Raising Dust: A Cultural History of Dance in Palestine

273 Pages·2010·5.8 MB·English

by  Nicholas Rowe

Nicholas Rowe graduated from the Australian Ballet School and subsequently
worked as a choreographer and dancer with the Australian Ballet, the Sydney
Dance Company, the Finnish National Ballet, Ballet Philippines, the West
Australian Ballet, the Royal New Zealand Ballet, Modern Dance Turkey and
Nomad Dance Theatre. In 2000 he moved to the West Bank city of Ramallah
and spent the next eight years working with local dance collectives and arts
institutions on dance performance and education projects in cities, villages
and refugee camps across the West Bank and Gaza Strip. He completed his
PhD on Palestinian dance through the London Contemporary Dance School.
He is the author of Art, During Siege: Performing Arts Workshops in Traumatised
Communities and his articles have appeared in Dance Research Journal, Research in
Dance Education, Dance Europe, Dancing Times, Dance Australia, the Jerusalem Times
and This Week in Palestine. He is currently an Associate Dean at the National
Institute of Creative Arts and Industries, University of Auckland.
facing page: 1 Dancers of El-Funoun Popular Dance Troupe, 2004
Ra i s i n g
D u s t
A Cultural History of Dance in Palestine
NNNN i c h o l a s R o w e
Published in 2010 by I.B.Tauris & Co Ltd
6 Salem Road, London W2 4BU
175 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10010
www.ibtauris.com
Distributed in the United States and Canada Exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan,
175 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10010
Copyright © 2010 Nicholas Rowe
The right of Nicholas Rowe to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in
accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or any part thereof, may
not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form
or by any means, eletronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior
written permission of the publisher.
ISBN 978 1 84511 943 0
A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
A full CIP record is available from the Library of Congress
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: available
Typeset by JCS Publishing Services Ltd, www.jcs-publishing.co.uk
Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham
Acknowledgement is made of a grant from the AM Qattan Foundation towards the publication
of the book.
To
SGT, MR, SR and YR
Three generations of
very different dancers
2 A dancer from the Caananite town of Laish,
thirteenth–fourteenth century BC
Contents
List of illustrations ix
Acknowledgements xi
Part One: Entering Palestine and its history 1
1 Dance, people and politics 3
2 Finding the start for a history 15
Part Two: 1800–1947, Dance observed: the salvage paradigm 25
3 The late Ottoman period 27
4 The British Mandate 55
Part Three: 1948–80, Dance revived: three processes of salvage 79
5 Zionist salvage 81
6 Pan-Arabist salvage 93
7 Palestinian nationalist salvage 111
Part Four: 1980–2008, Dance in evolutionary motion: the
post-salvage paradigm 127
8 The First Intifada 129
9 The Oslo period 159
10 The Second Intifada 179
11 Dancing down the road 197
Notes 205
List of interviewees 215
References 218
Permissions and credits 236
Index 238

Illustrations
Pictures in text
1 Dancers of El-Funoun Popular Dance Troupe, 2004 iii
2 Bronze Age tile of Caananite dancer vi
3 Entering Nablus in 1839 1
4 Entering Nablus in 2004 2
5 Map of Palestine in 1687 14
6 Early Bronze Age seal of dancing line 17
7 Late Bronze Age cultic stand 18
8 Late Bronze Age tile 18
9 Nabi Musa festivities in Jerusalem, early 1900s 22
10 Bedouin dance game, early 1900s 24
11 The Nabi Musa parade near Jerusalem, early 1900s 26
12 Pilgrims at Jericho in 1839 37
13 Wedding dance in Bethlehem, 1940s 51
14 Dervish dancing in the Nabi Musa parade, early1900s 54
15 Dancing at Nabi Musa, early 1900s 58
16 Bedouin woman sword dance, early 1900s 64
17 Sword dance at wedding, early 1900s 65
18 The ruins of Ba’albakk in 1839 92
19 Ballroom dancing, Grand Hotel, Ramallah, 1960s 99
20 The Ramallah Nights Festivals, 1960s 104
21 Jordan from the West Bank 110
22 Rural life in Jaffa in 1839 114
23 Women working in Nazareth in 1839 122
24 El-Funoun at the Birzeit Nights Festival, Birzeit University, 1984 128
25 El-Funoun perform at Birzeit University in 1979 136
26 El-Funoun perform Afrah Filastiniyah, Al-Quds University, 1987 139