I was in Munich, Germany, settling into my new temporary digs when my Couchsurfing host flung open the living room windows. “Lüften!” he exclaimed ardently.

The breeze felt nice, if not a bit chilly, on that late winter afternoon. But in a land where the people love cold plunging, I made like a local and embraced the briskness.

Although it was March 2020, finding fresh air had nothing to do with the impending Covid-19 pandemic. In fact, as my host explained, lüften is a German cultural tradition practiced multiple times daily.

Simply the practice of opening windows for natural ventilation, it is considered essential for well-being and doesn’t cost a dime. Even a short burst of air has a powerful impact, with the typical session lasting from five to thirty minutes.

In the modern era, Germans have emerged as trailblazers in health and social care, but they have been practicing lüften for centuries to rid living spaces of stale air, odors, and even mold by regulating humidity. For these benefits, many landlords write lüften into their rental contracts.

Related: Improving the air quality of your home starting with your AC unit

Physically, lüften is a tried and true remedy for improving respiratory function, energy levels, and mood. We refresh our spaces with plants with much of the same motivation; lüften makes greenification a more immersive experience.

Lüften must invigorate a primal understanding that we are connected to the elements. When, for whatever modern reasons, we are stuck inside, we can swiftly invite in the great outdoors. Easy, breezy, beautiful.

See also: Eco-friendly upgrades every homeowner can make

I’ve never been a big fan of air conditioning, much preferring air that hasn’t been tampered with. It has always been a no-brainer for me to let fresh air flow inside during warmer weather, but now I happily crack the windows during the colder months too, actively recalling my old friend and the wisdom of his ancestors.

I brought lüften back with me from Germany, an unseen souvenir — often the best kind of memento.

The post Let the lüften in — and be healthier for it appeared first on Green Prophet.

I was shopping online for a candle the other day and quickly realized this: candles have gotten very expensive! Soy candles, aromatherapy candles, eco-friendly candles in fancy jars. If only there was a way to create some nice romantic lighting without breaking the bank.

But wait – there is! Introducing the orange peel candle: the solution to expensive candle-buying syndrome. And it’s a guaranteed prize for getting your daily dose of vitamin C from its citrusy contents.

Naturally providing the candle holder from the peel and the wick from the pith, all you need is a little oil and voila – you’ll have yourself a candle in no time!

Related: 5 ways to use orange peels in the kitchen – candied and

Try the fun and easy process for yourself by following along:

1.  First, slice your orange in half. That’s the half with the knobby part on the outside – the one I’m holding in my right hand, in the picture. The pith coming from that knob is stronger and will make for a better wick.

2. Remove the fruit, being careful to leave the thick string of pith that extends up from the center intact. I used a spoon to make a nice clean shave inside the orange peel towards the end of this step.

3. Fill the orange peel with oil of your choice. Here in my kitchen in Greece, where I’m currently living for work, I had only sunflower oil and extra-virgin olive oil. Deciding to save the latter for eating, I went with the sunflower oil. Do not drown the string of pith that extends upward – remember, this is your wick!

4. Light it up! (Optional soundtrack: “Light It Up” by Major Lazer, followed by “(Burn Baby Burn) Disco Inferno” by The Trammps) It took a while for the pith to catch fire; I felt as if I was toasting a marshmallow, watching in eager anticipation. Just be patient, and it will light. Good things come to those who wait!

5. Optional: Create candle covers by cutting shapes into the as-of-yet unused orange peel halves. I chose a crescent moon and a star.

6. Especially optional: Place your candle in a bowl that’s filled with water. Marvel as it floats around, and place a freshly picked flower in the water. You can customize your add-ins; choose your favorite leaf or flower to add an herbal or floral note to the orange scent from the peel. And then – because why not – take a selfie.

A word of caution: I left my orange peel candle out for a couple nights, and when I checked back, I saw that hundreds of fruit flies had come to feast. Most had died in their gluttony, floating in the oil inside the orange peel, but many were lingering above it. So I’d suggest refrigerating your orange peel candles after their first use, if you plan to reuse them later.

What do you do when life hands you oranges? Why, make orange peel candles, of course! If you have grapefruits or lemons, you can also make candles from their peels using this how-to guide.

The post The orange peel candle: A how-to guide appeared first on Green Prophet.

Image by Raygar He via Unsplash

Summer in the northern hemisphere, and this thalassophile is here for it—quite literally, as my location is coastal.

