Funoun, Tallat, leaping across the stage with vigour, a keffiyeh3 wrapped over her face and a long dress swishing around her body. Nadia and Lina’s family had experienced arrests and harassment by the Israeli occupation before; their father had been imprisoned in the 1990s. As I re-read Nadia’s interviews and think of her sister Lina, I am reminded how acutely the occupation in the West Bank affects every individual living there. The theme of the occupation that had just arrested Nadia’s sister resonated over and over again in the words that Nadia had spoken to me, even though the word ‘occupation’ never surfaced once within the transcripts. Nadia talked mostly about the ‘situation’, and sometimes the ‘problems’, the ‘issues’ and the ‘troubles’. She didn’t even mention the word ‘occupation’ when she described to me the first choreographic work she had made, entitled Desperate attempt, which explicitly focused on issues related to the Israeli occupation. Although the word ‘occupation’ was never used in our conversation, we both knew that you didn’t need to use it for it to be there. It was everywhere. It was running through veins, permeating bodies and minds. On a cold winter afternoon Nadia and I sat in Café Zamn in Al-Tireh, Ramallah. A snowstorm had recently paralysed the city for days. This was the first day in nearly a week of immobility where electricity had been fully restored; roads were slowly being cleared and people were able to venture outside. The upstairs seating area of the café was filled with a haze of cigarette smoke, but it was too cold to open the windows for fresh air. Nadia and I ordered our lattes and sat at a small table.

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Figure 8: Nadia in the dance studio of the Popular Arts Center, Ramallah Image by Arnaud Stephenson (2014)

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By the time I was interviewing Nadia for this book I had known her for two years. She was a dancer in El-Funoun Palestinian Popular Dance Troupe. Her older brother Ata also danced and worked as a trainer and choreographer with El-Funoun, and her younger sister Lina had recently joined El-Funoun after dancing with the Bara’em.4 Their father was one of the founding members of the group and they grew up in the El-Funoun environment. Therefore, it was perhaps not surprising that Nadia, Ata and Lina all pursued dance. Nadia mentioned, ‘I sometimes think “am I born talented, or do my experiences make me talented?” I often wonder, if my father had not been in El-Funoun, would I have been a dancer? Maybe, maybe not, I don’t know.’ Nadia had recently graduated with a degree in business and taken an office job with a large company. In early conversations she mentioned that she felt torn between wanting to be a dancer and doing what she felt she ‘should’ be doing – getting married and starting a family. One afternoon as we were out shoe-shopping in downtown Ramallah she said to me, ‘I will wait a few years before I get married. I don’t think I will stop dancing then, but when I have kids I will stop dancing.’ These comments echoed what I had heard from other dancers I talked to in Ramallah. Nadia seemed to be continually grappling with the expectations of the two worlds she found herself in – the dancing world of El-Funoun, and wider Palestinian society. Nadia had a personality that swayed between bouncing off the walls with energy and enthusiasm, and sinking into melancholia where she quietly retreated into herself. Outside of the dance studio we socialised together. Our circles of friends linked more firmly when I dated one of Nadia’s childhood friends. When I decided to ask Nadia to talk to me for this book her eyes widened. ‘Really?’ she asked, seeming excited. When it came to recording the first interview, however, she shut down, becoming closed and vague in her responses to my questions. She would say: ‘But you are not going to mention all the names, are you?’ ‘This part is off the record.’ ‘This part is just for you, not for the book.’ ‘I might sound bad if I say this […]’ There was hesitancy in her answers and I struggled to find a way to allow her to feel comfortable to talk as we usually would. I decided to change tack. I often avoided asking about certain creative works or performances, instead waiting for these moments to be brought up by the women themselves if

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they felt they were significant and relevant to the discussion. Nadia had recently made her first choreographic work, Desperate attempt, a collaborative piece with Fayez Kawamleh who was also a dancer in El-Funoun. I decided to ask about this, hoping that it would allow her to focus on this particular event and process. I knew the work had the underlying theme of occupation, so I thought it might be a safe way to approach what could be a more sensitive subject that Nadia might not raise on her own. Desperate attempt was based on the experiences of her co-choreographer and performer, Fayez, who holds no formal identification due to his family situation at various points of the Israeli occupation.5 His lack of ID has resulted in Fayez not being able to travel abroad, and has the potential to impact on everything from employment opportunities to relationships. It is considered by many Palestinians that it is preferable to marry someone who holds the same ID. Blue ID to marry blue ID, green ID to marry green ID. This creates a de-facto class system, where those with blue ID and the most freedom to travel have the potential for more opportunities, whereas those in a situation such as Fayez are in a more difficult position with few opportunities. The difference in types of ID and the repercussions these differences have on lives impact on young people’s choices about relationships, especially when looking towards marriage. My friend Aya, who holds a blue ID, had met a young man in Haifa. After telling me he was a doctor, the next most important information to share with me was: ‘And he has a blue ID.’ I watched the YouTube clip Nadia posted on Facebook of Desperate attempt numerous times. I wished I had been in Ramallah in November 2013 to see it performed live. I arrived back in town a few weeks after it was performed and people were still talking about it. I asked Nadia about the work – the inspiration, process and reflections. Nadia relaxed. She began to share her thoughts, free of second-guessing or worries about what others might think of her comments. Her narrative below offers her reflections on making and performing Desperate attempt: What can I say about my piece? Well, it has come from something that I am really living. I think that it’s important for any work I make to come from my reality, because I am always asking myself, ‘Why are you doing it, Nadia? Why are you making this work, and why are you making it like this?’ If I am working on something that I am really experiencing, really questioning, then I can find a way to rationalize why I need to

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do it. If I am experiencing something, the likelihood is that others are experiencing it, have experienced it, or will experience a similar thing in some way. So Fayez and I had a small idea at the beginning. Over time the idea changed and became more focused, but it started with this small seed of an issue that we wanted to discuss in our dance. The idea was about when a person has no ID, how does that make them feel? How does that impact on them? Obviously this is a Palestinian context – no ID here is something that we have to deal with. It is a big thing. Most people can’t imagine having no ID – they say, ‘How is that possible?’ Or they say, ‘It’s just a piece of paper’. No, it is so much more. So this was the first idea, and we started to develop it. We just had three weeks to make the piece, and the dance became more focused on a specific aspect of a story, about how two people might get married and feel worried about this ID situation if they have two different IDs. Again, it might not seem like a big thing outside of here [Palestine], but it is, it is very real and lots of people are in these sorts of situations. Like a situation where one person lives in Jerusalem, the other in Ramallah, or where someone only has a permit to live in Jerusalem. During the performance there was an amazing response. The people started clapping. I felt that they received the message at this point. My god, it was really emotional. This piece makes me more committed to my philosophy that I can do this [dance] here [in Palestine], that I can work on more things like this and to work with dance on something that is very closely connected to human emotion and feelings. You can take a problem or an issue and you can communicate about it through dance – for me this is special. The audience went crazy over the piece, and I felt so popular, like a celebrity. I went home after the performance and there were many messages to me on Facebook congratulating us, saying how much they enjoyed our performance. I was like, ‘Wow!’ I felt like it was very special and had made some sort of statement. Along with positive experiences of dance that Nadia encountered, there were also moments of frustration and challenge. While Nadia was an experienced dabke dancer, it was not until much later in her dance training that she experienced contemporary dance. The limited contemporary dance

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training she had received left her wanting more, and a particular experience prompted Nadia to seek out further dance education with an emphasis on contemporary dance. Nadia shared with me the following story, often pausing to gather her thoughts, and contemplating how to phrase what she was feeling. She said: I want to tell you a small story, about what made me go, ‘Yes, I want to be a dancer.’ Last summer, in 2012, there were dance auditions for a workshop that would lead to the production with Ballet C de la B, called Badke. I was really interested in doing this. I went to the audition. It was in the morning and there were a lot of people auditioning, it felt very serious. All these other people were contemporary dancers from Palestine, and I am there as a dabke dancer. The audition started with a sequence, and I am not good at remembering the movements, I have to do the movements many times to remember them, like about 10 times – it is a weakness. They gave a very hard sequence, and I started to follow the others but I really didn’t know how to do it. There were three people watching in the audition. We finished the sequence and they gave us a break before the individual auditions. I didn’t do much in the sequences because I was so lost with the movements, so I was waiting for this individual audition to show them what I could do. Before the individual auditions even started, though, one of the people watching the audition picked a lot of people and asked us to talk to him. He said, ‘You are all great dancers, but I am sorry you cannot continue the audition.’ He said, ‘Keep dancing, you are great dancers, but we cannot take you.’ I was the only one from El-Funoun who they told to stop at that point. It really hurt me, I don’t know exactly why. I thought, I am a folklore dancer, and I am a good folklore dancer, but why do I not know anything about contemporary? From this I learnt that I want to learn contemporary, and I want to be able to participate in an audition like this again, and to do well. I want to be a dancer. Okay, I am a good dabke dancer, but I want to be a good dancer in everything. So I say to myself, I really want to be a dancer. So from this audition experience I decided that I wanted to be a dancer, a good dancer. But there are a lot of challenges. I started to take every workshop

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I could, I started to work on myself. In the audition we were told we did not have technique, so I thought, ‘Okay, I need to get these techniques.’ But as much as I say ‘I want to be a dancer’, I think it is too late, I have graduated from university and I have started to work in a job completely unrelated to dance. Here in Palestine it is difficult to say, ‘Okay, I am going to leave everything, and go somewhere in the world and learn dance.’ That audition made me very sad, and it made me realize that I want to be a dancer. But I can’t go outside of Palestine to study this, it is too late – well, not too late, but too complicated […] because of money, the visas, and if I go and I study this dance and I come back here, what am I going to do here? What opportunities are there? Another area that Nadia appeared to talk about freely was teaching dance. She was particularly open to talking about her teaching practices in the rural villages of the West Bank. Earlier in the year I accompanied Nadia to one of her regular Saturday morning classes in the village of Beitillo, a onehour drive in a service taxi from Ramallah. As we travelled the bumpy roads in the back seat of the taxi Nadia told me that it was not always possible to get to these classes; the roads were dangerous and if there was bad weather it was impossible to make the trip. Once we arrived in the village I quickly became aware that the inhabitants were living in very basic conditions. Nadia and I walked down a winding path towards a makeshift gymnasium, with half a roof, dusty floors and a portable CD player with rusty-sounding speakers. It was clear that we stood out. Older women sweeping doorways or hanging washing stopped and stared. Some young boys chased after us, wanting to know our names and where we had come from. Once inside the gymnasium a group of about 25 girls, between the ages of 7 and 13 years, were waiting patiently for us. As we walked in some of the girls ran up to Nadia to greet her, but others stood back a little, looking shyly at Nadia then me, whispering to each other and quietly giggling. As the newcomer I felt they were interested to know who I was and why I was visiting. Nadia introduced me and very swiftly I made friends with some of the littler girls who came and said ‘hello’ to me. Once the class was underway they seemed to forget about my presence, becoming absorbed in the rhythmic dabke movements. Nadia asked them to repeat the steps over and over, until even the smallest members of the group had mastered them. She was firm with her instructions, but the girls

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looked at her with a mixture of wistfulness and admiration, following her every command. At the end of the class there were numerous invitations from the girls to come to their houses for tea and food. A group of older girls asked if we would like to look around the village; they would act as our tour guides, showing us their favourite places. We set off with a group of about 10 girls and other children joined us along the way, holding our hands and asking us questions. ‘What is New Zealand like?’ ‘Are you married?’ ‘Do you have any pets?’ ‘What is your favourite Justin Bieber song?’ The group led us down a rocky hill towards a lush valley with a few small houses dotted around. The girls moved fleetingly over the rocks, assured in their footing and appearing to know every crevice of the ground. Nadia and I walked a little more gingerly. Once in the valley we strolled to the small river and around the houses. The group then sat us down on a large rock and asked if they could perform a few songs for us. Nadia and I said, ‘Of course!’ and encouraged them to begin. Two of the older, more confident girls commenced the first few lines of a Miley Cyrus song, and the others joined in for the words they knew and clapped along enthusiastically. Nadia and I joined in too, clapping and dancing with the girls; all of us had huge smiles stretching across our faces. This memorable experience led me to ask Nadia about her work in the villages, why she felt drawn to teach in these contexts and what some of the challenges were when teaching not only in a very rural area, but also when dance education is still seen by many in Palestinian villages as something unnecessary. Nadia shared the following: I was in University when I started working in the villages […] it was like different worlds. When I started as a trainer I wanted the students to be like the Fire of Anatolia6 – I was giving them movements that were too hard, I was not tailoring it to the groups I was teaching and what they needed. Going to teach in the villages I was like someone who had come from the moon – I am a lady who wears jeans and nothing over my hair. The villages are very different to a city like Ramallah. Sometimes there is no electricity, and they are very small places where everyone knows everyone. It is not just different in how people dress and the conditions they live in, it is also different in the

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mentality of people – the villages are more conservative. But even though they are more conservative than places like Ramallah there are still a lot of students to teach, but there are no boys in the classes I teach, just girls. One of the difficult things is trying to keep the students in the classes; many drop out. In one village the students are in grade 11 and 12, they have school exams and they always tell me that they have to study and can’t come to the practices. Some of them get married at a young age and then they stop dancing. For others they get to a certain age and some of their parents no longer allow them to come and dance. The girls I teach in Beitillo village are younger, they are seven, eight, nine and this is a great age to get them. I find at that age they are a bit more attracted to dance than older girls. I feel I can also be a role model for them. There are no opportunities in Beitillo; the girls I teach always tell me that they have no activities, and that the dabke class is the only activity they have the whole week outside of school. The Beitillo group really has high commitment – they have passion for dancing and there are enough of them to support each other. When there are just a few girls who want to dance together it’s much harder to make it happen. I find with the younger girls I am a little bit tough with them – maybe that’s my personality as a trainer, just a little bit tough. I say to them that I am not there to teach them just to have fun; I tell them that I am there to give them something. When the Beitillo village group won the second prize in the dabke competition this year it was a very big surprise for me. I was very stressed about this competition; I was not sure how they would go. But they did a great job, and they did so well on the stage. It was a success story of sorts for me. It makes me confident to work with another group like this – to start from nothing, where the group has no dance experience, and work with them to develop into dancers. This transformative process was something that Nadia felt passionate about. As she talked about this her arm gestures became larger, more elaborate, and very dance-like. She jumped rapidly between ideas and stories as thoughts came into her head. A few days after our interview I arranged for a photo shoot with Nadia at the El-Funoun studio. Nadia and I chatted as

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Figure 9: Nadia jumping on the rooftop of the Popular Arts Center, Ramallah Image by Arnaud Stephenson (2014)

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we waited for the photographers to set up their equipment. As we talked Nadia stretched a little, fidgeting with her clothing and readjusting her shoes. She looked over to the two photographers as they tested the light and made final adjustments. Turning to me she said with laughter in her voice, ‘Maybe this is what it is like to be a “real” dancer. Maybe I have made it, I’m an actual dancer!’

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Breaking boundaries and borders of dance

The contemporary history of Palestine has been fraught with conflicts, tensions and unimaginable injustices (Pappe, 2006; Qumsiyeh, 2011; Said, 1992). The most prominent moments within the past decades have included the two Palestinian Intifadas1 and the more recent Israeli blockade and attacks on the Gaza Strip.2 Along with acts of violence and oppression there have been actions that have created a prison-like situation for those living in Palestine (Chomsky & Pappe, 2010; Levy, 2010; Pappe, 2006). The wall3 erected by Israel in the Occupied West Bank illustrates this incarceration (Backmann, 2010). While there are claims that the wall serves to protect the citizens of Israel from Palestinian violence, it annexes Palestinian land, severely impedes freedom of movement, separates families, inhibits access to resources and makes travel (even over short distances) impossible for many Palestinians (Backmann, 2010; Christison, 2011; Christison & Christison, 2009). Within the conditions those living in Palestine have endured and are currently enduring, it could be suggested that dancing in such a tempestuous context is ‘bizarre’ (Rowe, 2010, p.5). Despite the notion that dancing during war, conflict or occupation might be ‘frivolous’, dance permeates Palestine – as a form of resistance, expression, enjoyment and education (Rowe, 2009, 2010). I am reminded of this one afternoon I as walk through the streets of Ramallah. ‘Just dance in Ramallah.’ I came across these words faintly graffitied in purple on a wall in the suburb of Al-Tireh. This wall was on a main street I had walked along many times when going to the Sareyyet Ramallah Dance

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Figure 10: The separation wall near the Qalandiya checkpoint in Ramallah, Palestine Image by Arnaud Stephenson (2014)

Studios or the Jasmine Café. Despite passing the wall almost daily I had never noticed the words until now, but they were too faded to be new – had they been covered? Had I just never spotted them? I took a photo of the writing and posted it on Instagram. My dancing friends in Ramallah commented that they had also never seen this before. A few weeks later I saw the same words written on the wall of a building in the older part of town, this time in light green spray paint – ‘Just dance in Ramallah!’, underlined and with an exclamation mark. Perhaps this was a coincidence? Perhaps there was a dance revolution brewing? Whatever the motivation behind the messily scribed words on the walls, they reminded me of how surprising Palestine can be. Ramallah was a city I was initially afraid of. I delayed visiting until I had been travelling the southern Mediterranean region for nearly a year. Perhaps part of my reluctance to visit was due to the images I had in my head of a

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Figure 11: ‘Just dance in Ramallah’, a wall in Al-Tireh, Ramallah Image by Arnaud Stephenson (2014)

warzone, full of chaos and danger. Despite spending much of my time in the region based in Amman, Jordan, less than an hour away from the Occupied West Bank, there were logistical issues that made visiting while also going to other locations in the region challenging.4 It could have been the stories I had heard from my PhD supervisor, Nicholas Rowe, who had lived there for a number of years, or perhaps the idea of venturing into a location that has an almost mythological history, but I was immensely nervous as I crossed the King Hussein Bridge for the first time into the Occupied West Bank. Arriving at the Inbound Tourist Hall I was greeted nonchalantly by a teenage girl dressed in an oversized Israeli army uniform, working on passport control. I noticed that the paper in front of her had doodles of flowers and hearts and that her fingernails were painted bright pink. She didn’t ask me why I was visiting; she barely looked at me. Instead, she just looked at my passport and said, ‘New Zealand – I really want to visit one day.’ While she scrawled on some small pocket-sized

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documents she told me that she was a fan of New Zealand’s landscape. She then stamped several papers and my passport, handed it back to me and wished me a pleasant visit. I tucked my passport away and noticed that she returned to her doodling of hearts and flowers before the next passport arrived on her counter. Very quickly I realized that my preconceptions of Palestine as a frightening place were unfounded. While there were certainly elements of chaos and the occasional moment when I felt unsettled, as I met dancers, taught classes, watched performances and made myself at home in Ramallah I realized that this was a place of contrasts. There were enormous challenges and complications facing those who were engaged with dance, but there was also an abundance of creativity and tenacity in the dance practices that were occurring. There was something about Palestine that grabbed me, shook me up and compelled me to return over and over again. During my first visit to Palestine there were several dancers I hoped to interview in Ramallah. I had been given the names of various dance practitioners by my supervisor, and knew of the few dance centers and groups that were active in the city. I had met one Palestinian dancer before my visit. I met Noora in Amsterdam at the 2009 Dancing on the Edge Festival, when she was dancing in a collaborative work called Waiting Forbidden. We chatted briefly between various performances and after some of the informal evening debates and presentations, but it was watching Noora perform in Waiting Forbidden that really caught my attention. This performance was about being Palestinian and being of Palestinian descent, and it aimed to investigate and question themes of displacement, fear and resistance, issues I was intrigued to know much more about. Talking to other dancers in the region I noticed how many mentioned the impact social and political issues had on their dance practices. Some expressed their frustrations with these conditions, while others explained the inspiration and creativity they found within their socio-cultural and political situations. For example, the Jordanian performance artist Lana Nasser posed the question, ‘Does censorship actually create more creative art, more innovative ways to say something? You just have to look at Iran5 as an example’ (personal communication, 10 December, 2011). Arriving in Palestine and witnessing the obscene separation wall erected by Israel and the treatment of Palestinians at border crossings, I wondered what impact this had on dancers and dance. Noora’s story started to reveal to me that the borders and walls Palestinians may be confined within, while unjust and illegal, are not debilitating to dance.

