Dance Me To The End Of Life

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Zoomingarden (@zoominzee)

FROM TURTLE ISLAND TO GAZA by Palestinian-Greek-Canadian artist: Christina Damianos

by Palestinian-Greek-Canadian artist: Christina Damianos

 

Palestinian Arts Festival in Minneapolis May 3 through 6, 2012

Westminster Presbyterian Church, Minneapolis

 http://dwkcommentaries.wordpress.com/tag/ibtisam-barakat/

[AS ALWAYS PLEASE GO TO THE LINK TO READ GOOD ARTICLES IN FULL: HELP SHAPE ALGORITHMS (and conversations) THAT EMPOWER DECENCY, DIGNITY, JUSTICE & PEACE... and hopefully Palestine]  

On May 3 through 6, 2012, Minneapolis’ Westminster Presbyterian Church will host a Palestinian Arts Festival. It will celebrate music, painting, film, dance, poetry and commentary by Palestinians.
The opening event at noon (CDT) on Thursday, May 3rd, will be a Westminster Town Hall Forum presentation entitled “Playing for Peace in Gaza” by Patrick McGrann. A Minnesota native, McGrann has spent the last 15 years creating toys and events for young people living in the midst of violence.  He now lives in Gaza where he has taught at the Islamic University, lead the rebuilding of the American International School and developed educational partnerships between the Middle East and the West. The Forum is free and open to the public and broadcast on Minnesota Public Radio. The Forum is preceded by a half-hour of free music and followed by a free reception and a discussion group.

Later that same day (May 3rd) at 7:30 p.m. at the Women’s Club of Minneapolis (410 Oak Grove Street) 14 young dancers from the Diyar Dance Theatre of Bethlehem, Palestine will perform. Tickets at $10 are available at Westminster on Sundays or on the web. Starting at 5:00 p.m. the public is welcome to dine at the Women’s Club; call 612-813-5300 for reservations. A reception with dessert will follow the performance.

Diyar Dance

 On Friday, May 4th, at 6:00 p.m. an art exhibit, Room for Hope, opens at Westminster.  It brings realistic, abstract and provocative images by Palestinian artists expressing their visions of the present and their hopes for the future.

Ibtisam Barakat (Steve Fisch credit)

 Also on Friday, May 4th, at 7:30 p.m. will be a concert at Westminster. Ibtisam Barakat will present her “Freedom Doors Made of Poems.” She grew up in Ramallah, West Bank, and now lives in the U.S. Her work focuses on healing social injustices and the hurts of wars, especially those involving young people. Ibtisam emphasizes that conflicts are more likely to be resolved with creativity, kindness, and inclusion rather than with force, violence, and exclusion. The concert will also include Palestinian musicians playing music from their homeland.
On Saturday, May 5th at 1:00 p.m. a Palestinian Short Film Festival will be presented in Westminster’s Great Hall.

Rev. Dr. Mitri Raheb

The concluding event of the Festival will be part of Westminster’s Sunday worship service on May 6th at 10:30 a.m. (CDT). Rev. Dr. Mitri Raheb of Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church in Bethlehem, Palestine will be the preacher. Palestinian musicians will lead the world debut of specially commissioned music during the service. Our guests will sing in Arabic while Westminster members and others sing in English. For those who cannot attend the service, it is live-streamed and subsequently archived on the web.

This historic Festival is the outgrowth of Westminster’s partnership with the Christmas Church and of mission trips to that church by Westminster members. (Westminster also has partnerships with churches and other organizations in Brazil, Cameroon and Cuba.)

Evangelical Christmas Church

 

*******************

 The Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church in Bethlehem

Al Hanouneh - protecting the collective Palestinian memory

http://www.jordantimes.com/?news=32768
Al Hanouneh - protecting the collective Palestinian memory Al Hanouneh troupe members dance in traditional Palestinian outfits in Amman on Saturday evening (Reuters photo by Muhammad Hamed)

By Mohammad Ben Hussein

AMMAN - Arab nationalism and Palestinian folk traditions were set to live music in a performance in the capital on Saturday evening.

In a concert held to express solidarity with the Palestinians, Al Hanouneh folk troupe took to the stage at the Royal Cultural Centre and danced to popular tunes such as “Youya” “Alee Narak”.

Band leader Musa Saleh said the performance titled, "Guardians of the Memory", is part of the group’s mission to preserve the recent and historical memory of Palestine and the greater Arab world.

“We have a duty as a band to protect the collective Palestinian memory. Our memory is part of our identity and Israel is doing its best to tarnish that memory to destroy our identity,” Saleh told The Jordan Times after the concert, which marked the anniversary of the partition of Palestine by the UN General Assembly in 1947.

“We see Israel as trying to rob everything from us, not only the land. They dress air hostesses on their planes with Palestinian attire and claim to have invented falafel among other things. We should not allow them steal our tradition and culture,” he added.

This year’s event featured prominent bands and poets from across the region, including Tawfiq Al Halabi, Rayek Kheir, Shadi Mousa, Najeeb Yuakbi, Ahmad Fahmawi, Flayeh Al Jubour, Sana Mousa, Talal Haidar and Ahmad Fahmawi, among others.

Al Hanouneh was established in 1993 in Amman with the goal of protecting and safeguarding the culture and folklore of the area through the selection and classification of Palestinian folklore.

The group comprises over 80 dancers, musicians and singers.

20 December 2010

This Week in Palestine Book of the Month- Raising Dust: A Cultural History of Dance in Palestine

Book of the Month
Raising Dust: A Cultural History of Dance in Palestine
By Nicholas Rowe
I.B. Tauris, London and New York, 2010, 244 pages, $50.00

http://www.thisweekinpalestine.com/details.php?id=3246&ed=187&edid=187

Raising Dust by Nicholas Rowe is the first book of its kind to focus solely on Palestinian dance, past and present. The book is divided into four parts that discuss dance history and practices in Palestine from biblical times through the second Intifada, though the main context is post-1948 Nakba and how dance emerged as an act of resistance to Zionist policies that aimed to erase Palestinians and their culture.

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.

Message From the Editor