Heading seaside during the off-season has its own kind of charm, but there’s nothing quite like a quintessential, sun-soaked summer beach day—the kind that leaves you exhausted from the heat and exasperated with the sand but rejuvenates your soul for the days ahead.

Salt and sand in your hair, but you don’t care? Aggravating for your scalp, but otherwise not a big deal. Don’t care about prepping your beachcapades with earth-approved products? Houston—or in this case, Miami, Nice, Seychelles, etc.—we have a problem.

To refresh my beach bag this year, I curated a shortlist of eco-conscious companies that don’t skimp on style. By implementing green practices, they inspire consumers—and each other—to do better for themselves and the planet.

Embrace a sustainable summer by putting these brands on your vacay radar:

Skincare:

Earth Harbor

Founded by a professional herbalist and toxicologist, Earth Harbor is committed to using bio-based ingredients boosted by minerals and other nutrients in their bath and body goods, and recyclable and biodegradable materials in their packaging. Ocean inspiration flows through product names: “mermaid milk” moisturizer, “mystic waters” mist, “nymph nectar” facial balm, “sea kiss” lip balm, and many more.

Through Thrive Market, I’ve tried and loved some of these products at a discounted price, and once scored the “beach waves” hair texturizer as a gift with purchase. Visit the website!

Urban Hydration

The clean skincare products by Urban Hydration are widely accessible in the U.S., stocking shelves at more than 30,000 retail locations across the country, from pharmacies such as CVS to beauty-focused outlets such as Ulta. Many of their cleansers, moisturizers, creams and oils incorporate fruit extracts and other plant-based, natural ingredients, giving skin a taste of the tropics.

Try the algae line to “sea the glow” and target blemishes, or the aloe vera collection to soothe the beatings of the sun. Visit the website!

Swimwear:

Vitamin A Swim

As the first swimwear company to use recycled fibers, Vitamin A holds sustainability at its core. Expanding from nylon and polyester, their newest all-recycled material combines 80% ghost fishing nets with 20% spandex. Besides swimsuits, the brand offers a wide variety of other beachwear, such as sarongs, caftans, and loose-fitting trousers.

Collections heavily utilize organic and recycled cotton, high-quality flax linen, and TENCEL™, made from sustainably sourced wood fibers processed in a nontoxic organic solvent. Visit the website!

Rhyle Swim

These bathing suits are responsibly made in Brazil and live up to sexy bikini expectations. Designs are boldly cheeky yet subtly unique, with small cutout features and a range of textures. The details are thoughtful but not over the top, fashioning a girl-next-door vibe. Pieces are luxuriously soft, with a growing focus on using recycled fibers and minimizing textile waste.

And they are delivered in a reusable laundry bag, extending their longevity. Visit the website!

Footwear:

Teva

Going strong after more than 40 years in business, Teva has become a household name in functional footwear. Founded by a Grand Canyon river guide, the company pioneered the modern sport sandal. Specializing in strappy architecture constructed with 100% recycled polyester, “Teva’s,” as the kids call them, provide secure grip, in and out of the water. Water conservation drives minimal packaging goals. Visit the website!

Fleks Footwear

Founded in 2024, Fleks Footwear boldly burst onto the market with a future-focused agenda, offering a curated collection of popular styles in ultra-comfortable, ultra-sustainable form. Slides (platform optional), flip-flops, double-strap sandals, and clogs are proudly made with 85% high-performance foam waste.

The remainder of materials are either salvaged or recycled, and no solvents are necessary. I picked up the East Beach Slide in Coconut Milk and, because I couldn’t resist another pair, which I mainly wear as house slippers, the San Ysidro Slide in Morning Coffee, featuring a fluffy shearling strap. Visit the website!

And there you have it: A handful of brands to help you look and feel your best as you head out to shore.

Add a sunhat—preferably made from raffia, wheat straw, or seagrass—and a pair of upcycled shades, and you’re golden! Just like the sun intended.

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It had been hundreds of years since a non-motorized vessel had traveled such a distance, guided only by the stars. Last weekend, a historic 18-day double-hulled canoe voyage was completed from the archipelago of Palau to Orchid Island, a remote feature in southeastern Taiwan.

The GPS-free team of eleven was led by Sesario Sewralur, who inherited the love of sailing from his father, legendary navigator Mau Piailug. The journey was co-sponsored by the Taitung County Government and the Micronesian Voyaging Society, as a cross-cultural exchange to honor shared regional conservation values and seafaring techniques.

