Book of the MonthRaising Dust: A Cultural History of Dance in Palestine
By Nicholas Rowe
I.B. Tauris, London and New York, 2010, 244 pages, $50.00
The book is remarkable and a pleasure to read. It is remarkable not because of the writing alone but because of the work that has been put into it - clearly not the sole result of research. The author, an Australian dancer and choreographer, has spent many years working with various dance groups in Palestine and has thus experienced the grim realities of Palestinian life. The book opens with the author describing his entry into “Palestinian territories” through Kalandia Checkpoint on a tear-gassy day, and closes years later, with the author and his dance students being arrested, beaten, and humiliated by Israeli soldiers near Hebron.
The author maintains that dance is a cultural performance by an indigenous people who fell victim to the violence of colonisation. Dance in this context becomes loaded with national significance, and the dancing body becomes organically connected to other dancing bodies, weaving together as they go a sense of cohesion and unity. Dance becomes resistance because it sustains a sense of collective identity, indigenous authenticity, and national pride, and materialises the imagined community, be it the lost ones of the past, or the wished-for ones of the present and the future. Yet dance is not a natural phenomenon but a discursive one that can be subject to socio-political powers and ideological conflicts. Through dance, for example, Palestinian communities ritualistically reinstated the social order, such as that between man and woman, individual and community, culture and politics. Through the course of its development, however, Palestinian dance came to question these very notions of social order and hierarchy. The author maintains a critical perspective that neither romanticises nor orientalises this cultural phenomenon. In fact, it is very refreshing to read such a book by a Westerner.
My only take against the book is its scope of research that is limited to the West Bank, specifically to Ramallah, the cultural capital of the newly founded Palestine. In addition, the book starts by discussing Palestinian dance in general but then gradually focuses on the two dance groups, El-Funoun el-Sha’biyah and Sarreyet Ramallah. There is no discussion of dance amongst exiled communities or amongst Palestinians who remained in historical Palestine and became Israeli citizens. Did dance disappear from their cultural life? What has become of dance there, as a social ritual? Did it have any significance in promoting and sustaining a sense of cultural or national identity? What about Palestinian refugee communities in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and other places in the world? Perhaps this is too much to ask for in one book. I hope that this work will encourage other scholars and researchers to take further this important work that fills a vacuum when it comes to research and writings on Palestinian performing arts.
Review by Sobhi al-Zobaidi.
No comments:
Post a Comment