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Noora’s story The first time I interviewed Noora she invited me to meet with her at the Popular Arts Centre in Al-Bireh, just a few minutes’ walk down a winding hill from where I was staying. I arrived a little early and took some time to absorb the mural on the wall of the hallway and up the staircase. The large colourful images of children and adults dancing and running beneath a crisp blue sky captivated me; some in the painting were wearing keffiyeh and there were Palestinian flags flying in the painted breeze. I followed the painting up the stairs. Noora warmly welcomed me into her office and introduced me to the many people that came in and out during the first interview we had together. The animated and excited squeals of children arriving for their dance classes in the early afternoon filled the reception area, and the muezzin giving the call to prayer rippled through the building from the mosque across the street as Noora and I talked. Between our interviews I would watch some of the children’s dance classes, where they were learning to stamp their feet rhythmically and count six stamps to the left, six stamps to the right. Noora explained that she had started dance in classes just like the ones I spent my afternoons observing: I was seven years old when I started dancing. I was very active, always moving and dancing, so my parents thought it would be good for me to come and dance. It was the beginning of the First Intifada, and my parents were very afraid for me – there was nothing for kids to do, the schools were closed, so they were concerned about my education. Then they heard about this group called El-Funoun that my cousin had joined. At this time it was only for boys – in 1986 – but in 1987 they let girls join, and I was one of them. I entered the Bara’em, the young group. I was very shy, I wanted to be at the back but I was always very short, so I always got pushed forward towards the front. Noora recalled how she enjoyed the experience of learning and performing dance as a child; however, ‘becoming a dancer’ was not something she considered seriously until much later in life. Noora explained, ‘It was in my unconscious, it was not like I said to my parents, “I want to be a dancer” – there was no such thing.’ Noora’s experiences of dance were often intersected with recollections of trainers being arrested, memories of travel bans, or

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Figure 12: Noora standing among the olive trees in Beitunia village, Palestine Image by Arnaud Stephenson (2014)

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simply the words ‘occupation’ or ‘prison’. I felt that Noora never particularly dwelled on any of these experiences, but rather they made up the fabric of her life in Palestine. However, there was one story that she shared with me during the first interview we did together that left an impression on me, and was an experience that perhaps informed Noora’s future dance activities and practices: When I was nine years old it was my first performance. We didn’t have any costumes, but we had t-shirts with the image of Ghassan Kanafani,6 a Palestinian writer. It was banned by Israel at that time to dance and still my parents kept me in this group. Often the dancers would be arrested and the audience would be too – by the Israelis. This performance was in Jerusalem in Al Hakawati Theatre. I remember that day very clearly. I was supposed to go on stage and I was very excited, but also at the same time very afraid to go on stage in front of an audience. But before we got on stage the Israeli army came and raided the place. I remember Khalid, my teacher, he literally held us all, he grabbed the kids – as many as he could – and threw us in this very small room, to protect us from what was happening. In the very tiny room there was a small window, and I remember my sister opening it and I looked out. I saw the soldiers hitting my mother, and then my sister, and then my father, and then my other sister, and then taking them away. Then a soldier doing this must have seen us, so he threw a tear gas bomb at the window so we had to close the window. I then just remember crying. My whole family was arrested then, along with many other people. After that experience I wasn’t afraid of dancing – even though you’d think after something like that happening you’d say, ‘I never want to dance again’ – but no, it was not an option. I was afraid of the Israelis but that was it. All I had in mind then was that I wanted to dance. Not long after this I went on stage again. The moment I was on stage I didn’t feel shy, I didn’t feel afraid, it was just like it was my own world. It was a place where I could be happy. It was very clear to me that this was where I wanted to be. And it wasn’t about the audience, because I still remember from that first performance it wasn’t about the audience. There were lights in my eyes and it was black, but it felt good – it wasn’t about a

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Palestinian cause or anything. Slowly I realized that this was my place, that this is what I wanted to do. Over time Noora moved from the Bara’em group to the El-Funoun Palestinian Popular Dance Troupe where she danced and later began choreographing. Noora explained that her initial experiences of dance from abroad were at the Popular Art Centre, where teachers from Europe often visited for short residencies. Noora explained her first experiences of training from abroad and going abroad to train in the following narrative: My first time with training from abroad was here actually – ElFunoun used to bring some trainers from abroad and we would train with them. By the time I was about 14 El-Funoun started to travel – the travel bans on members and restrictions started to loosen up in particular areas, and not so many dancers were being put in prison. The prison itself became within Palestine, within the country itself. It is a different reality – we can travel but I cannot go to Gaza or I cannot go to Nablus at times – it’s a worse situation, but it’s a different prison. It became in a way easier for me to travel abroad than travel within Palestine, which is quite an odd situation. Noora shared how she felt that dancing during her teenage years had brought particular challenges. She explained that while some members of her immediate family were supportive of her dancing, she felt some pressure from her father and extended family to stop performing: I had a lot of people telling me that I shouldn’t dance – my family as well, not my mother, but my father at many points and my aunts and my uncles. When I hit puberty they were like, ‘Ok, that’s enough.’ They would ask me, ‘Why are you still dancing?’ For my father, it wasn’t about being conservative – he really thinks that I need to build a future and this is not the way to do it, so it was not because he thought it was promiscuous or anything. I come from a very liberal family; however, my extended family, it was more because of the conservative views, so it was like why is she still on stage – get her off – and there was a lot of pressure for me not to dance. But I think with that, it was like

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when the Israelis came to the first performance I did – it made me want to stay as a performer even more. Noora spoke of how the group she was dancing with, El-Funoun, played an instrumental role in negotiating the dance practices and performances with her family: I think that El-Funoun dealt with it [dancing through the teenage years] beautifully. They visited my family many times, speaking with them about how important it was that I was there [in the group]. I had curfews from my parents, and I understand why, because society here does not accept a girl coming home at 12 at night when they are 14. It doesn’t fit with our society, and my parents didn’t accept it. They were like, ‘I can’t have you coming home at one o’clock in the morning on a school night, what are people going to say?’ – I understand it. It was like, ‘Ok, maybe I shouldn’t challenge them anymore and get a boyfriend and go to parties – all I have to fight for is El-Funoun.’ During her late teens Noora began to travel frequently to England, America and France, taking part in classes, workshops and residencies for varying lengths of time. These experiences of engaging with dance in different cultural contexts led Noora to reflect on her own motivations for dancing. She explained this in the following narrative: I went to different training and workshops abroad, and I realized that many of the young dancers that I interacted with and met abroad, when I was maybe 16 or 17, had this very bitter experience with dance because they were technically trained very well, and they wanted to make it, to become dancers, but they didn’t really know why. I realized that it [dance] was always related to something so beautiful and so pure. It was never something forced on me, not as a technique or anything, never; it was always free will, and whether that was good or bad I don’t know. Engaging with these different cultural contexts for learning and performing dance Noora shared how she began to question the role of ‘technique’ and how, as someone who was not schooled in Western technical dance training, she fitted in when dancing abroad:

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Maybe it’s just a different approach. I started thinking about the content and the actual presentation of dances – you start seeing other choreographers from abroad and I sometimes think, well, they’re restricted in terms of technique, in terms of the discipline of the technique, but at the same time it gives them more freedom with bodies on stage, but then at the same time on the content level, how much do you have when you have all this freedom? Noora also spoke of how she has always been drawn to choreography, and how the use of dabke elements influences her work: As long as I remember I’ve wanted to change people’s choreographies. I just want to do my own work, and because of this I think choreography was often my focus when training abroad. So then I started exploring more and I started trying things out – you have these ideas of what you want to do, and the past maybe five years here [Ramallah] I’ve been very interested in women’s movement here and how women dancers move here – in El-Funoun – and you know we move, the bodies move – because in dabke the woman can do her movement plus the men’s movement, so to me they are very well rounded in terms of really using their upper bodies, their eyes, their hair, all their senses, and it’s interesting. I feel sometimes that I want to push that a bit forward and see where I can push that movement, and I’ve been trying to do that – but to make choreography about this outside of a Palestinian context might just seem confusing or conflicting. Noora expressed how she felt that her practice as a choreographer had developed through her experiences abroad, which in turn fostered her creative work within El-Funoun. Noora explained that her experiences abroad enabled her to view how various environments and locations might influence her choreographic practices: When I started choreographing for El-Funoun I started questioning: ‘Do the restrictions I have here [in Palestine] give me more freedom, more ways to think, or don’t they? Are these borders making me more creative? Because I’ve worked within boundaries here all my life and this is what creates my work and inspires me, do I want to get rid of them or do I want to keep them?’

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Noora also expressed how what she needed and wanted from dance education abroad changed over time: I would go for the summer to London and would dance there. I applied for residencies in Paris and I had a lot of valuable experiences doing this, but over time my interests changed. Like, when I was 17 all I wanted to do was take classes and dance, dance, dance, and then at age 21 I wanted to do residencies, that sort of thing. At age 26 I wanted have my own experiences and work with other people. Noora’s work with El-Funoun, as a dancer, choreographer and trainer of the group, as well as her involvement with CACTUS Performance Art Collective7 and independent productions, has enabled her to travel abroad on a regular basis to gather diverse dance experiences and training. When I met Noora in October 2010 she had recently returned from performing with El-Funoun as part of the Shanghai Expo 2010. Meeting with Noora and some of the other El-Funoun dancers at a local café one evening, they recounted their journeys to and from Shanghai for me. They explained that while they had enjoyed the experience of visiting China, they were frustrated with the difficulties of travelling with Palestinian travel documents. One of the men in the group told me that it had taken him three extra days to get home to Ramallah, explaining that he had been stranded in airport transit lounges and waiting rooms as visa issues were dealt with. Noora rolled her eyes and chuckled, saying that this is what made staying abroad a very appealing option. Although this was said as a joke, I felt that there was some honesty within her statement. Returning home between these frequent experiences abroad raised issues for Noora about negotiating the term ‘contemporary dance’ in her home context. She also spoke of how, having experienced dance in Western cultural contexts, she would like to resist applying Western modes of dance teaching and learning in her home environment. She explained this in the following statement: I feel that over many years we’ve been a bit trapped in that because for years we’ve been like, ‘we don’t want to be like the West’, and it has been an issue – so sometimes I just drop it. I don’t care what you want to call it, if it’s strong and expresses what I want to express, you can call it folklore, you can call it contemporary, I don’t care. The contemporary work allows the

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space to express and there are less boundaries, so dabke is a tool and it doesn’t negate the idea of having contemporary dance, but it [dabke] is also a tool and can be put in a contemporary setting. There are so many people, especially in the Arab world, working with the development of the body in different ways, working with a body that is not trained technically, and how the body can tell a story, and this is very interesting for me. Like, if I want to work with dancers, I want to work with dancers in Palestine and there are not technically trained dancers here, and if I want to work within the Arab world there are many dancers who are technically trained in the wrong way, and this is the worst – I would not want to work with them. So I’m really interested in working with people who do not have a dance background, or working with dancers like in El-Funoun who have a dance background, but not in the sense of being Western dancers. The resistance towards being ‘like the West’ was an issue raised when discussing the development of dance in her home environment: We need to work more technically on the body and not necessarily in the European sense. I don’t know, maybe we need to research it more, but if we want to work with bodies we need them to be strong; we need to have strong physical bodies, to get the maximum out of them. So we need to develop stronger bodies so that we can really reach the maximum. While learning from her experiences abroad Noora explained that she is sometimes reluctant to work with artists who may be drawing on colonial ideals and promoting Eurocentric dance paradigms. She explained this in the following statement: I choose not to work with some European artists, not because they are European, but because I don’t like their ideas and they have very colonial views, for instance. If you like it then fine, but I’m working, doing my work, and if you like it and are interested then you are welcome to come. I want people who are interested in my work to come, and not just interested in my history or in changing my future. I don’t want people coming in and saying what’s best

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for me, and this is very much happening. People dictate mostly – European minds, dictating what they want – and I don’t want to generalize and it’s usually not with artists […] but it’s not black and white. I’ve done some co-productions [that are cross-cultural and internationally collaborative] and people have come and said, ‘How can you let this happen, how can you let them [foreign artists, groups and organizations] do this here, to us?’ This makes me cautious now, cautious not to let colonial perspectives override the culture here, the strong identity we have as dancers. As someone who is actively involved in the dance community in Occupied Palestine, Noora shared how she feels certain social responsibilities in her home environment and how training abroad might have challenged her artistic directions in her home environment: There is a lot of responsibility in this tiny little country [Occupied Palestine]. I feel this huge responsibility, and then I leave and it’s like a weight has been lifted – I can go get drunk and have fun. But the more you see [abroad] the more you question your work at home. It’s very easy to be just in this bubble here, and I have been for many years, in my own bubble thinking that I am the world’s greatest – at times. Probably between the ages of 19 and 23 I was in that box, that bubble – where you think you own the world, and you’re a dancer and everyone loves you, but then what? The bubble bursts and you’re quickly back to reality. I’ve learnt that it’s good to go abroad – because you have to come back and give. My belief is that if people give back to their community, the community itself will be more involved. I asked Noora if the next generation of dancers from Occupied Palestine might engage with dance training abroad, and if so, does she feel that they will return? And if they return, how does she think they will approach dance? She cited specific issues that she feels dancers will face, particularly when returning to their home environment: It is very difficult, because say they go abroad, when they come back will there be this opportunity for them to continue the work they were doing abroad here? Will we be able to contain

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them? There are no jobs here. Things need to come together, so when they come back [to Palestine] they cannot only depend on El-Funoun. I want to be ready for when a young dancer comes to me and says, ‘I want to go and study abroad,’ and I will be able to say ‘Go’ – with confidence. We need to create opportunities for young people to have the chance to go and study dance professionally and have their own experiences and come home to opportunities. Noora explained in detail that she perceives her self-identity to be something inherently informed by both her experiences abroad and in Palestine. She shared that she feels this comes through within her artistic work, regardless of the location where she is performing: The word ‘identity’ for me is tricky because it can also trap you, in one place or another. I think me being on stage, being Noora, the way I look, I carry my history and identity in my flesh and blood. This doesn’t go away when I’m in a different location; I don’t have to say anything more. If I’m there people will ask why – it’s presence. It could be that in my work, yes, it might reflect who I am and my reality, and it could carry, it will probably carry something political or social because this is who I am. An example of Noora carrying her history and identity through into her creative work was evident to me when I watched her perform in Waiting Forbidden, a co-production between El-Funoun, Le Grand Cru, Al-Balad Theatre and the Dancing on the Edge Festival (2009). The small black-box theatre was full to overflowing, and as the lights dimmed the hum of the audience became a still silence. The relationship with oppression, the motion of time and the dancers’ personal stories were focal points of the work, layered through a rhythmic dabke pulse and movement stemming from what seemed to be a common vocabulary that morphed into frenetic flurries of movement, skimming the floor, the walls and each other. At one point Noora stood motionless under a shadowy light filtering across the stage. I felt that watching her perform, her identity appeared to be clear, as a woman, as a dancer, and as a Palestinian. Noora’s more recent work has continued to explore issues that connect implicitly with the context of Palestine. In the work Sensored (2012), which she devised with CACTUS collective members Thais Mennsitieri and

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Dafne Louzioti, Noora and Thais play on the words ‘censored’ and ‘sensored’. They investigate the query: how can we play nicely when some of us have louder voices than others? In a surreal performance space created with lights, sound and movement, Noora and Thais engage in a series of power games. Using a movement language of gestures derived from political speeches the women explore themes of power, control, oppression and voicelessness. Thais and Noora enter the stage to the recorded sound of cheering. Both are wearing identical black and white striped suit jackets and black pants. A power play ensues and the gestures turn more physical – clapping, stamping, slapping. The idea is that Noora and Thais are trying to censor each other, their voices each trying to drown out the other. Noora feels that the work speaks to the moments of censorship ‘where being seen and heard is all that matters’. Her narrative reveals further insight into the work and its relationship to her location of Occupied Palestine: We took political speeches as the first inspiration, and the gestures used in the speeches. This is not a new idea, but it was a good starting point. Sensored began with the idea of voicelessness, a universal issue. But if you bring the idea of being voiceless to a Palestinian context it has a certain meaning, it is about power and control – so if you apply it here [in Palestine] it has a certain meaning, but Sensored did not set out to be a performance specifically about Palestine. Noora went on to explain the process of developing the work with her collaborators from CACTUS, and how Palestine acted as inspiration: As we were making the work we started to go in circles. We were not making any progress. We wanted to perform Sensored in public spaces in London, but quickly we realized that it is nearly impossible to get permission to use any public space for a performance. So just before we started to go through the process of applying for permission to access spaces, Thais came to talk to Dafne and I. She said, ‘I cannot get my mind off the borders coming in to Palestine.’ The thing was, they had an experience where Israeli intelligence took them to one side. Israeli intelligence started to question Thais, asking her why she was visiting, and she just told them, ‘Oh, I’m going to Jerusalem […]’.

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I told her to tell any Israeli the Jerusalem story. The woman questioning her said, ‘So what is in Jerusalem?’ and Thais froze. She said, ‘The Dead Sea’ [laughs]. The woman said, ‘You’re going to Ramallah, aren’t you?’ and they were like, ‘No, no, no […]’. But after the questioning the intelligence officer let them through, so they were lucky. It was the first time they had to go through this and I think it was a shock to both of them. I mean, you go through this arbitrary questioning process, you see the separation wall for the first time and it is all so absurd. People study surrealism in university, and we quote all these great surrealist artists, but you just need to visit Palestine and walk around and see the wall and things like that, and it is surreal, it is unbelievable. So thinking about this experience of coming to Palestine for the first time, Thais said, ‘I think of a small space, concrete, interrogation, the light, the sound.’ We said, ‘Okay, let’s be in a closed space’, and then we thought about occupation and we thought, ‘Bingo! Let’s talk about occupation!’ I got all excited, and then they both stopped me. They said, ‘We are not talking about the Israeli occupation, and we will not talk directly about it like that. People see it, they know it, we are here to shed light on an issue perhaps or just bring up questions. We want to work in a way that can challenge us artistically with this theme in mind.’ So I said, ‘Yes, that is what we are doing,’ and I had to think beyond my immediate thoughts and experiences of occupation. We started to think about what it meant to occupy a space and we researched things like the Occupy movement.8 We decided to look at the concept of occupation from social and political perspectives as well as the more general meaning of the word. I see it to generally mean ‘to come and take a space’. So we came from this idea and developed the work from there. We wanted to make a work that would easily tour to other countries. In each location we would take up a space that no one lives in – an empty building, a stairwell in an office block, these sorts of things – and that is where Sensored would be performed. We would present the work but also have discussions about what it means to occupy – not only in a political sense, but to occupy, to take space, be in space.

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As we devised the work we started to realize that it was not a site-responsive piece; rather, it was just taking that space, whatever that space might be. We also knew that the audience were important to the performance. We decided that the work has to be informed by the people in it – including those watching. Along with the idea of occupation we thought we would work with the idea of choice – particularly choice for the audience. Of course we had no money when we did the performance in London, but the University [Goldsmiths, University of London] gave us some space. We occupied that space and we found chairs. We invited an audience of ten people, and each audience member was given a chair, except for the last person who came into the room – they did not get a chair – so there was one person without a chair. The funny thing is that the first audience that came kept standing, holding the chair they had been given, not even sitting down. The second audience that came put the chair down and sat on it, leaving one person standing without a chair. At one point we bring out bread and we give everyone a piece of bread, except for one person who gets no bread. So one person is not sitting, one person is not eating. Then we do Chinese whispers and someone is left out. The three of us then speak in our own languages – Arabic, Greek and Portuguese – so not everyone understands what we are saying. At other points of the performance we separate people from each other, we move them around the space, we tell them to sit or stand. The audience go along with what we encourage them to do, but they also have some choice about how they respond to our requests and actions. We had discussions after the performances and there were often arguments between audience members. People were reflecting on some of the things that had occurred in the performance, saying, ‘You had a choice about doing that,’ then someone else saying, ‘No, you didn’t have a choice at all.’ In all of this we didn’t even talk about occupation or censorship. What I noticed is that we have that argument ourselves here in Palestine. I mean, is there really always a choice, or do you not have a choice about what happens to us at various times? When

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Figure 13: Photo shoot in Beitunia Village Image by Amber Hunt (2014)

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an Israeli checkpoint closes, what is your choice? Your two obvious choices are to turn around and walk away, or try to get through. If you try to get through your choice might mean you will die. The context of checkpoints, barriers, borders and restrictions engulfs the West Bank, and it is clear why these themes in Noora’s creative work resonate strongly with the Palestinian situation. In late January 2014 Noora invited Amber and Arnaud, my two photographer friends, and I to dinner at the home she shared with her mother in Beitunia village. After dinner we drove from the narrow winding streets of Beitunia towards the vast rolling hills dotted with olive trees and encroaching Israeli settlements. As we drove Noora told us a little about the area, what it used to be like a decade or two ago and the new developments that were impeding access to the roads, towns and land. Soon thick, high concrete walls barricaded either side of the road, blocking our view of what might be on the other side and creating a claustrophobic tunnel-like sensation, with the road only wide enough to accommodate two lanes of traffic and nothing more. Noora told us how the walls that cut the West Bank into awkward and illogical segments not only separated urban areas of Beitunia from more than half of the town’s land, but also were there to hide the encroaching settlement building and sustain the façade that those on the ‘other side’ were not there. Returning back to the village and finding a part of the village where the olive trees were still abundant, we decided to take some photographs. As Noora posed with the sun setting behind her, capturing the shadows of the trees and illuminating her curls, a few children came out of a nearby house to see what was going on. Soon their mother, father and older siblings joined them. The girls stood back shyly, and some of the boys started jumping and mimicking the poses that Arnaud was making as he took photographs of Noora. One boy used the small radio he was carrying as a makeshift camera, sneaking up behind Arnaud and clicking away taking imaginary images. We realized we had caused quite a stir and the family wanted their pictures taken. Arnaud obliged and Noora briefly explained to them what we were doing there. The mother stood next to me, wrapping her light-pink dressing gown a little tighter around her body. Had we made her uncomfortable? Was it time to leave? She turned to me and said in a mixture of Arabic and English, ‘Dancing? Tayeb,9 okay […] good.’ Once again I was left feeling inspired and reminded of how surprising Palestine can be.