Image retrieved from Taipei Times.

In Palau, living in harmony with the environment is at society’s core. The customary practice of bul empowers the Council of Chiefs, Palau’s highest-ranking group of traditional leaders, to place and maintain moratoriums on the harvest of natural resources to prevent overconsumption. Local fishing is generally prohibited based on these measures.

The island nation established the world’s first shark sanctuary in 2009. In 2015, it designated 80 percent of its waters as a national marine sanctuary. Earth Day is expanded to the entire month of April.

While Palau is known for its lush land and seascapes, impressive biodiversity lies in particular within marine ecosystems. A paradise for snorkelers and divers, Palau is home to some of the Indo-Pacific’s most thriving reefs, which constitute one of the “seven underwater wonders of the world.” Now say that five times fast.

Image retrieved from Great Barrier Reef Foundation.

Palau is a prime tropical destination—but it’s just about in the middle of nowhere. Widespread sustainability efforts aim to offset the carbon footprint intensified by tourism. Many eco-tourism experiences involve nature excursions and one-of-a-kind experiences drawing on traditional knowledge and practices in such realms as culinary arts or handicrafts.

For visitors to Palau looking to gamify their stay in-country, Ol’au Palau is an app rewarding environmental stewardship with special access to local heritage sites. Though the transaction happens on a screen, it promotes on-site engagement for fuller meaning-making.

As of 2017, Palau also requires visitors to sign the Palau Pledge, a code of conduct stamped into their passports at international arrivals. Entry into the country hinges on signing on the line, promising to the Children of Palau to exercise awareness and shared responsibility for Palau’s ecological and cultural preservation.

Image retrieved from Palau Pledge website.

The Palau Pledge goes like this:

“Children of Palau, I take this pledge, as your guest,

To preserve and protect your beautiful and unique island home.

I vow to treat lightly, act kindly and explore mindfully.

I shall not take what is not given.

I shall not harm what does not harm me.

The only footprints I shall leave are those that will wash away.”

According to Palauan legend, a two-headed eel grew with one head on either side of a rock, each unaware of the other. The snakes starved as they pulled each other to go after prey, before realizing they were linked. Only then did they put their heads together, working together to thrive.

We are already aware we are linked. Palau may be one of the most isolated countries on earth, but we are all connected by the waters which lap at its shores.

The Palau Pledge is a refreshingly humanitarian immigration policy, inspiring us to respect and protect our surroundings both near and far. Should other countries follow Palau’s lead?

The post Palau: The place, the pledge, the legends appeared first on Green Prophet.

? BEER: Did you know that beer can be greenified? Green ingredients such as matcha and spirulina have hit the international market. Spirulina, a blue-green algae superfood packed with protein, copper, and B vitamins, in particular is growing in popularity among international brewers. RedDot Brewhouse, located next to the Singapore Botanical Gardens, offers a spirulina-infused lager.

Japan’s Okhotsk Brewery created the highly popular Okhotsk Blye Ryuhyo Draft with unique local ingredients including spirulina.

? SLÁINTE!  Like so many people across the world, the Irish say “Health” to toast to one another’s well-being. Try this nutrient-packed six-seed soda bread to moderate your libations.

? SHAMROCK:  Four-leaf clovers are believed to occur every one in one thousand. For a shot at finding one of these rare shoots, consider cultivating a clover lawn. Decimated by the herbicide revolution in the mid-twentieth century, clover lawns are making a comeback as a sustainable alternative or addition to turfgrass. They are heat and drought-tolerant, able to thrive in partial shade, and attractive to pollinators.

? LEPRECHAUN:  Leprechauns are often depicted as cobblers. Ireland’s shoe-making traditions are increasingly innovative; Sampla is a sustainable Irish footwear brand pioneering designs made with vegan leather formed from apple waste.

? RAINBOW:  Check out these rainbow-wrapped pencils that are wood and plastic-free, using recycled paper instead. Eco-conscious retailer Friendsheep makes multicolor pom pom coasters out of natural wool.

? GOLD:  E-waste is glittering on the economic horizon after Cornell University researchers developed a non-toxic method for extracting 99.9 percent of gold from recycled electronic waste. As an added bonus, the process catalyzes carboxylation, or converts carbon dioxide into organic compounds.

The post Going green with Saint Patrick’s Day iconography appeared first on Green Prophet.

