POST 26: To (en)gender courage: Shubbak

(EN)COURAGE AND (EN)GENDER

More from the Shubbak Festival.

Badke; and When the Arabs used to dance..

When the Arabs Used to Dance; photo: Agathe Poupeney

Four men, in a grid pattern, move like cats licking their own tails. They swivel their hips, pout their lips. Again and again, moving forward,  pouting and provoking, jerking, grating. 

At times the movements are sharp; the shadows on their faces, their faces with 5-o'clock shadows, are dark, heavy, challenging. At other times, some (not all) achieve a serpentine grace. They are women in men's bodies, are they? They are dancing in a way that honours women. So passionate, so beautiful, shirts on, shirts off. Is this an attempt to understand what it is to be woman?

The final 15 minutes broadcasts Hollywood behind them: the pouting belles, the wiggling hips, the ogling men, the American idea of Arab exoticism in the 1960s.  The whole piece changes tone. The dancers exaggerate lustfulness, almost mocking themselves. It becomes high camp; it becomes a different piece. 

Then choreographer Radhouane El Meddeb leaps from the audience to bow with his dancers. His red eyeglasses gleam, his tight shirt brightens the stage. Ah. Would it had not ended like this. Retrospectively, the show becomes an example of high camp. To my mind, it had been much more subtle, beautiful, challenging.

C de la B's Badke is like a street revelry spun on stage, a celebration of a wild folk dance practiced mainly in Palestine, Lebanon and Syria. Except there are moments of exquisite pain, like a rift in time, opening to isolation, or historical violence. A gay couple court each other--one more aggressive, the other shy: dangerous, an alleyway; too many looking. The performance is as powerful for  its  behind-the-scenes preparations as for the fire it brings to the stage: the ongoing mentoring of young Palestinian dancers by the Belgian C De La B. 

Joy, lust, passion, and pain. 

Meeting-grounds.

Badke: Ballet C de la B. Photo: Danny Willems

text c. Z Soboslay 2015.