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Freedom inside and outside of dance

The long stretch of highway from Queen Alia International Airport to the city of Amman is a journey that I have been on many times. The landscape is beige and flat, the cars drive too fast for my liking and often I just hope that I will arrive in Amman alive. In April 2014 my regular driver, Sayel, collected me from the airport and I made this journey for what felt like the hundredth time. As we passed the few small sections of fields being tended I noticed that makeshift tents and haphazard shelters had been erected as temporary communities around the farmland. The scrappy plastic tarpaulins billowed in the breeze, while the ground around the dwellings was strewn with detritus. Sayel, noticing how I was fixated on the sight as we drove past, looked in the direction of the tents and said, ‘It is sad, it is a terrible situation for the Syrians. More are arriving each day.’ A huge number of Syrians had fled their country since the start of the Civil War. A vast number had moved to nearby countries – Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Egypt – and there was a struggle to accommodate and provide basic resources for these refugees. I was aware that, like other countries in the region, Jordan had limited infrastructure for its own population, let alone for an influx of refugees. I asked Sayel for his thoughts on how he felt Jordan was coping, and he said, ‘Jordanians want to help our brothers and sisters from Syria, but I notice that people get angry because there is not enough to go around. When things go wrong the first people everyone blames are the refugees.’ This mass influx of Syrians into Jordan was the third large wave of refugees the country had experienced since it gained independence in 1946.

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Figure 14: Downtown Amman Image by Arnaud Stephenson (2014)

First there was the arrival of Palestinian refugees in 1948, and then again in 1967. A flood of Iraqi refugees arrived in 1991 and 2003. The latest stream of refugees from Syria was huge, and while the UNHCR estimates that there are approximately 640,000 Syrian refugees in Jordan (UNHCR, 2015), the actual number could be double this. With such vast numbers of people moving across the region, problems pervade refugee communities – human trafficking, abuse, underage marriage, illegal employment and mental health issues. Everyone had a story or opinion about the refugee situation. I was no exception. A few weeks prior to this trip from the airport and the conversation with Sayel, I had been in Lebanon for the International Dance Day Festival at the Lebanese American University. Part of the festival involved a sitespecific performance around the scenic waterfront of Byblos. I took several photographs in the late afternoon sun as the dancers moved intricately together over the rocks on a long pier leading out to the Mediterranean. I posted one of these images on Facebook that evening. Almost immediately

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Figure 15: Dancers at the International Dance Day Festival Lebanon 2014 perform on the pier of the Byblos waterfront Image courtesy of International Dance Day Festival Lebanon (2014)

I received a Facebook message from Ahmed,1 a dancer I had met four years before in Damascus. He wrote, ‘I saw your picture! Are you in Lebanon? I am here!’ I had not heard from him since I last saw him in Syria, and had often thought about him as the events of the Syrian Civil War had unfolded. I quickly replied and we arranged to meet in Beirut the next day. Meeting in Hamra Café, Ahmed told me that after fleeing Syria he had ended up in Beirut. Last time I met with him he was waiting with dread to begin his compulsory military service. By the time the Civil War broke out he knew it would not be long before he would have no choice and would have to join Assad’s army. He decided to try to leave Syria before this happened. Leaving his family behind in Damascus, he went to the south of Syria with the hope of crossing the border into Lebanon or Jordan. The situation in the south was volatile and Ahmed found that it was impossible to get to a neighbouring country easily. Ahmed decided to travel to the north of Syria. He crossed into Turkey and arrived in Istanbul a few months later. Explaining that the language and lifestyle in Turkey made it very

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difficult to adapt, Ahmed felt that he could not make this his new home. After struggling in Turkey for several months he decided to try to get to Lebanon as a legal refugee. This process involved months of waiting in Cyprus for papers to be approved. Ahmed had arrived in Beirut just two weeks before we met. Reflecting on this arduous journey that had taken nearly two years, Ahmed said, ‘The things I saw in Syria were more terrible than anyone could imagine, but being a refugee is also terrible.’ Ahmed’s experience is one that millions of refugees from the region have endured.2 Time and time again I found myself having conversations with people in the southern Mediterranean region about the role dance might play within such geographical upheavals and humanitarian crises. When I talked with Rania, a Jordanian dance educator and choreographer, the refugee crisis in Jordan was at the forefront of her mind. While we spoke about her dance history and memorable dancing moments, the notion that dance had the potential to assist people during times of hardship and trauma was a topic that recurred as we talked. Rania said to me, ‘Arts are not a luxury […]. The arts have to be an integral part of developing the next generation and encompass and interfere with the lives of people. Arts have to mobilize people.’ I found myself nodding in agreement.

Rania’s story Rania and I played ‘interview tag’ for nearly a year before we finally managed to sit down and chat. I had known about Rania’s work in Amman for some time; I had met her and many of her students and had taught at her dance school. However, we had never quite managed to schedule an interview together. Times we had arranged to meet in person were cancelled due to travel commitments or hectic schedules. Times for Skype interviews were made and then remade as time zones and technology played havoc with our desire to talk. Finally, in January 2015, with looming pressure to submit the manuscript for this book, Rania and I agreed to Skype each other for an interview. As the director of the dance programme of the National Center of Culture and Arts in Jordan, Rania could arguably be one of the most influential dance practitioners in the country. While the dance scene in Amman is growing at a steady pace, it is not as vibrant a location as Beirut

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Figure 16: Rania Image courtesy of Rania’s personal collection

or Ramallah. When people asked me about dance in Jordan I often found it hard to explain the attitude and atmosphere toward dance in a positive light. I felt that the ‘typical’ Jordanian attitude towards dance was well encapsulated in a short anecdote that Rania shared. She said: I clearly remember an interview I did when I first came back to Jordan. It was at a school that was private, quite respectable. I went there because they wanted a ballet teacher. At the end of the interview the woman interviewing me asked, ‘Well, if we don’t get enough students for the ballet class, can you teach basketball?’ I thought, ‘What? Excuse me?’ I told her, ‘I will see the ball and run the other way.’ There is a problem with dance being considered a serious subject or activity here in Jordan.

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In a cultural context where dance is not seen to be a particularly viable career option, I wondered about the journey Rania had been on to make dance her profession. I asked her to tell me a little about her background and her initial experiences of dance in Jordan: I was born and grew up in Amman. I have a very large family, with eight siblings; my father was a cardiologist. By chance my parents went to a reception at the British Embassy [in Jordan] and they met a British dance teacher. This dance teacher was married to a Jordanian doctor here. My mum came home from the reception and told me that this woman – her name was Betty Hijazi – was teaching some ballet classes at her home. So I attended my first ballet class. I remember being not dressed correctly for this first class. I was not in dance clothes; instead I put on this long dress and wanted to impress the teacher. I trained with Betty Hijazi for a year, and then she talked with my parents. She said that she thought I could audition for dance schools abroad and that I could get somewhere in dance. I was 10. I did the things for the auditions – the videos, the photos – because I couldn’t travel to the UK to do the auditions. I think that my parents probably thought that I wouldn’t get accepted. But I did get accepted. My parents and I had this huge discussion – did I really want to do this? Was it realistic? Was this what I really wanted to do? Rania described how her parents’ views of dance contrasted from those held by many in Jordan. She explained: My parents didn’t really have a problem with the dancing. They both thought that you couldn’t really excel in anything if you didn’t have passion for your chosen subject. They knew I had passion about dance. The only deal I had with my dad was that I would be studying at boarding school – Hammond School for Dance in Chester – for a year before making a final decision about pursuing dance seriously as a career – but remember, I was only 10! So the agreement was made, my parents took me to the UK, settled me in and then left.

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Arriving in the city of Chester, Rania shared how she felt ‘quite abandoned’. She explained that part of this isolation was due to her being ‘the only Arab in the school, and it was like they had never seen an Arab before’. Rania recalls being bullied during the first months of her time at the boarding school because she ‘looked different, and had a different accent’. She reflected on how she was called names like Scheherazade and Paki, and remembers that ‘for the first three months I cried every morning and I was miserable’. However, these feelings of alienation did not last. Rania explained how she adapted to life in the UK and her new education and dance setting: By the time it got to Christmas I had decided that this was not what I wanted to do. I came back home and begged my father not to make me return to Chester. But he insisted that a deal is a deal and I had to finish the year, so he sent me back. By April I was fine, I had acclimatized, I was getting the hang of things, I was working hard, I had a few friends around and that made it a bit easier. It gave me a lot of strength of character. I was in the UK for about 10 years, quite a long time, so of course I got used to it. After finishing her studies at boarding school, Rania remained in England to complete a three-year teacher-training course with the Royal Academy of Dance (RAD). This training was focused predominantly on ballet, but it included other dance practices and theoretical components such as anatomy for dance and dance history. After graduation Rania was assisted by the RAD to gain a teaching position at a dance studio in Portugal. Rania describes this experience: I went to a little ballet school in the north of Portugal, in the city of Guimarães. The challenge was that no one in Guimarães spoke much English. I remember sitting on the plane; everyone was speaking Portuguese and I was thinking, ‘What am I doing, going to this place?’ I started teaching my ballet classes in Guimarães with a list of words that translated basic things like ‘hands’, ‘feet’, ‘head’, ‘go there’, ‘come back’. Between demonstrating movements and this little list, this was how I was giving classes. I was labelled ‘Profesor Loca’, the crazy professor. I would say things in Portuguese like ‘go away’ when I meant ‘come here’, I would say

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‘move your hands’ when I meant ‘move your feet’, these sorts of things. But after six months I was speaking quite fluently. Rania explained that she was ‘supposed to come back to Jordan, at the request of my father, because he said that I should try to establish something here [in Jordan]’. However, Rania had set her sights on a position with the Centre de Danse de Lisboa. Without telling her parents she went to Lisbon for an interview and got a job as a teacher with the Centre de Danse de Lisboa. She said, ‘I then told my parents. I explained that I needed more time to hone my skills. They understood and I knew I had a little more time.’ Eventually Rania felt the need to return to Jordan; she said, ‘I wanted to stay [in Lisbon] but my dad said “no”. He said, “come back and just try to do something”. So I came back.’ The return to Amman after many years abroad brought mixed feelings for Rania. She reflected on the experience, saying: Coming home was something I really did for my dad and for my family. I respected the fact that my family gave me the chance to do what I wanted, especially in a very conservative society where people were telling my father that he was mad for letting me do dance. I came home also because I thought I would come back and see what I could do and give it a shot. I actually got quite a culture shock coming home. The culture shock Rania felt when returning to her home environment was illustrated within a narrative she shared, recounting an experience of an interview at the Royal Cultural Center in Amman. Rania said: My first interview when I came back to Jordan was with the director at the Royal Cultural Center. We sat down and after polite introductions he said to me, ‘Hold on, just wait a bit,’ and he picked up the phone. He called my dad at his clinic. After their conversation he put down the phone and said to me, ‘Don’t worry, we will take care of you and look after you.’ With my UK background I was shocked. I couldn’t believe it. I said to him, ‘I never knew my dad could dance, are you interviewing him or me for this position?’ For a long time after my return to Jordan I was known as Dr Kamhawi’s daughter. As the years progressed my father and I joked that he became known as Rania Kamhawi’s father!

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Settling back into Amman was challenging for Rania both professionally and personally. Rania cited one of the main difficulties as the fact that ‘everyone wanted to interfere a lot in everything I was doing. I didn’t like that’. Another frustration was that ‘dance was not taken so seriously’, yet everyone ‘had an opinion and wanted to be involved, without knowing anything about dance’. The perception that ‘West is best’ pervaded many people’s views of dance, as Rania explained: There has often been the thought that foreigners could do this [teach dance], especially in the Arab world. When I first started teaching I would have Russian ladies who were living in Amman come to my studio and say, ‘Oh, I teach ballet and I trained at the Mariinsky Theatre.’ I would say, ‘Okay, great, I don’t take teachers until I have seen them in class.’ Then after class the story would change and it would be, ‘Oh, I actually trained more in acrobatics.’ They were not trained dancers at all. Because of the frustrations of working in Amman, Rania contemplated moving abroad again, but an opportunity emerged that compelled her to stay in Jordan. She said: The Director of the Haya Cultural Center called me. He said, ‘You can come to the Haya Cultural Center and set something up here. I have one studio, you can do what you want. I will not interfere.’ I felt that this was a chance to do something that was really my vision. I set up the dance school. I stayed there for 10 years and grew the school. When I started there were about 10 students with me at the school, and by the time I left I had 178 students. The audiences were growing for the performances the school would put on. As a result I think people started taking dance more seriously. I only left the Haya Center because I got a Fulbright Scholarship to do a residency at the University of South Dakota in the States for one year and teach dance. After her time in the United States of America, Rania returned to Jordan to join the National Center for Culture and Arts, with the intention of developing a dance programme. In 1998 the dance programme of the

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National Center for Culture and Arts opened, with Rania as director. The role of director encompasses the spheres of teaching and creating, as well as administration, production and funding organization, and community engagement and outreach. Emerging strongly from Rania’s narrative was the need to present creative work and activities that are of relevance to Jordanian audiences and sensitive to the national culture. She shared: For me it is important to make things have relevance to the place and culture, and connectivity to the people here in Jordan right now. It has taken years to develop a dance audience here [in Jordan], and when I am working I have them in mind. One of the pieces where I think I managed to make this connection between audience and culture was when I took a piece of Umm Kulthoum’s music, the piece called Enta Omri (You are my life) and I choreographed a contemporary dance to it. It was 15 minutes long and at the end of a production I was doing. A lot of people were sceptical about this because Umm Kulthoum is a revered artist in the Middle East, and it is risky to ‘mess’ with a classic piece of music like this by combining it with contemporary dance. After the show people came backstage to me in tears because they thought this was the way to bring the music to life. Along with the desire to connect with audiences in Jordan, Rania revealed some of the trials she felt within society as she sought to make dance more present within the social fabric. She explained that she has been ‘criticized a lot throughout my career here [in Jordan]’, and has been ‘mentioned by name in the [Jordanian] parliament for promoting dance and how it is inadmissible’. She shared the following thoughts: The perception people have of dance and who should dance is so diverse in different places. In Jordan we have our own challenges with dance being accepted and considered ‘okay’. In my perspective, it is because society is becoming so conservative; I want people to feel that we are combating this conservative push in some way, providing another viewpoint. One of the hardest things is to create performances that let the audience enjoy the movement and story of the dance, more than being fixated on the physical meaning of the ‘body’. Culturally here it is almost impossible to focus on this performing

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body, because in essence this is not accepted. I think the issue people have is more about the physical presence of someone on stage and moving and showing off their body, rather than the type of dance someone might be doing. Since I have returned to Jordan the society here has become more conservative. I had to transition with this. I had to find a way to present dances in a different way to get people to look beyond the body and see something else. It is possible. For example, the recent performance of Coppélia that the National Center put on was something people loved. It had such great feedback. In part I think it was because it was comic, light and entertaining. I think people now, in the situation we live in, need some comic relief. I think it also helped that in this ballet there were no deeper meanings that the audience had to search for in the performance. Instead it took them away for one hour, away from the problems they are facing, because really it is very hard for people to get away from the horror of what the country is like, and what it is surrounded by. There are some hard times where I go, ‘That’s it, I just can’t do it anymore!’ because it is just too much hard work. But some people say that it is your calling and you’re stuck with it [laughs]. I am hoping that what I’ve done is making a difference, even a ripple, and that is fine. The current situation in Jordan, with the influx of refugees and the neighbouring countries fraught with conflicts, was something that Rania felt impacted on her work and influenced some of the creative decisions she made. She said: It is very sad, the situation that we have here in Jordan, it is something that has no end in sight. I can tell you honestly over the past 10 years, since the Iraqi war and the first Iraqi refugees came to Jordan until now, there has been no end in sight, I can’t see it. I would love to tell you, ‘Oh, I think in 10 years things will be better’, but I don’t think so. I don’t think arts and culture are going to be on the agenda and in the top priority list in any country in the region. These countries are trying hard to just survive. The resources are strained, which makes us want to work even harder.

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Last year at the Amman Contemporary Dance Festival people were asking me, ‘Is this a good time with the situation, the chaos, the misery?’ and I said, ‘Yes, every person deserves the right to enjoy life, to enjoy art and to take away at least one hour of relief.’ We can’t just sit and think ‘this is miserable’ and give up. The question of ‘should we be living while other people are dying?’ is something that we often get asked in the Middle East. From my perspective it is a responsibility to give people hope and lightness. I have always felt strongly about using dance and arts for causes that I believed in, and I feel I have a responsibility to develop our community and offer a piece of art for people to enjoy. We have many little villages here [in Jordan] that have never ever seen anything like a dance performance. We did a performance in Petra, near Wadi Musa, and 3,000 people attended the performance. Before we did the performance a lot of people were saying to me, ‘Oh, but it is dance, do you think they will react well? Be careful.’ But the audience loved it. I think until people are convinced that culture is important in raising good citizens, and an integral part of forming a civic society, the attitude towards dance will not change. Things will not change until the government believes in the power of giving artistic qualities – dance, theatre, visual arts, music – and experiences to individuals. From my perspective the arts are not a luxury, we cannot treat the arts as a luxury. The arts have to be an integral part of developing the next generation and encompass and interfere with the lives of people. Arts have to mobilize people. The idea of mobilizing individuals through dance, which Rania spoke of, was something I became acutely aware of one cold winter’s evening after teaching a group of about 12 young adults at Rania’s studio. The group of students I had just taught piled on coats, scarves and hats to keep warm in the harsh conditions outside. They joked and laughed with each other, like a close-knit family. One of the quieter young women in the group came over to the corner of the studio where I was packing up and offered to drive me home. Given the looming threat of torrential rain I took her up on the kind offer. As we drove slowly through the stormy weather pelting down on the streets of Amman we had time to talk. I asked her, ‘What are you studying at University?’

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She replied, ‘Architecture, I’m in my last year.’ Interested to know more, the interviewer in me surfaced and I asked, ‘And how are you finding it?’ She hesitated for a moment, shrugged her shoulders and said, ‘It is […] well, okay, but you know how things here are pretty conservative […] The ideas I have are not always easily accepted by my professors.’ ‘What sort of thing are you interested in?’ I asked. ‘In architecture and dance,’ she said. Pausing for a second, she then explained, ‘I’m interested in collaborations.’ ‘Uh-huh,’ I replied, encouraging her to continue. ‘And […] I have ideas about how dancers and architects could collaborate in Amman, how there could be the opportunity to bring the city to life more and bring dance into people’s lives.’ Intrigued, I asked, ‘What exactly do you have in mind?’ With a smile beginning to stretch across her face she said, ‘A performance, site-specific, where dancers are responding to new architecture here, where dancers have worked with architects on developing ideas of the relationship between the building, the body and the city.’ ‘Wow […]’ I said quietly, imagining the type of event she was describing. The young woman went on, saying, ‘I imagine it being something that would be free for the public, and around different locations in Amman, to take performance to people, to make it accessible.’ I said, ‘It sounds like a fantastic idea.’ It really did. Briefly looking over at me and then quickly back to the foggy, wet road in front of us, she said, ‘Thanks. I think we need things like this to help our community to care about the arts, or to at least see how dance might relate to their environment. I hope to do it, I am not sure how or when, but inshallah.’ ‘Inshallah,’ I responded.

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Censorship choreographed, propaganda performed

Censorship and propaganda take place globally in numerous forms. Whether book-burning in Chile following the 1973 coup that installed the Pinochet regime (Bosmajian, 2006) or the destruction of the ‘Goddess of democracy’ statue in Tiananmen Square by Chinese troops in 1989 (TsingYuan, 1994), censorship and propaganda occur within the fabric of political, educational, creative and social practices across the globe. The diversity of censorship regulations and the modes in which propaganda is circulated within the southern Mediterranean region are extensive. Religious authorities, political parties, media outlets and individuals are all involved in enforcing censorship and promoting propaganda. I was reminded of the issues of censorship and propaganda on a regular basis when living and travelling in the region. The topics were often raised through the stories shared by dance practitioners, but at other times I noticed the self-censoring that occurred within conversations. Then there were moments where quite mundane day-to-day activities and events outside of a dance-specific or creative realm raised the issues. An evening I spent with friends watching television in Ramallah raised the topics of censorship and propaganda, as shared in the following anecdote. The semi-final of Arab Idol1 played on a large flat-screen television that nearly filled an entire wall of the living room. Mohammed Assaf, a young Palestinian from Gaza City, was one of three contestants vying for the final two places in the competition. Ramallah had become infatuated with Assaf over the weeks the show had been running, and the group of my friends and I, gathered in front of the TV, were no exception. Even though I didn’t

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Figure 17: The back streets of Khan el-Khalili Markets, Cairo Image by Arnaud Stephenson (2014)

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understand a lot of what was being said on the show and certainly didn’t recognize the songs the contestants sang with the fondness that my Palestinian friends did, I had become addicted to following Assaf’s progress each week. Assaf, handsome with a bouffant gelled hair-do and extremely white teeth, was a hit with the ladies. One friend commented that ‘the girls go crazy for him, they have not gone this crazy for a guy since Yasser Arafat’. All the boys wanted to be like him, or at least have the same hairstyle. He started to belt out the song Ali al-keffiyeh (Raise your keffiyeh). The room I was in erupted with clapping and cheering. Two friends stood up from one of the sofas and began to dance. In the middle of the song, just as Assaf began a small jig of dabke steps across the stage, one of the young men watching thumped his fist down on the coffee table with such force that the beer bottles, glasses and coffee cups jumped and rattled. ‘Such propaganda!’ The words tumbled from the young man’s mouth with ferocity. He was in his early 20s, with a wiry frame, and his face was getting red and puffy, perhaps out of anger or maybe he’d had one too many beers, or both. ‘This show, really, it is just another fucking place to shove something down our throats!’ His face grew redder. Flecks of spit flew from his mouth as he spoke. ‘They choose this song just to create some fake reality between a group of people – us Palestinians – who are screwed. We get this on one side and then we get the Israeli bullshit on the other!’ The television continued to filter into the abyss of uncomfortable tension that was left after the young man’s words ended. Another friend piped up: ‘Yeah, but chill out […] this propaganda, this censorship […] it is everywhere.’ The moment quickly blew over and everyone’s attention returned to Arab Idol. Comments about the judge Nancy Ajram’s plastic surgery became the topic of discussion. The outburst was forgotten. I curled into the plush sofa and ran my hand over the dark green velvet covering. I let the beat of the next song fill my senses, and the words ‘censorship’ and ‘propaganda’ filled my mind. Censorship of artistic practice and propaganda communicated through artistic mediums are certainly not new or novel discussions (see, for example, Carmilly-Weinberger, 1986; Childs, 1997; Mostyn, 2002; Negash, 2010), and nor are they discussions confined to the southern Mediterranean region. The relationship between censorship, propaganda and dance is also

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not a new debate, with diverse perspectives emerging from various cultural contexts and political situations (see, for example, Cooper, 2004; Hanna, 2002; Martin, 1987, 1998, 2006; Nielsen, 2008). Through the experiences shared by some of the dance practitioners I interviewed it became clear that censorship and propaganda affected their work in numerous ways. A conversation I had with dancer, teacher and choreographer Dalia El Abd in Cairo in early 2010 brought the idea of censorship in relation to dance to the fore. Among all that Dalia shared with me during the interview, there was one particular moment that resonated powerfully. It was not an especially prominent moment in the sense that Dalia did not emphasise it, nor did she say it with any dramatic quality. Rather, it was a moment that was said quietly, almost understated and in passing. It was a moment that could easily have been overlooked had my attention been drawn elsewhere. She said simply, ‘They shut down my performance.’ ‘They’? Who were ‘they’? Why did ‘they’ shut the performance down? This was the first time I had heard an experience of such direct and overbearing censorship over dance. I was intrigued. I had to know more.

