Dance, dance, dance...

   Khitam and I have attended more dance here than I have in years, and the combination of new theater and new-to-me dance is stunning and also says something about Palestine's divided state, a state that is not yet a nationstate.  This combination also says something about humanity, here or anywhere.  First, the dance.
   For over twenty years, there has been a dance festival in Palestine.  Dance companies from Tunisia, Estonia, Norway, France, Morocco, Scotland, Switzerland, Great Britain and Palestine participated this year.  There have been over twenty performances in two weeks.  Khitam and I attended three in East Jerusalem and one in Ramallah.  Here's where politics enter.  To get into Jerusalem, you need a yellow license plate, available to people with a Jerusalem identity card and to Israeli citizens.  If you live on the West Bank, which includes Ramallah, the city where all Palestinian government offices are, you do not have a yellow license plate and cannot enter Jerusalem unless granted special permission, which is expensive, temporary and not easy to get.  So a Palestinian living in Ramallah, or anywhere else on the West Bank, is unlikely to be able to get to a performance in East Jerusalem.
   But wait!  There's more...  Why East Jerusalem?  Well, Jerusalem was divided into East and West after the creation of Israel in 1948.  The dividing line was marked by what was called The Mandlebaum Gate, an actual gate separating the two halves of Jerusalem and manned by the United Nations.  I remember going there in the sixties, when we drove to Jerusalem from Lebanon, where we were living.  The June War in 1967 changed that.  Israel's victory over the Arab armies began the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.  This paragraph will turn into a not-very-readable book if I continue to explain these divisions, so I'll return to dance.
   Hakawati Theater in East Jerusalem and The Culture Palace in Ramallah were the sites of most of the dance performances.  Sometimes a company would dance in both, so audiences in occupied Palestine and audiences in East Jerusalem could attend.  Sometimes there was one company in one place, another in the other.  It added up to a lot of dance.  Khitam and I attended four dance performances, one with Chelsea, who has been shadowing Khitam as part of her Masters program, and one with Suhayl, Khitam's neighbor and friend for thirty years.  The first performance was a forty minute solo by Mark Brew from the United Kingdom.  When he was twenty, Brew was in a car accident that left him paralyzed from the waist down.  His performance was at times agonizingly moving and it was inspiring.  He was on the floor for the whole performance until the end when he was lifted by the ankles ten feet into the air and suspended there as the stage went black.  He took his bow in a wheelchair.
   The second performance comprised three companies from Tunisia with ties to France.  One was a lovely piece by two performers dealing with estrangement in today's world.  Another was a solo piece with a bizarre beginning: a pile of newspapers on the floor began to move.  The pile looked like a creature from another planet, perhaps one inhabited only by failed journalists.  Eventually, the dancer revealed himself by discarding the newspaper pages that covered him and moved freely, as if reborn, or maybe born.  Finally another solo piece that was a moving, as in dancing, meditation on religion, at times engaging, at other times confusing.
   Monday, we saw Alias Dance Company from Switzerland.  Their company included eleven dancers from Palestine, Tunisia, Egypt, Lebanon and Jordan.  They were exhausting and wonderful and in very good condition!  They moved constantly, crossing from stage right to stage left, returning behind the stage to stage right and going again...and again...and again...and...for an hour.  Their movement and energy were engaging and exhilarating.  They moved sideways, backwards, twisting, sliding, running, swimming on the floor, and when one stopped, which was seldom, the others would keep moving and soon the one stopped would start again.  They were human traffic in New York City, choreographed, or maybe electrical circuitry in action.  The audience loved them and brought them back for several bows.
   Tuesday night we drove to Ramallah to see the final dance event at the Cultural Palace.  The Akram Khan Company from the United Kingdom, dancing a piece about which they wrote: "Hindu Gods, black holes, Indian time cycles, tables, creation and destruction were the starting points" for their fifty-five minute piece.  They were stunning: high energy, powerful movement, solos that burst out of ensemble movement, stillness and then a burst of energy.  Like Alias the night before, their energy and endurance were remarkable.  And, as with Alias the night before, this very large audience brought them back again and again for another bow and another and another.
   At the performance, I met Mohammad Eid, an actor with Ishtar, a theater company in Ramallah whose founders and directors, Edward and Iman, I had met several years ago.  Mohammad told me about two performances coming up at Ishtar, and Khitam and I decided to adjust our plans, which were pretty loose anyway, after nine days of work, to include the two plays.
   Ashtar's theater is intimate, seating about fifty.  Edward and Iman run classes, a small professional company of young actors, tour shows and...they sound similar to The Theater Project, and in some ways they are.  Conditions in Palestine being what they are, Ashtar is constantly struggling to keep going, and they struggle successfully!
   The first performance we saw was a solo production written, directed and acted by German women.  The director was touring with the actress, so both were there to take questions and get feedback after the hour long performance.  The piece came out of a working visit to Afghanistan by the playwright.  Returning to Germany, she discovered it was difficult, maybe impossible to express what she felt after her time in Afghanistan.  The theater piece deals with that.  If my Arabic is weak, which is an understatement, my German is limited to "how are you" and "the window is..."  I don't even remember the word for open or closed!  However, as always, it was interesting to me to see the work and to consider what might have been done differently.
   Last night, we went back to Ashtar, as invited guests, no less, to see the official opening of their new show, Machine & a Hammer.  It was talk back theater, an opportunity for the audience to give feedback and to take part.  There were three pieces dealing with Palestine workers: the first about a carpenter who loses his job after seven years and has no benefits; the second about a construction worker hurt on the job who gets no workmen's comp; the third about a tailor shop where conditions are terrible with no recourse for the workers.  Afterwards, Edward, the director, talked with us, asked us for feedback and invited people to provide different choices or endings.  Two young men tried it, and the ensemble actors reacted to the men's choices.  It was good theater and good discussion and people would have talked on late into the evening if Edward hadn't ended it with a shookran (thank you) for coming and a round of applause.
   All of these events and the reaction to them reflect similarities, not differences, between the two cultures in this area who want the same space.  These events reminded audiences of the role art can play in developing and maintaining community, something we forget when it's budget time.  These are not grand events; they are small, mostly intimate, and they invite the community present to participate emotionally, mentally and spiritually.  It is the small events, the small steps that remind us of our humanity and of the possibility for change, one small step at a time.  There is often a clamor around these events that drowns them out, but not for everyone.  Some see, hear, participate and know there is something better worth striving for, one way or another.