With a special interest in the Middle East, after studying Arabic and also teaching dance to underprivileged children in Jordan, I was touched when I learned about Joudeh. Then around this time last year, in rehearsals for a modern dance show, I found out that one of the pieces I would perform centered around him. An excerpt from the documentary that introduced Joudeh to the world would play on the screen at the back of the stage. This good fortune moved me; I felt so lucky and eager to embrace his “Dance or die” spirit, to embody his movement, to give his story the spotlight it deserves – this time on a New York City stage.

In his documentary, there was one scene in which Joudeh dances on a barren concrete rooftop. It’s a beautiful day, a minaret and dome of a mosque visible beyond the roof’s border, but one inevitably fears that there isn’t much time before all of the structures pictured will crumble, the dust will block out the sun…

Joudeh ushers in a sense of hope to that roof, though, as he sweeps his leg around, tumbles to the floor but then reaches an outstretched hand to the sky. His movement is big; you can tell that he needs this art as much as it sustains him.

I, too, like to move big, and I know I dance better when I am emotionally charged. In this piece by the company Born Dancing, Inc., called Grey 5 because it was the fifth of a set of pieces dedicated to Syria, collectively called Grey, I started mimicking Joudeh’s movement pattern, dancing with him as I faced the back, looking at him on the screen. Three dancers joined and we danced in canon, and then it was complete accumulation: all six of us were flying and reaching alongside Ahmad Joudeh.

View the video on Facebook here.

The piece ended with pictures of Syrian children affected by the war flashing over the screen, and the dancers reacting to it. I remember that the director, Melissa van Wijk, did not choreograph our reactions; she let us feel the way we felt, and manifest that through movement, whatever it was. I appreciated that freedom awarded us, when usually dance is so exacting.

On the subject of freedom, I would like to give an update on Joudeh’s whereabouts. He is now dancing with the Dutch National Ballet. No doubt his technique and artistry have soared, and his future dance students will be all the more lucky to have him. Last month his first book, an autobiography, called Danza o Muori, Italian for Dance or Die, was published by DeA Planeta Libri. I have to brush up on my Italian, and then I’ll pick up a copy.

Tonight is opening night of Born Dancing, Inc.’s fourth production. Although we will not be showing all of Grey, and that means no Grey 5, there is a duet, Grey 2, that we have pulled to show, and I have the honor of dancing in it. I assume the role of a mother figure as I dance with an 11-year-old named Emily, who represents Syrian refugee children at large. We play, I support her, she supports me, and love is palpable.

This weekend, I bet Ahmad Joudeh is performing, too. Although we won’t be sharing the stage in person or thanks to digital technology, we will still be close: I plan to carry his love of dance in my heart, and that’s as close at it gets.

First photo courtesy of Born Dancing, Inc. Photo of Danza o Muori taken off Ahmad Joudeh’s Instagram page.

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English is my primary language, but even if I didn’t speak some Arabic, Greek and French too, I’d still be multilingual. As a dancer, dance educator and choreographer, I have always believed that I speak the universal language.

Movement is life. As living beings, we move even before making our presence known to the world. But some take the art and sport of movement as their life’s work, and use dance to assert their presence – and sometimes, help others to do so, as well.

Battery Dance, a professional company in downtown New York City, launched its Dancing to Connect programs over a decade ago. With these programs, company members travel abroad to conduct week-long dance workshops for underprivileged and at-risk youth. It very much reminds be of the work I myself did as an intern for the Hayatuna program launched by the Swedish NGO, Spiritus Mundi.

Instead of simply asking the children to watch and copy movement, the educators give the kids their own choreography wands, allowing and asking them to invent their own movement vocabulary. When I worked with the House of the Roses volunteer dance company, also a New York City-based organization, we employed this dance education method, and it proved extremely effective.

In creating their own movement to express emotions, ideas, etc., the children recognized in themselves greater potential and felt more closely tied to the project, more needed.

In Moving Stories, the documentary recently made following Dancing to Connect in Iraq, India, Romania and South Korea, we see the same trends and behaviors: dance stirring joy and awakening creativity in the young participants, and gaining appreciation by both the performers and their communities alike. It is clear that dance truly is a way we can communicate regardless of geographical or linguistic boundaries, and also that art is vital to our collective human culture.

Watch the Moving Stories trailer here.

I love what director, Rob Fruchtman said in an interview: “Dance is both a way in and a way out.” In addition to developing a greater understanding of oneself, dancing provides an outlet through which one can release stresses and emotions normally buried within.