Dalia El Abd’s story The colleague who arranged my first interview with dancer, choreographer and teacher Dalia El Abd informed me that the only time I could meet her during my visit to Egypt was at 10pm on a Tuesday night at her home in Agouza, Cairo. I was a little hesitant. I had just completed over 20 interviews in 10 days and I had a flight to Amman at 6am the next morning, but I thought ‘why not?’ and set out to find Dalia’s house. During the taxi ride from downtown Cairo I called Dalia to ask for directions. Her voice sounded clear and clipped with a slight English accent. I arrived at the front of her apartment building and looked through the decorative wrought iron double gates into a dark tiled entrance way. During the phone call Dalia had told me her apartment number but I had not had time to write it down; my mind was swimming with numbers from the past few weeks of travel and interviews – phone numbers, flight numbers, interview times, train times. I looked at the doorbells and the swirling script next to each that, had I been able to decipher Arabic, would have told me what apartment was Dalia’s. Before I had the chance to call Dalia again, a woman poked her head around the corner of a door to the left of the entryway. The woman, who might

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Figure 18: Dalia El Abd at home, Agouza, Cairo Image by Arnaud Stephenson (2014)

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have been in her mid-60s, glared at me as if I had disturbed her. I momentarily questioned if I had accidentally pressed the doorbell to her apartment or perhaps rattled the front gates. However, her face quickly softened into a smile – I must have looked both startled and lost, and she pointed across the hallway to a door opposite to hers. ‘Dalia?’ she asked. The woman let me into the building and I knocked on Dalia’s door. When the door opened and Dalia greeted me I already felt like I knew her, when in fact I knew absolutely nothing about her. I was relying on the few comments my colleague had made about her work, accompanied by the statement, ‘You have to interview Dalia.’ We began the interview and Dalia sat with her feet tucked up underneath her and her arms folded like origami. She got up and made tea, heating the water on a small two-element stove tucked in a corner of her apartment. She then returned to the sofa and clutched her grey porcelain mug with both hands. Despite it being a humid spring evening in Cairo, Dalia looked cold. The dim lighting of her lounge distributed a lemony hue to the cream sofa we sat on. As we talked Dalia fidgeted with lint on the sleeve of her black shirt. I left her house at 3am and walked the few blocks to my hotel, the whole time recapitulating the experiences she had shared in my head. Needless to say I did not bother to sleep; with our five-hour interview clearly etched in my mind I had a lot to think about. Dalia and I met again when I returned to Cairo a month later, then in Beirut in April 2011 (where I saw her perform live for the first time), and then again in 2014 when I returned to Cairo for the first time since the Arab Spring uprisings. I had seen works she had choreographed on DVDs and through video links that she gave me, and I had seen her teach at the Modern Dance School at the Cairo Opera House. When I saw her perform in person in Beirut in 2011 I felt I gained further insight into how Dalia’s training in a Western cultural context had influenced her creative work. Dalia had briefly mentioned the idea for her performance, I don’t know what this dance is about, but it must be about something,2 to me when we first met in Cairo, and although this was a studio performance of the work I was interested to see what she had developed. In the claustrophobic, overcrowded studio space of Maqamat Dance Theatre people lined the walls and crouched in the corners, bodies sandwiched between bags, programmes and video cameras. Dalia stood in the middle of the space, and then stepped a little off-centre. She closed her eyes, dipped her chin and then slumped to the floor. The music started echoing from the corner sound system and trickled out in waves. Dalia’s head and arms were

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hanging like a ragdoll, her long hair covering her face and her loose black pants billowing onto the floor around her. Dalia started to move her pelvis forward, audibly breathing out slowly and deeply, lifting her ribcage up and back into her torso with her steady exhale, lengthening the space between each vertebra and tucking her pelvis under further creating a ‘textbook’ Graham contraction. It could be said that from this very first movement it appeared that the dancing history of Western contemporary dance was imprinted on her body, the movements she was creating and the artistic choices she was making as a choreographer. During our first meetings and conversations Dalia reflected considerably on her childhood that was spent between Egypt and England. Dalia shared that she did not take dance classes as a child; it was in her PE classes at school that she discovered that she liked to move: The school had this climbing equipment in the gymnasium. I remember that I didn’t have any qualms about climbing so high, I didn’t think I was doing anything great, and the teacher was like, ‘Oh, Dalia, wow, you’re up there.’ There was so much more freedom [as a child in England] to explore movement in just everyday life, because you have playgrounds, you have big empty streets, you can ride a bicycle, everything – for me it was just exhilarating. I came back to Cairo as a teenager and was completely out of it – I was from another planet and couldn’t understand why everyone was so backwards – they seemed backwards to me after being in England. Dalia’s first encounters with dance were at university where, after some transitions from course to course, she settled on studying theatre. She explained: The Theatre Department [at the American University in Cairo] opened up. I would see the kids going in and out of the class and I would think, ‘it looks like they are having fun’, so I took the acting class. I felt at home; in these classes it was like another world. Outside of these classes I was different, I was a little bit strange at home. I thrived in these classes, I loved it. From the workshop and the movement class, the teacher started noticing me, and we had to do improvisations in the class, and the teacher would say, ‘Dalia, you are very good’ – and I felt very good.

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People were saying, ‘Dalia, you have to dance.’ I was like, I know, I have to dance, I want to dance. Dalia explained how shortly after graduating from university in 1993 she auditioned for the Egyptian Modern Dance Company: After I graduated I saw this flyer in our department saying ‘Dancers wanted – Walid Aouni3 – dancers with ballet or modern dance background’. I was like thinking – great! I didn’t know who he was or anything, I was just like, ok, the Cairo Opera House is having auditions, they must be ok. Dalia recalls her experience of the audition as ‘very funny’, and explained that ‘they got us to do things like touch your toes, jump around. Walid Aouni looked at me like he was not very impressed, but then he said, “Maybe we can do something with you.”’ Dalia shared her memories of dancing with the Egyptian Modern Dance Company in the following narrative: There were no dance classes, just rehearsals. I was 22. So we didn’t do any warm-ups, no ballet class. I hadn’t taken any dance classes, any dance technique whatsoever before – but do you know what I was doing? I was just doing fitness at home – sit-ups, some girls’ push-ups, that sort of thing. I had actually started taking private ballet classes too. It was like an army drill, because there was no music, but I did learn to plié and tendu. Dalia shared that after several months dancing with the Egyptian Modern Dance Company she came to the realization that she wanted to go abroad to gain further dance training. She explained: I was teaching a group of kids creative movement, and I remember thinking, if these kids, even one of these kids, wants to be a dancer, a good dancer, a professional dancer, how can they do that here [in Egypt]? It’s not possible. I knew I had to leave. In the summer of 1994 Dalia left Egypt for London to take part in a summer school programme hosted by the London Contemporary Dance School [LCDS]. Dalia auditioned for the LCDS and she explained that ‘there were

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25 people in the audition, and they took six people, and I was one of the six’. However, due to financial constraints Dalia was unable to stay in London and pay the tuition fees for the full-time training programme at LCDS. She returned to Cairo, and explained how she felt: I was depressed. I had already waited for two years after I graduated from college to go abroad. This was the time – timing is so important. You want something, you want something, and you work towards it, you work towards it, and then that’s it – you’ve got it! And then suddenly it’s gone. That’s how I felt about London Contemporary Dance School. I wanted to go there so badly, and then it’s gone, but if anything it just motivated me to try again. It was during her time back in Cairo that Dalia began to search for other dance schools abroad and scholarship opportunities, visiting embassies and international cultural centres. Dalia explained that she felt there was a sense of urgency to her search for a school: I decided that I had no time left; I had to just do it now – leave, get out. There was no internet back in 1994, 1995, so I would go from embassy to embassy asking about dance schools and scholarships. It was during one of her multiple visits to the American Cultural Center that she discovered videos of Twyla Tharp and Yvonne Rainer. It was through watching these videos that Dalia was convinced that America was where she needed to go to train. Then, through Dance Magazine she found the names and addresses of schools in America: I found a load of videos on dance, post-modern dance, of Twyla Tharp and Yvonne Rainer – and I would just go and I’d just sit in the corner and watch the videos. I didn’t know who Twyla Tharp was; I didn’t know who Yvonne Rainer was. I was so impressed and I knew that I wanted to dance like that. At the American Cultural Center – I went there several times, but one of the last times I went I fell upon Dance Magazine, by accident. Totally by accident, and I came across addresses of dance schools at the back of the magazine […] I had been asking people, what are the

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addresses of dance schools? I was like, where has this been? So in this directory, there was the Alvin Ailey Dance School, the Martha Graham Dance School, you know – I knew I had to write to them. Over the next year Dalia saved enough money for a plane ticket to New York. Dalia explained how her friends and family were against her decision to leave Cairo, stating: My parents would ask me why I was making such a big deal – they thought it was just a hobby and that it was a silly idea to go away. Also, a friend said to me, ‘Why don’t you just get a video and learn the movements that you want to know?’ Dalia explained how she decided to leave Cairo despite attempts to make her stay by her friends and family: I got home after buying my plane ticket and my father said, ‘You did not ask for my permission, you cannot go, you don’t have my permission.’ I was 25! He said, ‘You are not going.’ I said, ‘I’m sorry, I am.’ My sister said, ‘You are being so selfish, you just care about yourself.’ So I got my visa and my plane ticket. Before I left, my uncle came over to the house with his wife from the other side of town, and my mother’s cousin came over – I felt this family gathering. They were saying, ‘Dalia, you can’t go, this is the time for you to be married. You should be thinking of marriage at this age, you can’t go.’ Dalia left Cairo. Once she arrived in New York she set out to find a dance school that would accept her into their programme. She shared this experience in the following statement: I would look at prospectuses from the schools – I still thought the best place was the Alvin Ailey School – but they had already started their semester, so I would visit every dance school, especially the Graham School and take classes. But I went to the Alvin Ailey School in January 1996, I had just turned 26, and I knew they were holding auditions. I auditioned and got a place, I was in the Certificate Programme – voila! I would wake up at night, sometimes I would have nightmares that I was still in

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Egypt, and that people were pulling me from every direction. I’d wake up and I’d be like, I’m still here, and I’d think, ‘Dalia, you are so lucky to be here.’ Beginning her training in New York, Dalia expressed how she felt that she fitted into the school and learning environment easily: I went to school in England, I felt often more English than Egyptian, so this place [New York] was fine for me and the Ailey School felt like home immediately. For me, I always felt like I never fitted in to Egypt anyway and finally I found a place where there were people like me, people who were 100 per cent into dance. It was like a dream come true. I was excited to be in a place that I could really be me, and have technique, have creative things, work my body and like do improvisation and stuff – up until then I didn’t even really consider that improvisation could be like a serious skill or anything, and for me I’ve always been quite happy to improvise and make up things – so when we had this improvisation class I was like, ‘Wow, you’re kidding me, I get to just do whatever I want and say, “That’s my dance” – incredible, it was really great’. She also shared her feelings about experiencing specific dance techniques: When I first went to the Alvin Ailey School I had the choice of starting intensely with Graham or Horton [techniques], and I thought, let’s do Graham, because I thought that Graham was harder. So I did the Graham and it was like, wow, incredible! This technique opened up my body, it gave me a sense of control over how to use my body in a way I’d never had – so a freedom to be able to make choices about movement and how to say certain things through a movement. Although she explained that she felt that she adjusted to the socio-cultural environment of New York well, Dalia also suggested that there were some challenges when adapting to the dance classes and learning environment. Dalia explained how she navigated these encounters in the following narrative:

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At first I was very depressed because the teachers were not paying attention to me; they were not fixing me or giving me corrections. If they did say anything to me it was like I was being told off all the time; I was always doing something wrong. In technique class it would just be doing things over and over and over. I was not used to this; in the classes I had taken in Cairo I got more attention. This at first made me feel like I was not good and kind of like, why should I bother learning in this class? Then at one point I said, why should I be bothered by this? I felt like over the first few months I was learning in New York. I had gathered enough tools to understand my body, what it should be feeling like and looking like in particular movements, inside-out thinking about breathing and connection with breath, so after a while I thought, ‘Dalia, you know what you can do, you do not need the teacher to correct you. Pay attention to what the teacher is saying, listen to the corrections and apply these to your work – you be the teacher.’ I started applying these things and then the teachers started noticing me, and asked me to demonstrate some things. This demonstration was like a compliment, because they would still yell at us and tell us off – even in our third year – but I was used to it after a while, this became normal and for me this was actually how I improved, it was good for me. Dalia also expressed that dancing all day and also having to work in the evenings to support herself was difficult: ‘When I wasn’t tired I did very well in the classes, but when I was tired and wasn’t sleeping then it was hard. I had to work to support myself – I worked in restaurants, as a hostess – it was hard.’ When Dalia graduated from the Alvin Ailey School she had a part-time job in a contemporary dance company and was also teaching bellydancing classes; however, she explained that visa issues were limiting her job prospects: After I finished the school I had one year of work study, and in this one year you have to find a job in your field – if you don’t find anything you have to leave. So many of the companies, well, they require a Green Card. I joined this small contemporary company, part-time, but by the time I joined, it was April 1999, and my visa expired in August. So I had to change my visa, and the lawyer told me, you can’t because it is a part-time company,

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and also you have to be making US$ 20,000 per year to have your visa extended. I wasn’t making enough money. Dalia explained that her parents were concerned about the visa issues she was experiencing: ‘My mother was like, “The lawyers are tricking you, they just want your money.” She was going crazy and wanting me to come home.’ Dalia shared how her parents arrived in New York and wanted her to return to Cairo. Dalia related this experience during one of our interviews: One morning I was taking my CV to drop it in at the UNESCO school, I was applying for a job there. Then my aunt’s husband came with a car, with my father, and they pulled me into the car. They pulled my bag from me, which had my bank card and my passport and my address book and everything, and I was furious, and they pulled me into the car. I had no idea they were going to do this, no idea. It was very traumatic, and I couldn’t reach anyone, or call anyone. They were pulling me out of the car at the airport, and I kept thinking to myself, ‘Dalia, you can always run,’ but I was also thinking, ‘I don’t have a penny.’ I was at the airport – and you know Sadat, he was the ex-Egyptian President, and his sister was there – Sakina Sadat. I cried and said, ‘They are taking me, they are kidnapping me,’ and she said, ‘Why are you doing this to your daughter?’ and they said, ‘She doesn’t understand, she doesn’t know anything.’ I kept thinking I could just run. It got closer to the flight leaving, we passed through check-in and every step I was thinking, ‘You can still run.’ We got the bus to the plane and I was thinking, ‘You can still run.’ Then at the top of the stairs on the platform I thought, ‘I can still run’ […] but as soon as I stepped on the plane I felt that a door closed, I couldn’t go back, it was too late. I burst into tears, crying. I sat in my seat and I was just crying. I got back to Cairo and wanted to hide forever, and my mother is like, ‘We furnished your room – we repainted it – it is so nice, you will like it’. I was in shock that this was what she was caring about, a repainted room! Dalia recalled her feelings of arriving home in Cairo, explaining: I was crushed, down, depressed. It was awful and I felt so alienated. I couldn’t connect with the people, I couldn’t connect

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with the people at home, with my family, I couldn’t connect with what I was reading, I couldn’t connect with anything – but after a while I just felt like, ok, I’m here, I have to do something. I tried to start some dancing things, but I’d lost all my connections – my ties to Egypt. I didn’t want to be there, I felt alien, to the point where I didn’t leave the house – for me, my life, my home was New York. Over time Dalia began to reconnect with the dance community, working as a dancer and choreographer in Cairo on various productions. She told me about this experience in the following narrative: I went to the Opera to the Experimental Theatre Festival and some people saw me and word was out – Dalia is back, the one who was with Walid Aouni a long time ago. I ran into Walid Aouni and he said, ‘Why don’t you join the company, why don’t you come back?’ I thought – no way. Then I met up with a friend here, he directs plays. This play, it had some dancing in it, and there was one dancer that couldn’t be in it, it was a 15-night performance, so I landed the role and I did it. This got me back into things, but it was hard and frustrating. I didn’t know if I should just dance or choreograph. I didn’t feel like a choreographer but I just took on whatever work was happening and stumbled into choreography. One director I was working with said, ‘You have six days, can you choreograph this piece and find some dancers for us too?’ In just six days! I said to him, ‘You know that there are only six days until the performance?’ It’s like they think that you just press a button and art pours out! I did it, but I said that was it. I said that is it, no more directors, I am doing my own thing from now on. Dalia started teaching at local dance schools and sports clubs, and took on a teaching position at the newly formed Modern Dance School at the Cairo Opera House. While teaching at the Modern Dance School, Dalia created her first independent choreography; it was a process that was initiated through meeting a French dancer who suggested she contact the French Cultural Centre who might support the work if it involved collaboration with French artists. Dalia explained her experience of cross-cultural artistic collaboration and the potential issues that emerged from the experience:

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I think it’s good that we have things where we can work with the French Cultural Centre or the British Council; it makes it so much easier – financially – and also allows more people to go to watch or participate in something that is different, kind of educating people that could be an audience. I applied to do this collaboration with this French dancer, and the French Cultural Centre gave us 5000 Egyptian Pounds (approximately US$ 655) to do the performance. When the woman at the [French] Cultural Centre gave me the money she said, ‘I’m not buying fish in the water, you’ve got to do a great performance.’ I felt that there was a lot of pressure, but I felt because I was working with a French woman on the performance it would be a lot stronger, that I had some support and it was going to be successful because of this, I felt that there was a lot of pressure, and I had to do what they wanted – it was the only way I could have a chance of making my own professional work. But there are always all these politics involved and what made things worse – the cops stopped our performance, can you imagine? The experience of the police stopping performances was something that became commonplace for Dalia, and an issue that she would have to negotiate frequently when making work in her home environment: This was not the first time the cops – Al-Musannafat4 – came and stopped a performance I’d been involved with, but it was my first independent performance, so for me it was really important that this performance went ahead. Even though the panel that censors the work had seen our performance, and said, ‘Yes, ok, you can perform,’ it ended up on the day of the performance we were told to go home, that the performance wouldn’t be happening because something about the theatre not being safe. I think the reason is that they don’t like independent theatre, they are afraid that independent theatre might create a revolution or put evil ideas into people’s heads – we don’t have time for this [laughs]. The surveillance from the state was an issue that Dalia spoke of often when referring to her performances, choreographic work and artistic choices in Cairo, explaining,

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It’s in the back of my mind that I have to be careful in the ideas or movements I choose, nothing too risqué. It’s not like a complete freedom of artistic work, it’s artistic work within boundaries – a lot more than in other places. As an artist here I do feel I have a responsibility to talk about issues, to talk about things people might be thinking but not necessarily saying. The notion of responsibility and pressure had been something Dalia had spoken about previously, but mostly in relation to her experience of dancing between different cultural contexts and bringing back particular experiences and ideas to her home environment. She often spoke of how she felt there would be specific expectations and pressures because of her experience abroad, that people would be viewing her work with particular expectations because she trained in the United States of America: I did this performance – well, I prepared for it – it was called Roaming inner landscapes. It was the day of the performance and I knew it was not ready, I didn’t think it was ready. So everyone was outside waiting to come in and watch, and they were like, we want to see this girl that went and studied dance in New York. A friend of mine came into the space where we were performing and said, ‘Dalia, they are expecting something really great, they have high, high expectations’ – and I just couldn’t do it. I told people, enough – we are cancelling the performance. After we went out to a bar, and everyone who was coming to see the performance was looking at me, and I felt so vulnerable, but I felt so much pressure, I just couldn’t do it. Dalia expressed how the pressure and particular expectations she feels in her home environment have somewhat inhibited her from making choreographic work. She explained this as follows: ‘I’d rather perform in Beirut, in London, but performing my own choreographies here [Cairo] – it frightens me. Here I feel like I am exposing myself in ways I shouldn’t.’ More recently, Dalia has been teaching Graham technique classes at the Cairo Modern Dance School and also teaching yoga from her home studio. Dalia explained how she feels when she is teaching these classes in Cairo, and how she feels that she may be adapting in some instances or replicating in others the material she learnt in New York, with the intention of developing a technique that can fit within the dance milieu of Cairo:

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When I teach my students, I look at how I can adapt things for them from what I was taught in America, bridging the gap a bit between that world and the world here. I try to maybe change the music to something more local, sometimes incorporate some moves that are more relaxed and not so ‘technique’-based, but this is about as far as I can take it. I find it very hard because for me Graham technique is Graham technique, some parts of it should not change in my mind, they are part of the history and I think they’re usually there for a reason – to work the body in a certain way. But teaching these aspects, I hope in a small way this might just change how they [the students] see things, they might question something, they might be able to develop their bodies to become real dancers, this is what we need. Sometimes I think they get bored quite quickly with Graham [technique], they don’t realize that you have to have a secure technique. I don’t want to force them to do it, but it feels like I do at times. I get frustrated also because I either teach this technique or I don’t, there’s no half-way for me. Observing Dalia’s class I noticed that some of the students followed Dalia’s instructions diligently, performing multiple contraction and release exercises. Others looked disengaged; they attempted a few exercises and movements and then began to talk to each other, ignoring Dalia, frequently checking their mobile phones and stretching out their muscles or lounging on the barres that lined the studio. On some occasions I saw how some of the students began to ‘morph’ the exercises, much to Dalia’s frustration. They would take a movement she was working on with the class, such as a high release, and they would add their own take on the position, perhaps by moving their arms, rotating a leg in rather than out or keeping the movement rippling through their chest rather than remaining static and lifted. Dalia explained that she was struggling with how she could make the technique more appealing to her students, and relevant to the context in which it was being taught in Cairo: ‘I am wrestling with how I can make it more interesting to them – but I just don’t want to change it to get them to like it. I think about how it might fit in here and in all reality it doesn’t really.’ Just before I met Dalia for our first interview in March 2010, she had attended the British Dance Edition in Birmingham where dance artists from the southern Mediterranean region were invited to gather and share experiences:

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I just came back from the British Dance Edition. I was just one of the delegates watching, but it was great because I saw people like Omar Rajeh5 there, and I am not very good at networking, but this was a chance for me to kind of meet with people who are like me, and maybe they are doing things that I’d like to be able to do. I kind of felt a bit of hope in meeting other Arab dancers, working in the Arab world but wanting to connect with maybe European traditions in their own way – like not copying them, but not rejecting them. It inspired me. I came back to Cairo and I wanted to make work. I have all these ideas – I want to do this and that, especially choreographically. The teaching is one thing, it’s what you have to do to survive – and you know, I do enjoy it – but the creative stuff is what I want to push. Dalia spoke extensively about the ideas and directions her dance practices in Cairo might take, and also shared the feelings of responsibility she felt when dancing, teaching and choreographing in her home environment. She explained that ‘here [in Cairo] you feel isolated, like you might be the only person who does something related to modern dance’, while also articulating that ‘at the same time I sort of feel a bit responsible, to actually do something with dance and to share what I’ve experienced.’ When I met with Dalia in 2014 to interview her again I noticed how she had developed more confidence in her work, a more positive take on the dance environment in Cairo. She explained that she had found her teaching practice had revitalized her choreographic and performance practice: I have been doing a lot of teaching. This has helped me with my own work, I have learnt from my students. I found that I needed to gain their trust, to have them present and be in the mood of ‘I’m here and ready to learn’ – this does not happen automatically. I found that the students that have the most dance training are the hardest to work with, they are often like, ‘we know everything already’ and they need to unlearn their habits. So I learn from teaching these students, I learn from figuring out how to get a message across to them. I start approaching my own work differently as a result – I guess it is inevitable that this teaching and learning process affects you – you end up discovering and unravelling things about movement and technique.

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I like questioning and investigating when I teach and move. I do not let things go easily – I’m like, ‘I’ll do it again, again, again’ – because I think, ‘why is it not working? Maybe I should try this? Maybe I should do that? How would it be if I did it this way?’ Questioning everything all the time. This questioning and re-questioning of ideas led Dalia to the development of her most recent work Wesh w’Dahr, which she performed with Hala Imam. Dalia explained the motivation for the piece: To make the work we didn’t have a lot of time – only, like, 15 minutes four times per week over a couple of months. We did one performance at the British Council [in Cairo] and another at the D-Caf Festival [Downtown Contemporary Arts Festival, Cairo]. With this work I was not setting out to make a political statement. It was about the idea of how two things may seem different on the outside but they are actually two sides of the same coin, like they are each other’s shadows. The idea for the piece started from a music theory that a musician I met told me about. It is where you have two time measures that start off on the same beat, then they separate and then they come back together again. I thought it could be translated into movement. But I needed a stronger concept; I couldn’t just dance around to beats. I kept thinking about this idea, I was thinking, ‘What does this remind me of?’ Then I was like, ‘bing!’ I thought it was like women who cover their hair or wear the veil; they see their hair and body as a sexual object. I then thought how other women reveal their hair and body because they see it as a sexual object. Both are doing different things on the outside, but underneath it all they are both seeing themselves as sexual objects. This putting on or taking off of something on the outside is a way of hiding. For example, I have found that if you take the veil off but don’t dress in a revealing way people don’t know how to deal with you, it shifts their paradigm of how they understand women. In Wesh w’Dahr I am not talking about 101 reasons why people get veiled or not, I am talking about the philosophy behind the veil and how women are represented and treated within society. I was not aiming to give a lecture, I was creating two caricatures – yes, they were stereotypes, extremes and clichés.

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Figure 19: Dalia El Abd Image by Arnaud Stephenson (2014)

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I watched small excerpts of the Wesh w’Dahr performance at the British Council which Dalia had posted on Vimeo. It is very clear how the work critically interrogates the profound ideological fissures in the composition of Egyptian society that Dalia feels the revolution has exposed. Both Dalia and Hala walk into the courtyard, barefoot, presenting the audience with stark contrasts. While Dalia wears a revealing hot pink dress, with shoestring straps and a knee-length skirt, Hala is completely swathed in black, only her face, hands and, in very occasional glimpses, her bare feet showing. A slow conflict of movement occurs between the two dancers. Dalia taking small, sharp and measured movements – a twist of the hand, small bends at the knees and ankles – while Hala moves languidly and lithely, taking turns and lunges, extending limbs and rippling her torso beneath a swathe of black material. Dalia and Hala then each produce a large cardboard box from underneath an iron table to one side of the space. They bring the boxes forward towards the audience, placing them side by side. Each begins to reach into the boxes, bringing out different accessories. Once they both run out of accessories, the initial contrast between the two women has escalated. Dalia looks like a caricature, with a shiny blonde wig, brightly coloured necklaces and a red lipstick-stained mouth. Hala dissolves into the shadows of the space with a black scarf veiling her face and black gloves and socks. The anxiety this act constructs, creating two contrasting images, representing more than just specific aesthetic ideals, then reverses. This reversal is visually translated into a courageous act of stripping on stage that, one guesses, should have left both dancers nude. However, the ‘reveal’ stops at a small skirt and tank top for each dancer, highlighting the still-existing limits to what can be risked in a dance performance in Cairo.

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The female dancing body in the Arab world

The female dancing body brings with it numerous debates and dialogues within dance scholarship (Banes, 1998; Friedler & Glazer, 1997). Such discussions range from how dance practices imprint on dancers’ bodies, becoming part of the body’s cartography (Albright, 1997; Claid, 2006; Foster, 1996; Grosz, 1994), to feminist perspectives of the performing female body (Claid, 2006; Daly, 1991; Manning, 1997). The myriad of issues, layered with the cultural complexity of gender and understandings of the body within the Arab world, have led to specific concerns related to female dance practitioners in the region (Ahmed, 1992; Chabaud, 2010; Karayanni, 2004; Roushdy, 2009, 2010; Van Nieuwkerk, 1995, 2001a, 2001b). Susan Foster (1996) notes ‘the study of bodies through a consideration of bodily reality, not as a natural or absolute given but as a tangible and substantial category of cultural experience’ (p.xi). Likewise, Elizabeth Grosz (1994) states that the body ‘can be regarded as a cultural and historic product’ (p.187). It can be noted that there may be a multitude of cultures and histories shaping the dancing bodies of women in the southern Mediterranean region, with the body being ‘capable of being scripted, being written’ (Foster, 1996, p.xi) through experiences of dance learning. From the discussions I have had with women involved with dance across the region, it is clear that there is a range of understandings of the female dancing body. I noticed that while some women sought to emulate the ‘ideal’ dancing body frequently presented within Western cultural contexts (Albright, 1997; Green, 1999), other women attempted to resist this ideal.

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Figure 20: A Cairo apartment block Image by Arnaud Stephenson (2014)

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When I sat down in July 2014 to talk with Lebanese dancer and choreographer Dalia Naous, the discussion of being female emerged quickly within our conversation. Dalia had mentioned to me early in our conversation how, when living in Cairo, she found being female frustrating. She explained that in public she did not want to be a woman, and that as she walked through the streets of Cairo she wanted to disappear. I felt like I had found someone who was talking about the exact feelings I experienced during my time in certain parts of the region. I wanted to know more about what Dalia had encountered. I wanted to swap stories. I shared with Dalia the following anecdote. I sat in the back seat of a yellow taxi racing through the dark streets of downtown Amman. I was on my way to a performance at the Cultural Center and I was running late. I had only been in Amman for 10 days; I was still figuring out how to negotiate the myriad of cultural codes and customs that were new to me, and the Arabic language had yet to become something I could work with in even the most basic fashion. I was essentially a novice, a PhD student thrown into the deep end on the other side of the world. The driver of the taxi clearly did not know where he was going, but he zoomed through the streets with wild abandon. I was nervous about where I might end up and asked him again, ‘You know where the Cultural Center is?’, to which he replied, ‘Yes, yes, of course’. His English was good and he chatted idly, but we had driven past the same set of shops twice and I noticed that we had returned to the First Circle, one of the few landmarks I knew, for a third time. The driver looked at me in his rear view mirror and began to ask questions: ‘Where are you from?’ ‘Do you like Jordan?’ ‘What is your name?’ ‘How old are you?’ ‘Are you sure? You look younger.’ ‘Are you married?’ ‘No? Why not?’ ‘You have a boyfriend?’ ‘No? How come?’ ‘You work?’ ‘What do you do?’ ‘Dance? You dance for a job?’ ‘Really?’ It was at this point that the tone of his voice changed.

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‘Really?’ He repeated this a few times, and with each repetition I noticed that his voice was shifting to something with a more sordid tone. I hugged my bag to my torso and felt my breath rise high into my chest. He began to ask about the dancing that I did. I wanted to ask him to stop the taxi, but I had no idea where we were. The driver continued with his questions, and I felt his words crawling through my skin. I tried to think of someone I could call. We pulled into an empty parking lot outside of what looked like a government building, but it was certainly not the Cultural Center where the performance was supposed to take place. I saw a guard sitting at the entrance of the desolate building. I knew that I had to get out of the car, and I knew I had to not cause a scene. The taxi stopped. The driver turned around in his seat, reaching his hand back to touch my knee. I used one of the few Arabic words I knew at this stage, ‘Laa! Laa! No!’ and I flinched my knee up towards my chest. He said in response, ‘But you’re a dancer, people touch your body all the time, let me […]’ I threw a five dinar note at him and slapped away his hand that was now touching my thigh. Opening the door, I quickly got out. I slammed the door with such force I felt the metal of the door echo through my hand and reverberate through my body. I walked toward the guard who stood up from his white plastic chair. My feet moved at a brisk pace. I was trying hard to not look petrified but felt my heart beat in my ears. In broken English, Arabic and tears I told the guard that I needed help. I noticed out of the corner of my eye that the taxi was turning around and leaving the car park. The guard flicked his hand in a nonchalant manner and said to me, ‘Nothing I can do.’ He sat back down, picking up his newspaper and taking a sip of his coffee. I looked at him. ‘Really?’ I asked. No response. I said again, ‘Really?’ I was getting angrier, but my words were getting softer. The guard looked me up and down, pausing for a moment, and then he flicked his hand toward me, suggesting that he wanted me to go away. I turned toward the street, tears streaming down my face, my heart still high in my throat. I never made it to the Cultural Center to watch the performance. This was one of the first times when I felt that mentioning the word ‘dance’ was dangerous, where I felt it had put me in a situation where I became an object and the connotations that dance carried meant I was running the risk of being treated in a certain way. At the time of this particular taxi incident I did not understand how easily I could get myself

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into such a difficult situation, let alone how being a female dancing body was perceived by others within the region. This was not the last time I was accosted in a taxi, and nor was it the last time that I found the word ‘dancer’ might be interpreted as ‘loose woman’ or even ‘whore’. It was also not the last time that I felt I was subject to surveillance as a dancer, both in dance situations and a wider societal context. I often thought about this in relation to my gender. Was it because I was female that I received such a response when I told people I was involved with dance? I had never noticed gender and the implications of being female so much as I did during the first extended period I spent in the southern Mediterranean region. Over time these feelings dulled, perhaps as I became more accustomed to life in this part of the world. It was only when certain moments triggered a memory – like the conversation I had with Dalia – that the experiences came flooding back. Dalia shared her own experiences with me, and explained how her creative work sought to actively address issues related to the female body and presence, not only in dance in the region but in day to day life.

Dalia Naous’ story I first met Dalia in Turkey in 2010. She was from Lebanon, and later I heard through a mutual friend that she was working in Egypt. So it did not seem strange that when we met to do an interview in 2014 it was in France. If anything, these multiple locations just re-emphasized to me the nomadic lifestyles that many of us live. There was one particular piece of work that Dalia had made that caught my attention and prompted me to interview her for this book. Dalia created an 18-minute dance film with video artist Kinda Hassan. The film, entitled Cairography (2013), sought to challenge the limitations of what is deemed socially ‘acceptable’ in Egyptian streets. The subject matter and the process of making the film fascinated me, and I had read the reviews of the film and watched all the small clips I could find on Vimeo and YouTube. I thought of how Cairo’s chaotic and bustling streets would certainly not be easy locations to make a film. I thought about how, as a woman moving through the streets alone, I had found that the best option was to wear my iPod headphones and stare at the ground in front of me as I walked with aggression, concentration and tension filtering through my body. My arms would be tightly folded across my chest, shoulders

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Figure 21: Dalia Naous in the streets of Montmartre, Paris Image by Arnaud Stephenson (2014)

rounded, head down and feet moving at a rapid pace. When Dalia started to tell me about her personal frustration with the city of Cairo and how this had physically manifested in her body and prompted her to make the film Cairography, I was fascinated. She explained: I found that the places I was living – Beirut, Paris, Cairo – made me interested in how cities could affect the body and movement, in relation to the spatial, political and economic dimensions of the locations. I found that in Cairo I just didn’t want to be a woman. I wanted to hide, I didn’t care, and I didn’t want to be feminine. The first idea I had was that I wanted to talk about harassment and particularly sexual harassment in Cairo through this dance film. I then thought about how I am not Egyptian, I had only lived in the city [of Cairo] for a year and a half, I can still leave, and I noticed how much censorship there was in the city and

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how much self-censorship was going on. I wondered how local people coped with this. Are they still aware of this autocensorship? How does it affect the way they move, the way they walk in the streets? How does it affect what is accepted, unaccepted, expected and unexpected? I think this level of ingrained censorship and self-censorship is like war in Beirut. People are used to it. It is normalized. When there are explosions in Beirut people take no notice, people get used to things that others would find strange or worrying or frightening, and they find their way to live with such things. I wondered if the same normalization has happened in Cairo – is it ‘normal’ to face this harassment? Is it ‘normal’ for bodies to react in such a way? From the starting point of personal frustration Dalia explained how she and the group she worked with constructed the choreographic frame for the film based around public interventions in the streets of Cairo. These interventions would be filmed to document the events and responses that unfolded. Along with the challenge of performing the interventions came the challenges of voicing experiences of harassment, discussing taboos such as the public dancing body, and then documenting this all on film. Dalia talked about the process the group went through to develop their confidence in these ideas: I wanted to work with the dancers and do small interventions in the street. The idea was not to ‘perform’ in the street. Yes, to perform in the street is a right that people should have, but that is another discussion. This film was addressing something more basic. It was looking at how it is a right to walk and move in the street, at the most basic level. I worked with a group of dancers over a 10-day workshop. The idea was that the workshop would help the dancers when they went into the streets for the interventions, and help them to understand and express what people experience in the streets. One thing I noticed was that the people in Egypt did not like to talk about harassment, and they really did not like to talk negatively about what they experienced. Women were reluctant to say that they were being harassed. After the revolution people have started to talk about it more, but before the revolution they would not. It was more like if you got harassed you must have asked for it. There was shame and guilt associated with it, and there still is.

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I started working with the group in a way that was researchfocused, rather than working on creating a film as a performance. We explored the direct actions that could be taken in the street, what interventions we might play with. For example, in Cairo it is not considered acceptable for a woman to smoke in the street. We thought, okay, we will go and smoke in the street and see what happens. Another example is that for men it is not really considered good to have big hair. Most people think it is best that men have short hair. So we thought, okay, we will send someone out into the street with big hair. Some of these things may seem very silly, very simple, but they are all things that society in Cairo looks down on or considers taboo. Dalia shared how the street interventions had a game-like nature. There were rules structuring how all the people involved (dancers, those with cameras and those who were there for support during the intervention) functioned and moved in the streets when it was time to film: The rule was that the individual dancer doing the particular action had to pick a space in the street. So there was the dancer, but also everyone with cameras – we were filming with iPhones and iPads. The cameras had to come into the street one after the other and had to stand in a circle formation to capture all angles. The people with cameras had someone with them for support, because if they were alone they could be harassed and they would look very strange just standing, filming by themselves. So everyone stands in their positions and pretends they are waiting or just talking with someone. Then one person stands in the spot where the performer will be, to check the cameras are all in place. Then the performer comes in and everything starts. Then that same person who checked the spot at the beginning, they walk past the performer when it is time to end, the performer leaves and the cameras leave one by one. This ‘game’ had to be put in place because we were a big group of people. Just being a group could attract attention that was unwanted. Since the essence of the work was to film people’s spontaneous reactions without them noticing, we learned with each intervention how to be more discreet. The whole process in itself was a choreography.

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Figure 22: A still of the woman smoking in the street intervention from Cairography footage Image courtesy of Dalia Naous and Kinda Hassan (2013)

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The riskiness of the public’s responses to the interventions meant that when the time came to complete the actions in the streets not everyone involved felt comfortable. Some of the performers decided that they would not do the interventions, while those that did received different responses from the public. Dalia said: Of course, when we went to the streets it was completely different to working in the studio. Only two of the dancers ended up doing the interventions. The first dancer to do it treated it like a performance, and in a way it did look like a performance. The people watching behaved like it was a performance. The second dancer performed differently. People watching thought this dancer was crazy. Like, actually crazy. People saw that we had the cameras and they realized that there were a few of us [involved in the filming]. It started to cause a big problem in the street; some people started to tell us to leave the dancer alone, to stop filming him. They wanted to hit us. As much as it was frightening, I think it was a very positive collective reaction – they were trying to protect the dancer. One of the confusing things was that when people thought the person was genuinely crazy and doing something out of the ordinary they would either leave them alone, or they would actually go out of their way to help that person – like what we experienced. But if people think it is a ‘normal’ person behaving strangely in the street, they will not leave them alone and they will harass them. The cultural anthropological nature of the film highlighted the nuances of society in Cairo and how a moving body might fit within a cityscape. As our conversations continued we drank more black coffee in the Parisian summer sun. Dalia chain-smoked as we talked, and even though I was the ‘interviewer’ and Dalia was the ‘interviewee’, we asked each other just as many questions and shared our joys and frustrations with a part of the world we both found ourselves drawn to understand in more depth. I was interested to know how a spirited young Lebanese woman had found herself making creative work that addressed the taboos of Arab societies. Dalia explained her background to me. She shared: I was born in 1982, in Beirut. I grew up and studied there. I decided to leave Lebanon because I wanted to discover other

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things. I left Beirut in 2006. It was a very bad situation in Lebanon at that time. In 2005 there was a period where there were a lot of assassinations; there was war in 2006, and artistically we could not really work.1 I was asking myself the question: how do people create in this sort of environment? How do they create and make artistic work when there is no distance from these terrible things going on? I think the body holds a lot of memories of traumatic events. I think sometimes if people create artistic work very soon after traumatic events it can almost be very violent. I guess you could say I came to Paris because of the situation in Lebanon. For the first month I lived in Paris I was on edge. Every time I heard a door close or an airplane fly overhead I would jump. Beirut had made me anxious and nervous. Over time I started to relax. I slowly realized I was not living in Beirut anymore, and that I was in a city where you can do almost whatever you want and you can live in security. Dalia explained that while the move from Beirut to Paris required a shift in mentality, the move from Paris to Cairo brought with it an entirely new set of challenges. She said: I only moved to Cairo because my husband and I got married. It was easier for him to live in Egypt than in France. There were a few difficulties that came with the move from Paris to Cairo. One challenge was just living in a different country, but the biggest challenge was physically living in a different way, embodying the city in a different way. I had lived in Beirut, which is a very open city, and not very conservative compared to many of the other cities in the Middle East. I then lived in Paris, which is a very open city and as a woman you are really anonymous in the street compared to in Beirut. In a city like Paris you can really discover how you want to dress and how you want to walk in the streets, because no one is really looking, no one is judging – or if they are it is not in a very open way. Then I found that living in Cairo was very difficult as an individual regardless of being male or female, but for a woman it can be like hell. Cairo was really like hell for me. I couldn’t cope. If I am in a new city I like to explore and not go to touristic places – I am the

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type of person who likes to walk everywhere to find new things. Living in this city I discovered that you can’t walk anywhere as a woman alone. It is impossible to walk very far without getting harassed, without being an object, without people looking at you in a way that makes you feel uncomfortable. I felt very dependent on my husband. Even though he is a very open-minded person this city changed things because he would have to say, ‘Please, can you, you know, cover up?’ Covering up made it easier to avoid being harassed; otherwise he felt like he had to protect me. Dalia explained how Cairography provided an outlet to express some of her frustrations and led to further reflection on society in Cairo, which has spurred ideas for new works. Dalia shared how her forthcoming projects explore social concerns and taboos related to the moving body, and more specifically the moving female body, in Arab societies through the medium of dance and film: My dream is to work on a project about what people show on the outside and what is happening on the inside – the private and public persona – because this is what our [Arab] society is all about. The work I have in mind would be about one apartment building. The building has the guard at the front, the balconies and the windows and all that. It would be about the lives of the women and men in this building, and inspired by Cairo and the codes of the society. This idea came to me after I had this amazing thing happen to me. I was coming back from Alexandria to Cairo on the train; no one was sitting next to me. Then suddenly this young woman – she must have been about 22 years old – with a small baby came and sat next to me. She put her bag on my knees, opened it up and said to me, ‘Give me the diapers.’ She put the baby down on the seat and then all of a sudden I was involved in all of this. After she changed the baby she sat down next to me again. She begins talking to me, like we knew each other. She told me about how she met her husband and her sexual life. She told me how her husband asked her to wear the veil. She then told me the story of how she lives on the fourth floor of an apartment building and she takes off

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the veil when she is at home, sits on the balcony and looks out at other people. As she was talking I was thinking ‘Thank you!’ because all of a sudden I could see this performance in my head. She kept talking to me. She told me how she would put the laundry out on the balcony wearing whatever she wanted, looking how she wanted, but then how inside the apartment she is beaten by her husband and he forces her to sleep with him. But she explained how she has her own little world and how when he is not there she can be in this little world. She talked about how she has her secrets even in her street and apartment building, where everyone knows her and everyone wants to know everyone’s business. It was amazing to hear her talk about her situation. The conversation with the young woman on the train prompted Dalia to consider the context for her next project. Along with this personal story, Dalia explained how she was also interested in exploring how the outside/ inside aesthetics of some buildings in Cairo mimicked the public/private personas demonstrated within society. She shared: When you go to places like Azhar Park, there are a lot of buildings that are illegal. These buildings are on both sides of the ring road crossing through and around Cairo. This is a very poor area, but all the balconies are decorated with bright colours and pictures. Everyone decorates the outside of the apartments a little differently. So the outside of the building is very decorated, they are very colourful and personalized balconies, but inside the building people are living in a very difficult way, in bad conditions. I thought how this is about inside and outside presentation, just like our public and private personas, giving the façade that we are living happily. I think that this connects to Egyptian society and the issues that the society is facing and how people are dealing with the problems – what is forbidden and what is not, taboos, conservatism and expectations. I am interested in this, and Cairo is a city that has inspired me a lot. I thought I would like to do something based around this apartment building idea as a live performance and film.

