Words & Interview by Michael Zarathus-Cook
Featuring: Khaled Qatamesh (Director - Arabic), Noora Baker (Head of Production - English)
Dancing may be the last thing on your mind if you’re trying to survive a genocide, there are far more urgent matters: food, water, shelter, safety, medical care. Yet, the fortitude that is required to persist in the face of such relentless cruelty, is itself rooted on something much deeper than the instinct to merely survive. To not only survive, but to survive with your dignity intact. For Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, this bare minimum of human dignity has been denied both at home and under the watch of the global community they’ve pleaded with for a ceasefire. How do you maintain your dignity despite this onslaught? For El-Funoun Palestine Popular Dance Troupe, the answer to that question has always been in the form of a choreographic gesture. Specializing in the Arab-Palestinian dabke tradition, El-Funoun was founded in 1979 with a mandate to “contribute to liberating the individual and society at large.” For this company, dance has always been, above all, an expression of freedom, a wand of defiance, a weapon of resistance.