It is so commendable that Battery Dance seeks out areas where there is the greatest need for something as freeing and healing as dance. The communities highlighted in Moving Stories have suffered more than most.

Gender violence, abuse, war and poverty are prevalent in the lives of these children. In India, for example, Dancing to Connect works with young women who have suffered sexual exploitation. In Romania, many of the children are gypsies who were raised in slums.

Working with kids is not always a walk in the park; attention strays, feelings get hurt, manners are lost, tempers flare, etc. Add to that the fact that the target population for these programs has been disproportionately affected by serious issues, and there you have a massive challenge. Battery Dance does not give up, though – another thing to admire.

After going through an intensive week filled with dance, the kids perform for an audience. It is clear, by the time of the shows, that the children have grown individually but also socially. A sense of accomplishment and pride is palpable. New friendships have been forged.

So much good comes out of Dancing to Connect, but a week is fleeting. Battery Dance works to make these programs sustainable by training people affiliated with the performing arts in these international locales under the company’s leaders during the workshops. The hope is that these close to home, native language speaking teams will grow the program, or something resembling it, as life continues, that the week with Battery Dance will not be remembered as a singular rare opportunity but as the start of much more.

The performing arts serve not only as entertainment; they also naturally lend themselves to therapy and act as a launchpad for social change.

As someone who has experienced their power firsthand, I can only hope that they will continue to be shared, and with growing zeal.

I read up on CMRubinWorld about Dancing to Connect. The title of the article there is, “The Global Search for Education: Is Now Our Time to Dance?” To which my answer is: Yes, it has always been our time to dance.

Top photo from Battery Dance website; next photo from The Dance Enthusiast

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Have you ever made a purchase in your life by which you gave the green light for planting a tree? It’s a great incentive that can be launched by a company anywhere, selling anything.

More often than not, however, the companies that embrace this duty to the environment are ones which use trees to make their products – namely, stationery and wooden products. Makes sense.

Another company has been added to this do-gooder list: Woodstone, which sells handcrafted wooden watches and sunglasses. For every item sold, a tree is planted. We applaud the two men who are behind the growing saplings. And I do mean young trees, as the company is not even three years old.

Originally from Turkey, Enes Ulutas and Fatih Cigdem were globetrotters who eventually settled on the idea of founding their company. Throughout their travels, they had seen firsthand how wood is so widely used – a wooden spoon here, a wooden necklace there. Simple and strong, yet warm and charming, it became their material of choice when it was time to make the game plan for Woodstone.

The pair still connects with diverse corners of the globe by sourcing fine, durable wood for manufacturing. Currently on the menu are maple, rosewood, black sandalwood and green sandalwood for the watches, and ebony, oak and rosewood for the sunglasses.

Very unique, right? There’s more: no watch or pair of sunglasses is the same. As long as we’re talking about handcrafted wooden goods, identicalness is impossible. Because wood’s patterns are ever-changing, in hues and loops and lines, based on the trees from which it came, no two products can be identical – much like palm lines, or fingerprints.

So the buyer of a Woodstone watch or pair of sunglasses is not only giving back to the environment with the planting of the tree, but is giving a truly one-of-a-kind gift to him/herself or someone else, if it’s a gift.

Enes Ulutas and Fatih Cigdem, like all designers, respect fashion and aesthetics, but they also respect nature. Visit their website to see the latest of their products, and follow them on Instragram @woodstone_wooden_watches.

Images pulled from Woodstone Instagram page. Featured image shows Woodstone’s black sandalwood Venice sunglasses and Queen watch.

The post Turkish watchmakers plant trees with this wristwatch appeared first on Green Prophet.

I remember that when I visited Byblos, in the Jbeil district of Lebanon, in the summer of 2011, I felt like a true beholder of history. Historians agree that it’s the second oldest continuously-inhabited city on earth, runner-up only to the Palestinian city of Jericho. I sat at Feniqia restaurant in the heart of the old Phoenician city, eating shanklish cheese and tabbouleh and imagining life in that very spot, if time were to rewind 7,000 years.

Since about 5,000 BCE, people have been walking the streets of this city. Bartering turned into buying and selling; hunting and gathering was first conducted out in nature, but in the present day, it all goes down in the local souk. Undoubtedly, homemakers hunt for the freshest red peppers to use for muhammara (see our recipe here) and gather the heartiest chickpeas for making hummus, a recipe that has been perfected over generations.