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Figure 23: Dalia Naous Image by Arnaud Stephenson (2014)

Within her examination of the social challenges of Cairo, Dalia described how she feels her work has been influenced by the Arab Spring uprisings and the Egyptian revolution. The impact these events have had on women is a particular interest for Dalia. Having participated in the Arab Spring uprisings in Cairo, Dalia explained her thoughts of how these events had impacted on women: I noticed how near the end of the revolution there was an aggressiveness that started to happen towards women. There was a lot of questioning of the place of women in Egyptian society and the role women should play in protests. It seems like now the strategy of the Arab world is to abort women from society, to get them out of sight, to get them out of active roles in communities and hide them away. This is worrying. Dalia articulated how she felt this worry could be expressed through her creative work. She explained how she sought to speak of the issues and sensitivities permeating the region through performance:

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One of the ways I feel like I can bring up this worry and concern is through performance. With my sister I did a performance called These shoes are made for walking.2 It is choreographic essays about the political situations in the Arab world. So we are talking about religion, women and dictatorship, these sorts of things. We are just trying to find our way of talking about all of this. A powerful moment in These shoes are made for walking is perhaps one of the simplest scenes in the production. Dalia stands in the middle of a barren stage. Dressed in a well-tailored suit, low-cut enough to see a glimpse of a bra, she stands in front of a microphone. The lighting is sparse, creating a silhouette of Dalia’s physique on the stark white backdrop on the stage. The movement Dalia initiates is minute to begin with, jarred and jolting, almost as though there is an external force initiating or dictating the movement path she should be taking. This gradually becomes more forceful, to the extent that there is a sense of invisible puppet strings taking her limbs on journeys that are unexpected and perhaps even unwanted. The microphone catches her breath and the sound of her limbs moving through the space. The movement then settles into a rhythmic undulating pattern, repetitive and soothing. I thought of the themes that Dalia spoke about and contemplated how the movement journey Dalia had taken the audience on in the space of just a few minutes mimicked the process I went through as I was acclimatizing to the environment of places such as Cairo – the initial shock, awkwardness, the increased frustration and anger with the location, and finally a sense of normalization and becoming accustomed to behaving, moving, being in a certain way. I was reminded that an intensely personal experience involving very complex subject matter can be powerfully encapsulated in a few small gestures.

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Society and the struggles of the dancer

Dance in turbulent societies is fraught with trials, but also full of possibilities. I discovered this in December 2009, when my colleague Nicholas Rowe and I went to Bourj el-Barajneh Palestinian refugee camp to facilitate a series of dance video workshops for children and youths. While Nicholas was an experienced practitioner in such situations with extensive experience working in Palestinian refugee camps, I was a complete novice. Bourj el-Barajneh, translated as Towers of Towers, is a refugee camp where approximately 20,000 people live in one square kilometre. The camp is situated in the southern suburbs of Beirut, deep in the heart of Hezbollah territory. Established in 1948 to accommodate Palestinian refugees from the Galilee region, Bourj el-Barajneh was under a bloody siege in 1982 during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon during the first Lebanese Civil War, and again from 1984 to 1987 when the Amal Militia sought to control West Beirut. Arriving with three hand-held cameras, a tripod and two translators, Nicholas and I obviously stood out. Walking into the camp, navigating the maze of alleyways between crumbling buildings and then meeting the group of children and youths we were working with over the coming days, it became apparent that any concept I had of how a dance workshop should be run, or even why it should be run, would have to shift. Time seems to have stood still for years in the camp. Generation after generation, children grow up in the same desperate reality, punished for crimes they did not commit, injured by a history not of their making. They stand on balconies cracked beyond repair, watching the world of Beirut go by on their horizon. Illegal construction and limited space for horizontal

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Figure 24: Dance workshop at Bourj el-Barajneh Palestinian Refugee Camp Image by Rose Martin (2009)

expansion have forced the community to build in a vertical fashion, creating a Kafkian-like reality, true but surreal. The refugees too are teetering between the lines of an almost pseudo-reality. They find themselves held hostage in time and space in a growing city, a hectically changing world, frozen in time and with ever-lower expectations. Open sewers run through the narrow alleyways and a spiderweb of exposed electrical wires hangs overhead, some dangerously low. I was initially sceptical as to how a few days of dancing might change anything here. The function of dance in this workshop was to collectively re-define and re-imagine space. We initiated the workshops by playing movement games with the group. We encouraged them to devise short stories that they wanted to make dance videos about. They came up with four stories with the common thread of a football game running through them all, linking them together. As a group we started to make some movements related to each story, and characters were developed. When Nicholas told them that they could film their stories

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anywhere in the camp there were giggles and looks of confusion, but then there were some suggestions – ‘film it in my house’, or ‘I know a great place’. We set out to begin filming. The children led us through their streets, and we stopped in an empty alleyway with high walls on either side and water streaming down one like a waterfall. The space implicitly called for movement that navigated around the spray of water, over the muddy puddles, and under the electrical wires above – dictating the path for movement, or alternatively making new movement emerge because of the parameters of the space. This was the location for the first short story to be filmed. This story was quite straightforward; it was about a group of boys who annoyed a group of girls who liked to dance. The boys would always run through the circle the girls were dancing in, chasing them and generally causing chaos. The movement the group decided to use was a hybrid of dabke, gestures and steps inspired by pop videos. In this alleyway it appeared that their physicality was linked with the sensory aspects of the space. Some traced the wall with their hands or ran their fingers under the water coming down the concrete wall. The puddles incited jumps over them, and unsuspecting members of the community who were walking through the alleyway became caught up in the movement; some joined in, others scurried past. A group of little girls, no more than five or six years old, looked around the corner, wide-eyed and whispering to each other. Smiles began to stretch across their faces as they saw how their alleyway had been transformed. One year later, in Jbeil, Lebanon, I met dancer, teacher, choreographer and scholar Nadra Assaf. Nadra explained how an essay written by one of her students at the Lebanese American University (LAU) about why people make a difference in society motivated her recent performance entitled I Matter. She said, ‘I thought, hey, we all make a difference. I matter. We matter.’ Months later when I was re-reading Nadra’s interview transcript I thought back to the dance video workshop in the Bourj el-Barajneh refugee camp. I had left the camp feeling tremendous sadness, as though a dance workshop in such a context was completely insignificant. However, Nadra’s words – ‘I matter. We matter’ – resonated with my experience at Bourj elBarajneh. I thought about how the dance workshop might not seem hugely significant, but when everything in some situations is so impacted by ongoing trauma, upheaval and conflict, being able to step, shuffle or slide out of it for an hour or two matters, and that those individuals doing the step, shuffle or slide matter.

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Nadra’s story Nadra and I met in 2010 when I visited her in Jbeil. Before we sat down to talk Nadra took me on a brief tour around the small seaside town, showing me the location where her dance work, I Matter, was staged. We set off down the well-worn cobbled streets through the souk towards the Mediterranean Sea that stretched out across the horizon. We reached the waterfront and Nadra pointed to a church in the distance, explaining that the performance of I Matter took place in the crypt of the building. As we walked back to Nadra’s apartment to continue our conversation she spoke about how the performance was interactive between performers and audience. She explained: I’m interested in the concept of how people matter in performance – no matter where you are at any moment in time you are making a difference to what is going on around you and to other people. For example, if you find yourself stuck in the middle of our performance and you accidently kick a dancer or a dancer kicks you, this can affect what happens in the performance, it is going to make a difference on that night, in that performance. Nadra went on to describe how the concept of I Matter connected with her perception of Lebanese society. She said, ‘I Matter comes from the broad concept that every person matters and makes a difference. I think this is something we easily forget in Lebanon, a place that has endured so much.’ I was interested to know more about Nadra’s thoughts concerning the relationship between creativity and culture. She said: The creative side of me is deeply fed through Lebanon, its culture and how I feel about this country. Historically speaking, anything I have ever choreographed always reverts back to Lebanon, even the pieces I did in the United States when I performed and worked there. Everything was geared towards Lebanon, Arab issues, struggles and sufferings. I believe the struggles are something that is interesting to watch and see in dance. Lots of people ask me why my dances are so sad, but I don’t think that I’d call my dances sad. They might make you cry at certain points of time, but always there is a positive note, because

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Figure 25: Nadra in the Jbeil souk Image by Rose Martin (2010)

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I believe that that’s what life is like and maybe I just feel that way because of being in Lebanon. I think that in Lebanon we often thrive through the down times, we have had no choice; we’ve had a lot of down times. I think I create and choreograph best when I’m upset, depressed or going through a hard time. When I’m having fun and happy I feel that my work is a bit trivial. Arriving at Nadra’s apartment building and climbing the narrow staircase, we stopped at a door covered in a patchwork of posters. She explained that this was the door to her dance studio, adjacent to the apartment where she lived, and that the posters were of her past performances. Pointing to two of the posters Nadra told me that these two performances were of particular significance to her – one because it embodied the sadness that she feels her choreographic work often focuses on, and the other because it gave attention to taboos within Lebanese society. She shared: One of the most dramatic pieces I have done was a tribute to my brother after he passed away. It was performed six months after he died. I think I let out all of my grief on stage. I spoke about my unhappiness, and I think that’s something that people also don’t like being confronted with. I think people found it too emotional. When people were asked at the end of the show what they thought, they were like, ‘It’s really nice, but I hope that she doesn’t do something so sad next time!’. After this I created a show that was not so sad, but perhaps still dark and certainly touching on taboo issues. It was called Adaptation: Alice revisits Wonderland. The concept was based on the Lewis Carroll story Alice in Wonderland, and asked the question: if Alice returned to Wonderland as an adult, how might she deal with certain issues? However, I threw in different concepts to what is in Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland – premarital sex, teenage pregnancy, drugs, and sexually transmitted diseases. So it was talking about things that are real taboos in our society here [in Lebanon]. Addressing taboos and pushing boundaries in performance has, on some occasions, resulted in difficult situations for Nadra and her colleagues. In the following narrative she recalls an experience of performing her work in Bahrain. She said:

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I did a show in Bahrain with Lebanese musician Marcel Khalife and Bahraini poet Kasem Haddad. The show was called Kais and Layla. Kais and Layla is like the Arabic version of Romeo and Juliet. It was based on extremely sensual poetry and in the poem there is a sex scene – not something you usually get in Arabic poetry! So in the performance I depicted it physically, exactly the way it is described in the poem. We got taken to court and now we can’t perform in Bahrain anymore. I’m glad that we flew out of the country right after the performance because had we been stuck there I think we would not have been allowed to leave. Directly after this performance a Lebanese TV show interviewed a key religious figure from Bahrain and two of my dancers about the show – so it was a big deal. It was a big deal about the fact that we were too crude, even though there was no nudity whatsoever, but there was embracing and touching, so they considered that to be offensive. What they didn’t focus on in all the critique of it was that we had a completely sold-out house – the theatre fitted 650 people, and we had 800 squeezed in on one night and 900 on another. There is one point in the performance where the dancers get off the stage and run up and down the aisles throwing things. When the theatre was filled beyond capacity the dancers couldn’t do this, there were people sitting on the floor in every available space. People outside were pushing their faces up against the windows, wanting to come in, but there were no places. I felt for the first time like I was a rock star! People were dying to see it, they were driving from Saudi Arabia to come to the show and they were asking us to do it again. For me it was a beautiful thing to see people respond in this way. I asked what encouraged Nadra to test the limitations of what can be discussed and presented on stage in the region. Nadra said, ‘I think it comes from my background, my childhood and upbringing.’ She elaborated on her early dancing years, and how these might have influenced her approach towards dance: When I was small my family lived in the United States of America and my mother put me in tap and ballet class when we were living there. When I was eight years old we moved here [to Lebanon], and

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there was no dancing for me to do. We lived in a very rural area, a village way outside of Jbiel. The road to the village was actually a donkey road and there was only one car in the village – my uncle’s car – and my mother was the first woman to drive in the village. My mother was American, and people were always talking about the crazy American lady that is driving! I went to a little village school and we had dabke at school, so I did a lot of dabke. When I was a little bit older my mother used to drive me once a month to Beirut to attend a jazz class in Ashrafieh. I felt like I was travelling to another planet. I recall that when I was about 10 I would watch bits of dance on TV to get ideas, and then I would choreograph for my friends. I think my mom saw that I had some talent and she brought me an itty-bitty record player and I had the little 45 records. I’d set it up in the garage at school and my friends and I would all be dancing. I finally got to take ‘real’ dance classes when I was 15 years old. I found a place in Hamra where a French lady was teaching jazz classes. I went there for a year, and then I left for America to go to university. I did a BS in finance and a BA, and my BA was in theatre with an emphasis on dance; it was not a dance degree. I did whatever dance classes I could at university and I took classes out of university too. I would go to New York and take classes at [the Alvin] Ailey School and at [the Martha] Graham School, because I wanted more. When I auditioned for my Masters of Fine Arts, majoring in dance, at Sarah Lawrence College I didn’t expect to get accepted. I knew I was lacking in technique, but what I was lacking in technique I made up for in effort and emotion. I got accepted and worked really hard during my Masters to improve, to develop my technique and competency in performance. The experiences of taking classes and watching dance in New York City appeared to influence Nadra’s perceptions of dance: My undergraduate studies revolved around Alvin Ailey and Martha Graham technique. These techniques felt right for me and they felt like home. When I was in New York I watched a lot of their work and the work of Merce Cunningham.

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When Merce Cunningham’s company came and performed here, it was one of the most moving experiences of my whole life. This is of course because I had the experience of taking classes in New York in that style. The company performed in Baalbek, and over half the audience left before the interval because they hated it. But I was just so taken by it all. You’re watching these bodies and thinking, ‘Are these dancers really human beings?’ There is just so much attention given to what they do with their bodies, every little muscle and every little vein. At one point in the performance the call to prayer started. The music was turned off and the dancers continued to move to the call to prayer. It was the most emotional thing I’ve ever seen. Merce was in his seventies at the time and he came out on stage at the end of the performance. I was crying by this point, in part because of how beautiful the performance was and in part because I was sad that only about 40 per cent of the audience stayed, and it was all just empty seats, it was horrible. I was embarrassed; I was embarrassed at that moment in time to be Lebanese. Nadra explained that she had a ‘love/hate’ relationship with Lebanon, and while she feels numerous frustrations with the context she lives and works in, she also finds inspiration: I love Lebanon, I love everything about Lebanon, I would never leave Lebanon. The 10 years that I was in America I came back to Lebanon every summer and I did workshops and performances. But I think I love the Lebanon that is in my head. Over the last two years I’ve realized that I don’t think I love the Lebanon that really exists. I live in a very secluded way, I’ve got my beach and my places I like to go, I have my students and my career, and that’s it. I hate going to Beirut, I would not want to live there. I am happy to stay in my own little Lebanon that exists in my head, and that’s the Lebanon I love. After graduating from her Masters of Fine Arts degree Nadra taught dance at tertiary level in the United States of America. She explained how ‘initially I thought I would teach in America for a few years’, as she wanted to gain

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‘experience of teaching at university’. She said, ‘I thought I’d then have a better idea of how I was going to come back to Lebanon and convince a university to do a dance programme.’ However, she decided to return to Lebanon a year and a half after graduation. Nadra revealed that her return was motivated partly by ‘really wanting to go home’ and also because of family issues. She reflected on arriving home to Lebanon: I arrived back in Lebanon just after New Year in 1991. When I arrived home and started to do dance-related things people looked at me like I was talking Chinese or something, people thought I was an absolutely insane human being. I would say to people, ‘I’m a female contemporary dancer’, and they would look at me like I was nuts, like ‘huh?’ Then I would say, ‘Yes, and by the way I am Arab, is that a problem?’ They would never say anything directly to me about it being a problem, but I got the feeling most people thought I was crazy, immoral or just not from here. But I do have to admit that my ‘Chinese’ is becoming more understandable now. Back in ’91 it was like I was constantly running my head into a brick wall, that’s what I felt I was doing on a daily basis. It was depressing, and it took me like seven or eight years until I got settled and found people who really understood me; their kids stayed with me at my dance school and the school started growing. Establishing and fostering Al-Sarab Alternative Dance School has been a focal point of Nadra’s professional life since returning to Lebanon. She said, ‘my dance school is a little bit different in its approach, it is alternative’, explaining that this took some time to develop: The school is based around the belief that there is no limitation to dance, that dance is a universal language which all people ‘speak’, and that a dancer should be able to do all types of dance. Of course, when I started the school these philosophies were considered quite unconventional here in Lebanon. At the school I have also encouraged the concept of a universal dancer. I believe in a dancing body, I don’t believe in a classical dance body or a modern dance body. I think that the reason why I believe this is because of how I learned how to dance, which was picking up little pieces of different kinds of

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dance wherever I could catch it, it was not limited by the body you had. Sometimes parents don’t understand the type of dance education I offer at my school – even though the name of the school clearly states ‘alternative dance’. They are disappointed that their daughters don’t wear tutus, and don’t do what I call ‘power-moves’ – like the splits, flips and high kicks. There is this idea that no tutus and no power-moves equals no dancing. Some parents think that if their child cannot do a perfect split they are not dancers and they are not learning how to dance. Some people say to me, ‘what do you mean, they are just learning to be dancers? Dancers of what?’ I say, ‘Any kind of dancer they want to be.’ This can confuse people. Oddly enough, one of the very popular programmes on TV, So you think you can dance, has helped me a lot, because it is built around the concept of a dancer that can do anything. When So you think you can dance started airing here in Lebanon about seven years ago people started to accept what I was doing at the school more. Overall, though, for me dance is always geared towards education, and I don’t mean that in the stern sense, I mean creatively educative. I believe dance is just as important as math and language and everything else that people might learn. Nadra’s interest in dance education led her to complete a Doctorate of Education at the University of Leicester. Along with developing Al-Sarab Alternative Dance School, Nadra has also been working as an academic at the Lebanese American University (LAU). Nadra talked about her work at LAU and some of the ambitions she has for dance at tertiary level in Lebanon: I don’t teach in a dance programme, LAU does not have a dance programme, I teach English and then two dance courses that have either been under physical education or theatre. I am working on hosting an annual university dance festival at LAU. The idea would be to bring guest teachers from other universities around the world, stage performances and have public workshops, that sort of thing. My ulterior motive is that if the university sees how well this goes they might implement a dance degree. It could completely change things here [in

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Lebanon], and for the region in general – I don’t know of any universities that offer dance degrees in other Arab countries. In my little school alone I’ve had over 20 people who have graduated who would want to do a dance degree. The choice they have is to leave the country or to do something else. That’s my ultimate dream, the next chapter in my dance story. Five years later I met Nadra in Jbeil again. I was visiting to teach at the 4th International Dance Day Festival at LAU. Over five days hundreds of participants attended workshops, performances and lectures. I taught contemporary dance classes to eager teenagers and gave lectures to LAU students keen to explore how dance intersected with wider social issues. While I was visiting LAU, Nadra shared some thrilling news with me. She said, ‘Remember when we first met and I was dreaming of making a dance degree here?’ I said, ‘Of course, that would be so exciting.’ ‘Well, we are doing it, we are going to get a dance programme!’ Smiling and shaking her head a little in disbelief, she said, ‘Next year we start, and I think it is just what the region needs.’ I nodded. ‘This is incredible, Nadra, truly incredible!’ She replied, ‘Who would have thought? A university in the Middle East with a dance programme! It is incredible!’

