Curfew Palestinian Dance Performance at Rich Mix

On Saturday the 24th at Rich Mix, two dabke groups, El Funoun and Hawiyya, one from Ramallah and one from London, joined forces to produce Curfew, mixing traditional dabke movemens with contemporary dance in a show revolving around the Palestinian experimence of the newscycle, the way the news is both flickering social media feeds and …

Mahragan Music

Listening to Cairokee's Keif (Fix) recently, I was reminded to look up another crowdfunded project from a couple of years ago -- this one on Mahragan music and dance.    The project was first put up on the site back in 2014, the idea being to make a documentary on the Mahragan movement, focusing on the …

Focus Young Arab Choreographers Opens May 25

Focus Young Arab Choreographers is a project is supported by the Italian culture ministry and eleven different dance festivals in Italy.  The aim is to promote cultural dialogue and exchange between Arab and Italian artists and choreographers. The programme opens May 25 and runs until September 23. Six young choreographers from the Arab world will …

Egyptian Arts Festival D-Caf (March 31- April 22)

D-Caf (Downtown Contemporary Arts Festival)  returns for its fifth edition on March 31 running until April 22. "Egypt’s only international multi-disciplinary contemporary arts festival," D-CAF has everything from literature readings to concerts, to film and theatre, comedy stand up and a puppet show. Dina El Wedidi and Khansa Batma open the show with a concert at Horreya Garden. …

Dabke Inspired Dance: Badke in Toronto

The Belgian-Palestinian dance production Badke (the title is a play on dabke) is running until Feb. 20 at the Fleck Dance Theatre in Toronto (harbourfrontcentre.com). A co-production between ballets C de la B, KVS (Royal Flemish Theatre) and the Palestinian A.M. Qattan Foundation, Badke is a 10-dancer piece inspired by dabke, an Arab folk dance from the …

Highlights of Shubbak 2015

In a wide-ranging article which provides an overview of the Arab art scene in the West, Lana Asfour writes about the commission and performance of an opera based on the acclaimed novel Cities of Salt by Abdelrahman Munif as part of this year's ongoing Shubbak festival. As Asfour writes, Cities of Salt is "arguably [Munif's] greatest work, …

THIS Bridge: Arab, Middle Eastern & Muslim Artists

Lebanese American theater artist Andrea Assaf, founder of Art2Action, is spearheading a two year event series at The University of South Florida under the title THIS Bridge: Arab, Middle Eastern & Muslim Artists, a series "that speaks to what it means to be Arabic or Islamic in today’s society — with an emphasis on women who are either …

What’s Dance Got to Do With Genocide?

In a NYT review of French-Algerian choreographer Rachid Ouramdane's Ordinary Witnesses, the reviewer asked: What has dance got to do with genocide or torture?  In Ordinary Witnesses, which incorporates innovative uses of multimedia and video testimonies and moves from interviews with survivors of genocide and torture to dance and contortionist movements, there is an exploration of what …