Through successful trade with Egypt, Byblos grew from a small village to a wealthy city. Today still it thrives, by way of a modern phenomenon called tourism, attracting travelers like me looking for a journey back in time.

Byblos was named the 2016 Arab Tourism Capital by the Arab Council of Tourism. Green Prophet was here to salute Erbil and Sharjah as the Arab Tourism Capitals of 2014 and 2015, respectively.

Although thousands of tourists visit Lebanon every year, with Byblos as the top of their to-see lists, municipal leaders say they expect an increase in tourism by up to 30 percent, in the foreseeable future. There are plans to inaugurate five-star international hotel chains and, well, keep up the good work with the Lebanese cooking.

Archaeologically, Byblos is fascinating. It is home to Neolithic, Chalcolithic, Greek and Roman ruins, including a Church of St. John the Baptist and a restored 12^th century Crusader castle.

The Byblos International Festival is an annual summer music festival and the biggest public event in Lebanon. Musicians and singers from all over the world, including but not limited to the Middle East, fill the air with everything from classical sounds to pop tunes. For the last few years, the municipality has projected a brief 3D animation movie showing historical highlights of Byblos on tower walls in the fishermen’s harbor.

Efforts for environmental sustainability are also at work. The air in Byblos is cleaner than it has been in a while. With aims to make Byblos more pedestrian-friendly, local leaders recently closed part of the old city to vehicles after 4pm on weekdays and noon on weekends. With decreased air pollution and less noise, visitors will be breathing fresh air in this very old city.

I’d recommend a few days in Byblos, although it could easily be made into a day trip from Beirut. I think spending more than 24 hours there only makes sense, for you’ll be stepping far, far back in time and there’s a lot of ground to cover!

What will the Arab Tourism Capital of 2017 be? Comment below with your guesses.

The post Byblos, Lebanon is best Arabian city to visit this year appeared first on Green Prophet.

When there is nothing left to do, you might as well do something. In Syria, where the war is five years and counting, dancing might be the last thing on anyone’s mind. But for Ahmad Joudeh, it is a priority. Dance is his lifeblood, and he is fueling others with it, too.

Joudeh teaches dance classes to young people, including a large group of orphaned children. The studio must seem like an oasis in the middle of a desert of smashed concrete. While not necessarily a safe haven – really, nowhere in Syria is safe – it is a refuge for the soul.

As a dancer, I know that dance stimulates both the body and the mind. Joudeh teaches, among other styles, ballet – the most exacting genre of dance there exists. For the young students, working on a higher leg extension, to name an example, could be a metaphor for getting past the extreme hardship they face every day.

The inspiring teacher has had a great deal of success in his career as a professional dancer. Most notably, he was a top contestant on Yalla Nor’os, the Pan-Arab version of the show So You Think You Can Dance.

These days, though, he can’t devote as much time to dance as he wants. Survival is not a guarantee, and so he has altered his lifestyle to help ensure it. As it shows him kneading dough in the video above, one of his main responsibilities is to quite literally put bread on the table.

And yet, and yet…he still makes time to teach dance classes. Not only is his teaching a special effort; it is also a huge risk. Joudeh has received several violent threats. One promised to shoot him in the leg, so as to handicap him, if he continued to dance and teach dance.

But with his strength of character, he refuses to be intimidated. “Dance or die” – that’s his motto, written in ink across the back of his neck. If we must fight for what we believe in, then he is a leader in the battle.

“You hear the guns?” He asked the cameraman . “They are shooting us. But they will never kill us.” He knows that he feels the most alive when he dances, and that dance itself can never die.

In the meantime, before something changes for the better or worse in his world, he dances for lost souls – on a rooftop in Damascus, in the streets at the place he once called home, in the rubble of Palmyra – sweeping up shards of glass and debris, and the occasional bullet, with his feet.

Art can come from any emotion, and it can create any emotion: grief, joy, anger, grace. It is clear that the young dancers under Joudeh’s instruction love the opportunity they have to learn something new and express themselves.

They are growing stronger, as dancers and as people, with each class. The electricity cut during filming for the video, right as the kids were talking about never giving up. In the darkness, you can hear their laughter and – unless I imagined it – a “Welcome to Syria!”

Update 2023: Joudeh made his way to safety in Amsterdam with the help of the Dutch National Ballet.

::Ahmad Joudeh

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