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Dreaming for the future

‘The time for dancing in the streets has come.’ (Fanon, 1961/1967, p.57)

Re-reading Frantz Fanon’s words I was struck by their potency in relation to the narratives of the women included in this book. Some of these women continue to work as dance practitioners in their home environment; others have travelled abroad to pursue dance opportunities or further training. With the shifts in politics across the southern Mediterranean region some of the women find themselves in new roles influencing the directions of dance in their home locations. Since returning to my ‘other life’ in New Zealand, there is not a day that goes by where I do not think about someone I met on my travels who shared their story with me, who took the time to invite me into their life for a brief moment. I was especially affected by the stories and opinions shared by the eight women featured in this book – Hala, Mey, Nadia, Noora, Rania, Dalia El Abd, Dalia Naous and Nadra. Their words lingered with me long after our conversations ended. The hours spent reading and re-reading transcripts, pondering how to include their voices within these pages and shaping narratives into manageable chapters allowed me the chance to gain new insights and understandings of the stories they shared. There were numerous issues that the women raised in the interviews, topics that we debated at length and moments where we contemplated how to solve major political difficulties, conflicts, cultural tensions and concerns. At times it could be seen that the discussions were focused on more negative

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Figure 26: Noora Image by Arnaud Stephenson (2014)

matters, the problems and the hardship they encountered. In part this is because the reality these women face is challenging. However, beyond the bleakness there were many moments where hopes and dreams were shared, where things were looked at with a humorous view, and light was made of situations. Stereotypes and assumptions of women, culture and dance were confronted, and the role(s) played by a female dance practitioner living and working in the southern Mediterranean region were re-thought and reimagined. There were times when our conversations revealed genuine beliefs that dance had the potential to be transformative for individuals and societies. Some of the women felt that the change they were making, even on a small scale, was significant in the transformation of their communities. Noora shared, ‘As a part of El-Funoun and working in Palestine I feel that I am making a difference – on a very small scale. I feel that there is value to our work, and the value of me and my work relies on being and functioning in this society.’ For others it was the notion that they were developing

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something that might be the foundation for future generations of dancers to build on. As Nadra explained, ‘Slow and steady I keep going, working to make dance education more accessible to people in Lebanon. If it doesn’t happen in my lifetime at least the process has started.’ For some of the women it was the expression of dreams related to their own dance practices that indicated their thoughts about the future. Nadia articulated, ‘I don’t say that I am a choreographer, I am not yet confident to say that. I dream that one day I can confidently say “I am a choreographer” and people will admire my work.’ There was also the expression of dreams and desires for dance within their communities or cultural contexts. Rania shared, ‘I think now more than ever dance has an important role to play in our society. Among the chaos the arts and dance can provide some sanity, relief or beauty. I would like people living in Jordan to see dance in this way.’ Past traumas reverberate throughout the southern Mediterranean region; the repercussions of the occupation of Palestine, the Arab Spring and the Syrian Civil War are ongoing and political directions are uncertain. Nevertheless, the experiences shared by the eight women in this book reveal that they are interrogating, shifting and encouraging dance in their communities. The attitude expressed in political activist Emma Goldman’s well-known quote – ‘If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution’ – echoed in the women’s stories. The thought that dance and dancers could contribute to change and possibly revolution was something people were contemplating and witnessing across the southern Mediterranean region. My most recent trip across the King Hussein/Allenby Bridge border clearly illustrated this to me. I sat in the makeshift shelter waiting to board the bus to cross the King Hussein/Allenby Bridge to Jordan. The haphazard process of bags being taken for inspection and placed on buses began, with no clear indication of where one should wait and when exactly the next bus would arrive to take the swelling number of people across the border. No matter how many times I made this return journey from Palestine to Jordan, negotiating the Israeli security and border control along the way, the system or process of this crossing has never been clear. I waited. A bus pulled into the parking bay in front of the crowd and a mass rush to secure seats began. I weaved through the crowd, ducking around large groups and squeezing my way to the steps of the bus. Once on board I found a seat next to a young woman wearing a bright red hijab and carrying a large shopping bag on her lap. The seats filled quickly. I felt a sense of relief that I would soon be out of the holding-pen environment. Before I had an

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opportunity to relax any more an Israeli officer entered the bus. I stared intently at the passport in my hands, studying the words on the cover – ‘New Zealand Passport – Uruwhenua Aotearoa’ – to distract myself from the presence of the officer who was moving down the aisle of the bus. The officer stopped next to me, I avoided looking up and waited for him to continue moving. He didn’t. ‘Passport?’ he said to me firmly. I handed over the passport I had been so focused on, noticing how my hands had left sweaty prints on the cover. He flicked quickly through the pages and gave it back to me by shoving it towards my face, inches away from my nose. ‘Off,’ he said, pointing to the door of the bus. I didn’t move. I didn’t look at him. ‘Off!’ he said more forcefully this time, followed by, ‘Arabs-only bus.’ I stood up, placing my passport in my jacket pocket and picking up my handbag from the floor in front of me. ‘Fine,’ I said to the officer just as firmly as he had told me to get off the bus. It was not fine. I followed the officer off the bus. Only then did I realize that I was the only foreigner on the bus, my blonde hair standing out a mile. Only then did I also realize what this situation could look like, that I was intentionally making a statement about the obvious segregation that was occurring at this crossing. I had a feeling that what was about to happen would not be pleasant or brief. As I stepped off the bus two female officers walked towards me. One said ‘Passport?’, and the other took my handbag from me. Again I handed over my passport for an inspection that consisted of a tokenistic flicking of pages. The officer with my passport in hand said, ‘Follow me,’ and turned towards the nondescript terminal in front of the bus. The woman with my handbag went in another direction. Within minutes I found myself sitting on an uncomfortable plastic chair in a tiny closet-like office. The female officer sat with pen, paper and my passport on the desk in front of her. The questions began, starting off easily with name, nationality, age, travel plans. Then the questions turned to occupation. ‘Dance?’ ‘Yes,’ I replied calmly. ‘What sort of dance?’

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Figure 27: Sunset in Ramallah Image by Arnaud Stephenson (2014)

‘Contemporary dance.’ I kept my answers as short and clipped as possible. The officer said, ‘What do you do with this dance?’ I said, ‘Teach it.’ ‘And where do you teach it?’ The officer’s eyes met mine; I knew that she was hoping for me to blurt out something like, ‘I teach it in Palestine!’ I said ‘Around the world,’ being as vague as possible. The officer decided to change tack. ‘Who do you teach dance to?’ ‘University students, mainly.’ After saying this I regretted adding the word ‘mainly’ to this answer. As I expected, she said, ‘Mainly? Who else do you teach?’ ‘Children, adults.’ ‘And what exactly do you do with this dance?’ I was genuinely confused by this question. I knew it was potentially a mistake to respond with a question, but I said, ‘What do you mean? I teach it.’ The officer scribbled notes. She placed the pen down on the desk, sat forward in her chair and said, ‘Are you involved in politics? Is there a political agenda to your dance?’

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‘No,’ I said firmly. Sitting even further forward in her chair, she said, ‘So no revolution through dances, then?’ ‘No,’ I lied. ‘Not at all?’ ‘Not at all,’ I lied again.

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Notes

Chapter 1 1 Several scholars document the challenges of negotiating gender in the field, and specifically issues pertinent to female researchers conducting fieldwork in the southern Mediterranean (for example: Bolak, 1996; Lengel, 1998; Sherif, 2001). 2 As mentioned previously, contributing to my fieldwork and meetings with the dance practitioners were projects I have worked on as a researcher and coeditor. These projects included a book titled Talking Dance: Contemporary Histories from the Southern Mediterranean (Rowe, Buck & Martin, 2014), working closely as a teacher and researcher at the El-Funoun Palestinian Popular Dance Troupe, collaborating with Dr Nadra Assaf from the Lebanese American University for the 2015 Fluid States events, and my work as a dance teacher in various institutions in Egypt, Jordan, Palestine and Lebanon. 3 The Arab Spring occurred across the southern Mediterranean/Gulf region during 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014. To date, there have been revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt, civil war in Libya resulting in the fall of its government, civil uprisings in Bahrain, Syria, and Yemen, the latter resulting in the resignation of the Yemeni prime minister, major protests in Algeria, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Morocco and Oman, and minor protests in Lebanon, Mauritania, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Western Sahara (Fakhoury, 2011). Clashes at the borders of Israel in May 2011 and the Palestine 194 movement (a diplomatic campaign by the Palestinian National Authority to gain membership for the State of Palestine in the United Nations at its 66th Session in September 2011) are also said to be inspired by the regional Arab Spring (Deitch, 2011).

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4 An example of this could be seen in Mohammad Shafiq’s (2011) performance The smell of the city. 5 For example, Toufiq Izzediou’s (2011) performance Aleef, or the El-Funoun, Le Grand Cru and Al-Balad Theatre’s (2009) co-production of Waiting forbidden.

Chapter 2 1 It can be noted that some scholars and writers have described the term ‘Arab Spring’ as an Orientalistic label that is semantically Western in construction (Alhassen, 2012; Khouri, 2011; Rooksby, 2011). Others have encouraged the term ‘Arab Awakening’ (Fisk, 2012). However, there have also been substantial critiques of this label being used to describe the events (Alhassen, 2012; Rooksby, 2011). Therefore, due to these contentious and ongoing debates, I have chosen to use the terms ‘Arab Spring’ and ‘Arab Awakening’ sparingly, referring to these events as the ‘uprisings’ where possible. 2 ‘Day of rage’ has become a leitmotif of the uprising activities across the region since 2011. 3 Examples of Egyptian dancers involving themselves in public protests related to the Arab Spring uprisings include the occupation of the Ministry of Culture in Zamalek in June 2013. Over a period of several weeks dancers, along with a wide variety of other artists, demanded the removal of Culture Minister Alaa Abdel-Aziz and the independence of the Supreme Council of Culture. The protesting group stated that a political direction should not be imposed on culture. Examples of dance being used in wider public actions connected to the Arab Spring uprisings in Egypt were witnessed in the ‘hub’ of the Cairo uprisings, Tahrir Square. Along with words, songs, music, slogans and theatre, dance emerged strongly as a creative medium that Egyptians used to express their opinions when they took over the public square to make it their own. Some of this dance was improvised in the sense that clusters of people joined together to physically express themselves through movement, with numerous video clips being posted on YouTube of a diverse range of people performing dance – from women in full hijab dancing to the beat of a tabla, to youths jamming to hip hop music. Examples of dance commenting on the uprising in Egypt includes work by the Cairo Opera Ballet Company. In early 2011 the company restaged a ballet choreographed by Maurice Béjart (originally created in 1990 with costumes by Gianni Versace). Originally entitled Pyramide – El Nour; in 2011 it was renamed Pyramids and the Revolution.

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  4 Abdel Fattah el-Sisi was a candidate in the 2014 presidential elections in Egypt. He was elected as the sixth president of Egypt on 8 June 2014.   5 Graham technique is a codified dance vocabulary developed by the American dancer, choreographer and teacher Martha Graham. This technique focuses on concepts such as release, contraction, fall and recovery in movement. Graham technique is considered by some to have revolutionized Western modern dance practices (Bannerman, 1999).   6 The Cairo Opera House complex encompasses companies such as the Cairo Opera Company, the Cairo Opera Ballet, the Cairo Symphony Orchestra and the Egyptian Modern Dance Theatre Company. These companies are statefunded and supported. Since the Egyptian ‘Arab Spring’ uprising of 2011 numerous changes have occurred at these institutions, with a new artistic director taking leadership and philosophies and objectives shifting. The companies and training institutions that Hala refers to – the Egyptian Modern Dance Theatre Company and the Cairo Contemporary Dance Centre (formerly called Cairo Modern Dance School) – are supported by the Egyptian Ministry of Culture. Both were established and run by Walid Aouni (from 1992 to 2011) and a clear divide in the Cairo contemporary dance scene existed between those supported by the Egyptian Ministry of Culture (or working within one of their state-funded dance institutions), and those who were working as independent artists. With the events of the Arab Spring, where the former Minister of Culture Farouk Hosni was removed from his position and support diminished for those propped up by the former Mubarak regime, Aouni resigned from his position as director of these institutions. The Cairo Contemporary Dance Centre was taken over by Karima Mansour, an independent Egyptian artist who had trained and performed abroad for many years before returning home. The Egyptian Modern Dance Theatre Company was taken over by director Monadel Antar.   7 The jellabiya is a traditional Egyptian garment native to the Nile Valley worn by both men and women.   8 Wesh w’Dahr translates as Back to Front. It was a performance choreographed by Dalia El Abd in 2012. It was first performed by Hala and Dalia on 8 June 2012 in the garden of the British Council in Agouza, Cairo.   9 The Egyptian University is formally known as Cairo University. However, it used to be called King Fuad I University, Egyptian University. It is a public university in Giza, Egypt, and a location where there have been numerous protests and fighting since the 2011 uprisings. 10 Inshallah is an Arabic word that translates into English as ‘God willing’ or ‘if Allah wills’. It is often said when speaking about plans and events expected to

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occur in the future. It is a common phrase across the Middle Eastern region and is used by Muslims and Christians alike.

Chapter 3 1 The Syrian Civil War, also known as the Syrian Uprisings, is an ongoing armed conflict in the state of Syria. Unrest began in 2011, within the context of the uprisings that were occurring across the Middle Eastern region (Hokayem, 2013; Sahner, 2014). Protests were initially focused on Bashar al-Assad’s leadership and government. The al-Assad regime responded with force and the conflict morphed from popular uprisings like those in Egypt and Tunisia, to armed fighting, military sieges and an all-out civil war. Numerous factions are involved – Bashar al-Assad’s Syrian Army, the Free Syrian Army, the Islamic Front, Hezbollah (in support of the Syrian Army), and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). Human rights violations have occurred, massacres have taken place, and chemical weapons have been used in fighting. The exact death toll since the conflict started is unknown, but the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights estimates it to be nearly 300,000 (as of 1/12/2014). Along with those killed thousands of other Syrians have been imprisoned and tortured; many of these people are protestors, activists, intellectuals and artists (Halasa, Omareen & Mahfoud, 2014). 2 Dabke is a folk dance ‘made up of intricate steps and stomps’ (Rowe, 2011, p.364). The dance is performed by both men and women and is popular in locations such as Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Jordan, the north of Saudi Arabia, Occupied Palestine/Israel and Yemen. The dance is often performed at weddings and celebrations; however, it is also performed in theatrical or contemporary modes. 3 Enana Dance Theatre Troupe was established in 1990 in Damascus by Jehad Mufleh. The company presents theatrical dance works for the stage, television, and film, blending Western theatrical dance practices with folkloric narratives and concepts, a blend that often ‘depends on many foreign experts specialized in classical and modern dancing and solicits the help of various specialists in popular dance besides Arab experts in local popular and folk dancing’ (Enana website, para.7). 4 Prior to the Syrian Civil War, telecommunications in Syria were slowly moving towards liberalization, but since 2011 access to even basic telecommunication in Syria has become challenging for many (Tkacheva et al., 2013). Internet

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censorship in Syria is extensive. Syria bans websites for political reasons and arrests people accessing them. In addition to filtering a wide range of web content, the Syrian government monitors internet use very closely and has detained citizens for expressing their opinions or reporting information online. In February 2011 Syria stopped filtering YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, and internet connectivity between Syria and the outside world shut down in late November 2011, and again in early May 2013 (Tkacheva et al., 2013; Vijayan, 2012).

Chapter 4 1 The King Hussein/Allenby Bridge crosses the River Jordan, and connects the Occupied West Bank of Palestine with Jordan. The bridge is currently the sole designated exit and entry point for Palestinians (who do not hold Israeli or Jerusalem ID) residing in the West Bank travelling in and out of the West Bank. 2 ‘Occupation’ here refers to the illegal occupation of Palestine by the State of Israel. The term ‘Palestinian Territory, Occupied’ had been utilized by the United Nations (UN) and other international organizations between 1998 to 2013 in order to refer to the Palestinian National Authority; it was replaced by the UN in 2013 by the term ‘State of Palestine’ (United Nations General Assembly, November 2012). Israel has occupied the territories of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip since the Six-Day War of 1967. These territories had previously been occupied by Jordan and Egypt. Israel disengaged from the Gaza Strip in 2005. However, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip are still considered to be occupied by Israel according to the international community (OHCHR). 3 A keffiyeh is a cotton scarf of the Middle Eastern region, most commonly in a black and white or red and white pattern, worn around the head or neck. While the keffiyeh has become a popular fashion item in diverse contexts, within a Palestinian context the black and white keffiyeh has often been worn as a symbol of Palestinian nationalism and the Fatah political party, whereas the red and white keffiyehs were adopted by Palestinian groups such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. 4 Bara’em means ‘buds’ in Arabic; this is the junior company of the El-Funoun Palestinian Popular Dance Troupe. 5 Israeli laws and policies prevent the reunification of Palestinian families when one partner holds Israeli citizenship (or a Jerusalem ID) while the other is a

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resident of Occupied Palestine (among other domiciles), thus depriving these families of their civil, economic, social, health and other rights. This interferes in Palestinians’ choices of future spouses and partners, based on their respective citizenship and residency document types. 6 Established in 1999, Fire of Anatolia (in Turkish, Anadolu Ateşi) is a Turkish dance group directed by Mustafa Erdoğan that performs large-scale spectacle performances fusing folkloric Turkish dance with ballet and modern dance. The company has approximately 120 dancers, several choreographers and a large team of other technical staff. Like other large fusion dance companies such as Caracalla (Lebanon) and Enana (Syria), Fire of Anatolia is well known in the Middle Eastern region, often performing on television and touring extensively.

Chapter 5 1 Intifada is an Arabic word that often gets translated into English as ‘uprising’, ‘resistance’ or ‘rebellion’ (King, 2007). The intifadas in Palestine were violent and non-violent uprisings against the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian Territories. The First Palestinian Intifada commenced in 1987 and concluded in 1993 with the signing of the Oslo Accords. The Second Palestinian Intifada began in 2000 when Ariel Sharon visited the Temple Mount – an act that was seen to be highly provocative. The conclusion of the Second Intifada came in 2005 at the Sharm el-Sheikh Summit. 2 Israel has placed Gaza under a blockade since 2007. The blockade commenced after Hamas won the Palestinian Legislative Election in 2006 (Levy, 2010). The blockade restricts and prevents people and supplies from entering and exiting Gaza. The humanitarian crisis in Gaza as a result of the blockade is severe and the economic implications for Gaza are significant (Chomsky & Pappe, 2010). 3 The wall built by Israel that separates the Occupied West Bank from Israel is also called the separation wall, the separation fence, the wall of apartheid or the apartheid wall (Backmann, 2010; Christison, 2011). The building of the wall commenced in 2000, it stands up to 25 feet (8 metres) in parts, and in July 2004 the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that the wall is a violation of international law and should be removed (UNRWA, 2013). 4 Travelling to Palestine and other locations in the southern Mediterranean region on one passport creates challenges as the borders of the West Bank of Palestine are controlled by Israel. Several countries (for example, Lebanon and

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5

6

7

8

9

167

Syria) refuse entry to individuals who show evidence of a visit to Israel, and Israel can refuse entry to those who have evidence of visiting certain countries (such as Lebanon and Syria). This evidence could be in the form of Israeli passport stamps, but it can also mean Egyptian or Jordanian stamps from the crossing-points in or out of Israel. Until the more recent policy shift in Israel to no longer stamp passports for B2 Tourist Visas, travellers moving between locations in the region either had to construct a tour itinerary to visit Israel/ Palestine last, or backtrack through certain border posts where their passport would not be stamped. The work of Yaser Khaseb, Atefeh Tehrani, Crazy Body Group and Black Narcissus are examples of contemporary Iranian dance and theatre makers who have explored the boundaries of censorship in Iran within their creative work. Ghassan Kanafani was a Palestinian writer and leading member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine who was assassinated by car bomb in Beirut in 1972. CACTUS Performance Art Collective was conceived by Thais Mennsitieri (Brazil), Dafne Louzioti (Greece) and Noora Baker (Palestine) in 2012. Working across disciplines through a collaborative model the group seeks to innovate interdisciplinary performance practices of dance, theatre and visual arts while challenging and entertaining audiences in a politically potent way. CACTUS have performed across the globe and facilitated performance arts trainings and workshops. The Occupy movement is a global movement that protests against social and economic inequality. It commenced in 2011 and is seen to be inspired in part by the Arab Spring uprisings. The protests sought to occupy public spaces such as New York City’s Zuccotti Park. Tayeb is an Arabic word that means ‘okay, nice’.

Chapter 6 1 Note that this individual’s name has been changed to protect his identity. 2 According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees 3,807,580 people (as of 26 January 2015) have fled to Syria’s immediate neighbours Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq. It is estimated that 6.5 million people are internally displaced within Syria (UNHCR, 2015).

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Chapter 7 1 Arab Idol is a television show based on the British show Pop Idol. Arab Idol debuted on December 9, 2011. There have been three seasons of Arab Idol, the most recent in 2014. 2 Performed at the Beirut International Platform of Dance: Arab Dance Platform, Maqamat Dance Studio, Beirut, Lebanon on 21 April, 2011, 2pm. 3 Walid Aouni is a Lebanese scenographer and choreographer, and was the artistic director of the Egyptian Modern Dance Company from 1992–2011, and the Modern Dance School (Cairo Opera House) from 2004–2011. 4 Al-Musannafat is the department for censorship and supervision of theatres, films, music and dance, affiliated to the Egyptian Ministry of Culture. 5 Omar Rajeh is a Lebanese dancer, teacher, choreographer and artistic director of Maqamat Dance Theatre and Takween-Beirut Contemporary Dance School.

Chapter 8 1 Lebanon’s contemporary history has been marred by conflict. After gaining independence in 1943, tensions in Lebanon grew in the 1950s and 1960s. These were a result of political and religious frictions, the 1958 Lebanon Crisis, the influxes of Palestinian refugees in 1948 and 1967, and issues pertaining to the presence of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) in Lebanon over this time. The Lebanese Civil War traumatized the country between 1975 and 1990, followed by the Syrian military occupation from 1976 until 2005 and the 2006 Lebanon War, which left Lebanon in a fragile situation. Numerous bombings and assassinations have taken place over the past decade. Most recently tensions between Israel and Hezbollah have positioned Lebanon on the brink of a new conflict, a double suicide bombing in Tripoli on 10 January 2015 claimed the lives of nine people and injured 30, and the debacle over the ‘selfie’ of Miss Lebanon and Miss Israel at the Miss Universe contest has flooded global media. 2 These shoes are made for walking (2013) was created by Nancy Naous (Dalia’s sister) and performed by Dalia Naous and Nadim Bahsoun. The work has been performed in Lebanon and France.

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Interviewees

Assaf, Nadra. Dance teacher, choreographer and professor at the Lebanese American University. Interview conducted in English in Byblos on 22 April 2010. Baker, Noora. Dancer, teacher, choreographer and administrator of the El-Funoun Palestinian Popular Dance Troupe. Interviews conducted in English in Al-Bireh and Ramallah on 20, 22 and 23 October 2010 and 11 January 2014. El Abd, Dalia. Dancer, teacher and choreographer. Interviews conducted in English in Cairo and Beirut on 16th March 2010, 22 April 2011 and 29 January 2014. Hassan Imam, Hala. Dancer. Interviews conducted in English in Cairo on 14 March 2010 and 30 January 2014. Kamhawi, Rania. Dance teacher, choreographer and director of the Jordanian National Center of Culture and Arts dance programme. Interview conducted in English by Skype on 15 January 2015. Khattab, Nadia. Dancer of the El-Funoun Palestinian Popular Dance Troupe. Interview conducted in English in Al-Bireh and Ramallah on 14 January 2014. Naous, Dalia. Dancer and choreographer. Interview conducted in English in Paris on 16 July 2014. Nasser, Lana. Performance artist, playwright and translator. Interview conducted in English in Utrecht on 10 December 2011. Sefan, Mey. Dancer, teacher and choreographer. Interviews conducted in English in Damascus and Bodrum on 22 May 2010, 24 May 2010 and 14 July 2010.

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Index

El Abd, Dalia 5–6, 104–21, 155 activism 21–2, 157 Adaptation: Alice revisits Wonderland 145 administrators 17, 97 Al-Ahram Weekly 24 Ailey, Alvin 41, 43, 110–12, 147 Ajram, Nancy 103 Alexander technique 43, 45 Alexandria 136 Algeria 21 alienation 4, 29, 47, 94, 113 Alvin Ailey Dance School 110–12, 147 Amal Militia 140 American Cultural Center 109 Amman 3–6, 52, 71, 88, 91, 93, 95–6, 99–100, 104, 127 Amman Contemporary Dance Festival 99 Amsterdam 5, 29, 51, 72 anthropology 7, 134 Aouni, Walid 23, 108, 114 Arab Dance Platform 51 Arab Idol 101, 103

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Arab Spring 5–6, 8, 21–4, 106, 138, 157 Arab world 3–4, 8, 44, 80, 123 body 125–39 censorship 118 freedom 94, 96 society 143, 146, 149, 151 Arabic language 13, 26, 33, 85, 87, 104, 127–8, 146 Arafat, Yasser 103 architecture 100 Ashrafieh 147 al-Assad, Bashir 34, 36, 51, 90 Assaf, Mohammed 101, 103 Assaf, Nadra 5, 142–51, 155, 157 Auckland 5, 55 audience 28–9, 31, 42, 50, 59 body 139 borders 75, 82, 85 censorship 115, 121 freedom 96–9 society 143, 148 auditions 60–1, 93, 108–10, 147 autocracy 9

Baalbek 148 Bahrain/Bahrainis 145–6 Baker, Noora 5, 19, 72–87, 155–6 Al-Balad Theatre 3, 82 ballet 38, 41–3, 92–4, 96, 98, 108, 146 Ballet C de la B 60 Bara’em 57 Basic Rights for Egyptian Dance Artists 24 Bausch, Pina 50 Beirut 4–5, 38, 51, 90–1, 106, 116, 130–1, 134–5, 140, 147–8 Beit Aneesh 6 Beitillo 61, 63 Beitunia 55, 87 Bieber, Justin 62 Al-Bireh 73 Birmingham 117 Birzeit University 55 blogs 24 Bodrum 23, 38 body 6–7, 9, 17, 30, 34–52 Arab world 125–39 borders 78, 80 censorship 111–12, 119 freedom 97–8, 100 propaganda 117 struggles 148–50

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Index borders 6–7, 17, 52, 67, 69–87, 157 Bouazizi, Mohamed 21 Bourj el-Barajneh 140, 142 breaking boundaries 69–87 British Council 13, 115, 119, 121 British Dance Edition 117–18 British Embassy, Jordan 93 Bruner, Edward 10 Byblos 89 CACTUS Performance Art Collective 79, 82–3 Café Downtown, Damascus 5, 36 Café Zamn, Ramallah 55 Cairo 4–6, 21–4, 26–8, 31, 33 body 127, 130–2, 134–5, 137–9 censorship 104, 106, 108–10, 112–19, 121 Cairo American University 107 Cairo Contemporary Dance Center (CCDC) 27 Cairo Modern Dance Company 23, 108 Cairography 129–30, 136 careers 39–41, 93, 97 Carroll, Lewis 145 censorship 4, 6–7, 9, 17, 50, 72, 83, 85, 101–21, 130–1 Centre de Danse de Lisboa 95 Chester 93–4 Chile/Chileans 101 China/Chinese 79, 101 choice 6–7, 17 choreographers 4, 7, 10–11, 17, 28 body 127, 131–2, 139 borders 76, 78–9 censorship 101–21 freedom 91, 97 future projects 157 occupation 55, 58 politics 30

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propaganda 107, 114–16, 118 society 142–3, 145, 147 surveillance 34, 38, 44–6, 48 civil disobedience 21 civil war 4–5, 9, 34, 36, 51, 88, 90, 140, 157 class structure 38, 58 classes 10, 12, 29, 33, 40 borders 73, 77, 79 censorship 107–8, 111–12 freedom 93–4, 96 occupation 61–3 propaganda 117 society 146–50 surveillance 43, 46, 49 collaboration 46, 58, 72, 81, 83, 100, 114–15 colonialism 8, 21, 80–1 consent process 14 contemporary dance 3, 9, 41, 46–8, 50–1 borders 79–80 censorship 108, 112, 123 freedom 97 occupation 54, 59–60 propaganda 107 society 149, 151, 159 Coppélia 98 corruption 21, 27 cultural centres 40, 95–6, 109, 114–15, 127–8 culture 4, 6–8, 11, 26–30, 33 body 125 borders 77, 81 censorship 111 freedom 93, 97, 99 future projects 155–7 propaganda 104, 106, 116 shock 44, 95 society 143 surveillance 37 Cunningham, Merce 147–8 curfews 77 Cyprus 91 Cyrus, Miley 62

177

dabke 34, 59–61, 63, 78, 80, 82, 103, 142, 147 Daily News Egypt 24 Damascus 4–5, 36, 38–42, 45, 47, 50–1, 90 Damascus Contemporary Dance Platform 47, 50 dance companies 46–7, 50, 57, 69–70, 79, 82–3, 112, 114, 148 dance degrees 147, 150–1 Dance Magazine 109 Dancing on the Edge Festival 5, 72, 82 Dar al-Assad for Culture and Arts 39 Darwish, Mahmoud 54 Davies, Charlotte 13 day of rage 21 Dead Sea 84 democracy 24 demonstrations 22 Desperate attempt 55, 58 dictatorship 27, 139 Downtown Contemporary Arts (D-Caf) Festival 119 Dubai 51 DVDs 106 East, the 8 Egypt/Egyptians 8, 21–2, 24, 26, 28–31 body 129, 131, 135, 137–8 censorship 104, 107–8, 111, 114, 121 freedom 88 politics 33 surveillance 36 Ek, Matz 41 elections 21, 34 Enana 50 England/English 77, 94, 107, 111 English language 13, 87, 94, 127–8 Enta Omri 97 ethics 14 ethnographies 10–13 Eurocentrism 8, 80

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178

Index

Europe/Europeans 8, 28–9, 47–8, 51, 76, 80–1, 118 Experimental Theatre Festival 114 Ezzat, Ezzat Ismail 24 Facebook 6, 12, 21, 24, 36, 58–9, 89–90 Fanon, Frantz 155 feminism 125 festivals 5, 27, 47–8, 50–1, 72, 89, 99, 114, 119, 150–1 film 3, 10, 34, 50, 129–32, 134, 136–7, 141–2 Fire of Anatolia 62 folklore 38, 41, 50, 60, 79 Foster, Susan 125 France/French 77, 114–15, 129, 135, 147 Frankfurt University of Music and Performing Arts 41–3, 45–6 freedom 6–7, 9, 17, 21, 69, 78, 88–100, 107, 111, 116 French language 13 Fulbright Scholarship 96 fundamentalism 21 funding 29, 47, 97, 114–15 El-Funoun Palestinian Popular Dance Troupe 5–6, 55, 57–8, 60, 63, 73, 76–80, 82, 156 future generations 157 future projects 155–60 Galilee 140 Gaza City 76, 101 Gaza Strip 69 gender 4, 7, 21, 30, 129 German language 43–4 Germany/Germans 39–49, 51 Goethe Institute Scholarship for Performing Arts 40–1, 46 Goldman, Emma 157 Goldsmiths College 85 graffiti 23, 69–70

WOMEN DANCE REVOLUTION.indb 178

Graham, Martha 41, 110, 147 Graham technique 26, 107, 111, 116–17 Le Grand Cru 82 Greece/Greeks 48 Greek language 85 Green Card 112 Grosz, Elizabeth 125 Guardian 24 Guimaraes 94 Haddad, Kasem 146 Hafez, Adham 24 Haifa 58 Al Hakawati Theatre 75 Hammad, Suheir 18 Hammond School for Dance 93 Hamra 147 Hamra Café, Beirut 90 harassment 127–32, 134, 136 Hassan, Kinda 129 Haya Cultural Centre 96 Hebrew language 54 hegemony 4, 22, 27–9 Heyl, Barbara 11–12 Hezbollah 140 Higher Institute of Dramatic Arts (HIDA) 38–40, 47–9 hijab 31, 157 Hijazi, Betty 93 Holland 28, 48 Homs 34 Horton technique 111 human rights 21, 34 human trafficking 89 humanitarian crises 36, 91 Hunt, Amber 18, 87 I Matter 142–3 identity (ID) 9, 15, 28, 30, 58–9, 81–2 ideology 121 Imam, Hala Hassan 5–6, 22–33, 119, 121, 155 improvisation 43–4, 107, 111 Instagram 70 International Dance Day Festival 89, 151

internet 21, 51, 109 interviews 4, 6–7, 10–17, 23, 36–8 body 129, 134 borders 73, 75 censorship 104 freedom 91–2, 95 future projects 155 occupation 55, 57 propaganda 104, 106, 113, 117–18 society 142 intifadas 69, 73 Iran/Iranians 72 Iraq/Iraqis 88–9, 98 Israel/Israelis 18, 50, 52, 54, 58 Army 55, 71, 75, 77 borders 72, 83–4, 87 censorship 103 future projects 157–8 society 140 Istanbul 90 Jasmine Café, Ramallah 70 jazz 38, 147 Al-Jazzari 5, 36 Jbeil 5, 142–3, 147, 151 jellabiya 30 Jerusalem 52, 59, 75, 83–4 Jordan/Jordanians 6, 8, 52, 71–2, 88, 90–3, 95–9, 127, 157 Kais and Layla 146 Kamhawi, Rania 6, 91–100, 155, 157 Kanafani, Ghassan 75 Kawamleh, Fayez 58–9 keffiyeh 55, 73 Khalife, Marcel 146 Khattab, Ata 57 Khattab, Lina 55, 57 Khattab, Nadia 6, 18, 54–65, 155, 157 kinesiology 45, 51 King Hussein/Allenby Bridge 52, 71, 157 Kulthoum, Umm 97 language 4, 8, 13, 43–4, 85, 90, 94, 127–8, 149–50

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Index Lawrence, Sarah 147 Lebanese American University 89, 142, 150–151 Lebanon/Lebanese 5, 8, 88–91, 127, 129, 134– 5, 140–51, 157 Lent, Shawn Renee 24 Levant 8 Lisbon 95 lived experience 11 London 79, 83, 85, 108–9, 116 London Contemporary Dance School (LCDS) 108–9 Louzioti, Dafne 83 Al-Madina Theatre, Beirut 51 Maqamat Dance Theatre 106 marches 22 Martha Graham Dance School 110, 147 meaning making 3–18 media 7, 101 Mediterranean Sea 8, 143 Mennsitieri, Thais 82–4 Middle East 8, 24, 97, 99, 135, 151 military service 36, 90 modern dance 23, 29, 106, 108–9, 114, 116, 118, 149 Modern Dance School, Cairo 23, 106, 114, 116 Moussaoui, Rana 9 Mubarak, Hosni 21, 23–4, 26–7 Myosotis 46 Nablus 76 Naous, Dalia 5, 127, 129–39, 155 narratives 6–8, 10–11, 14–18, 77, 83 censorship 108, 111, 114 freedom 95, 97 future projects 155 Nasser, Lana 58, 72

WOMEN DANCE REVOLUTION.indb 179

National Center of Culture and Arts, Jordan 91, 96–8 New York 26, 110–14, 116, 147–8 New Zealand/New Zealanders 5, 26, 54, 62, 71–2, 155, 158 Nile 23 Noor 33 North Africa 8 occupation 4, 6–7, 9, 17, 52–65, 69–87, 157 Occupy Movement 84 Opera House, Cairo 24, 26–7, 106, 108, 114 Opera House, Damascus 51 Orientalism 9 outreach 97 Palestine/Palestinians 8, 29, 52, 57, 69–87 censorship 101, 103 freedom 89 future projects 156–7, 159 occupation 59–62 society 140 Paris 5, 29, 79, 130, 134–5 passports 52–4, 71–2, 113, 158 performance 9–10, 12, 17–18, 57–9, 62 body 125, 128, 131–2, 134, 137–9 borders 72–3, 75–7, 82–5 censorship 101–21 freedom 96–100 politics 21–33 society 142–3, 145–8, 150–1 surveillance 34–51 Performing Arts Center, Amman 6 Petra 99 pharaohs 30 photographers 18, 65, 87 Pilates 45, 49 Pinochet, Augusto 101 police 21, 115

179

politics 4, 6–7, 9, 15, 17–18 body 130 borders 72, 82–4 future projects 155, 157, 159 performance 21–33 propaganda 101, 104, 115, 119 surveillance 36 Popular Arts Centre, Ramallah 73, 76 Portugal/Portuguese 94 Portuguese language 85, 94 post-colonialism 8, 21 presence 6–7, 17, 54, 98, 118, 129 propaganda 101–21 prostitution 31 Qalandia checkpoint 18 Al-Quds University 13 Queen Alia International Airport 88 Rainer, Yvonne 109 Rajeh, Omar 118 Ramallah 4–6, 18, 54–9, 61, 63, 69–72, 78–9, 84, 92, 101 rapport 11 refugees 88–9, 91, 98, 140–2 regime change 21 rehearsals 108 Reissman, Catherine 10 religion 4, 7, 31, 33, 101, 139, 146 revolution 4, 8, 22–4, 26–7, 29–31 body 131, 138 borders 70 censorship 115, 121 future projects 157, 160 riots 21 Roaming inner landscapes 116 role models 63, 156 Romeo and Juliet 146 Rowe, Nicholas 55, 71, 140–1 Royal Academy of Dance (RAD) 94

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180

Index

Royal Cultural Center, Amman 95 Russia/Russians 38, 42, 96 Sadat, Sakina 113 Al-Sarab Alternative Dance School 149–50 Sarah Lawrence College 147 Sareyyet Ramallah Dance Studios 69–70 Saudi Arabia/Saudi Arabians 146 scholarship 7, 9, 11, 17, 125 Sefan, Mey 5, 36–51, 155 self-censorship 101, 131 Sensored 82–4 sexual harassment 130 Shanghai Expo 2010 79 Skype 12, 91 So you think you can dance 150 society 4, 9, 37, 51, 77 body 129, 134, 136, 138 freedom 95, 97–9 future projects 156–7 struggles 140–51 Southern Mediterranean 4–10, 15, 17–18, 21, 47 body 125, 129 borders 70 freedom 91 future projects 155–7 propaganda 101, 103, 117 spies 36 Stephenson, Arnaud 18, 87 stereotypes 9, 30, 119, 156 stories 3, 10–14 street art 23 street dance 34, 155 struggles 140–51 superpowers 9 surrealism 84, 141 surveillance 6–7, 17, 34–51, 115, 129 symposiums 5, 23 Syria/Syrians 5, 8–9, 34, 36, 39, 44, 46–51, 88–91, 157

WOMEN DANCE REVOLUTION.indb 180

taboos 30, 38, 41, 44, 46, 131–2, 134, 136–7, 145 Tahrir Square, Cairo 23 Talking Dance: Contemporary Histories from the Southern Mediterranean 4 Tallat 55 Tanween Dance Company 47 tap 146 Tea and Coffee Leaf Café, Cairo 23 teachers 4, 7, 10–12, 17, 27–8 borders 75–6, 79 censorship 104, 106–7, 112, 114 freedom 91–7, 99 future projects 159 occupation 61–3 propaganda 116–19 society 142, 148–50 surveillance 38, 42–4, 46–9 technique 26, 77–8, 80, 108, 111–12, 116–18, 147 television (TV) 33, 101, 103, 146–7, 150 Tharp, Twyla 109 These shoes are made for walking 139 Tiananmen Square, China 101 Al-Tireh 55, 69 trance 45 translation 13–14, 94, 140 tuition fees 40, 109 Tunisia/Tunisians 8, 21 Turkey/Turks 5, 23, 33, 90–1, 129 Twitter 21

United States of America (USA) 77, 96, 109, 116–17, 143, 146–8 University of Auckland Human Participants Ethics Committee 14 University of Leicester 150 University of London 85 University of South Dakota 96 uprisings 4, 8–9, 21, 29, 34, 36, 51, 106

unemployment 21 UNESCO 113 UNHCR 89 United Kingdom (UK) 93–5

yoga 116 youth 8 YouTube 24, 58, 129

veil 119, 121, 136–7 video 34, 41, 93, 106, 109– 10, 129, 140–2 Vimeo 121, 129 violence 9, 21, 51, 69, 135 Wadi Musa 99 Waiting Forbidden 72, 82 walls 69, 72, 84, 87 Waltz, Sacha 48 war crimes 34 Wesh w’Dahr 30–1, 119, 121 West, the 7–8, 41, 48, 50, 77, 79, 96, 106–7, 125 West Bank 18, 52, 55, 61, 69, 71, 87 women dancers 7–11, 14, 16–18, 27, 123 body 125–39 borders 72, 78–9, 82 censorship 104 freedom 91, 100 future projects 155–60 meeting 3–6 occupation 54, 57, 60, 65 society 140–51 surveillance 36, 38, 40 workshops 10, 12, 49, 60, 77, 107, 131, 140–2, 148–51

Zamalek 23, 33

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PLATE SECTION.indd 1

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Plate 1: Amman Citadel Image by Arnaud Stephenson (2014)

Plate 2: Al-Hussein Mosque, Khan el-Khalili Markets, Cairo Image by Arnaud Stephenson (2014)

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Plate 3: Dalia Naous in These shoes are made for walking by Nancy Naous Image by Mohamed Charara (2013)

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PLATE SECTION.indd 4

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Plate 4: Colourful façade in Raouche, Beirut Image by Rose Martin (2010)

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Plate 5: Nadia Khattab performing at Birzet Nights Image by Shadi Baker (2012)

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Plate 6: Nadra Assaf performing in her production of I Matter Image courtesy of Lebanese American University (2010)

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Plate 7: Noora Baker and Thais Mennsitieri in Sensored by CACTUS Performance Art Collective Image courtesy of CACTUS Performance Art Collective

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Plate 8: Al-Manara by night, Ramallah Image by Arnaud Stephenson (2014)