We told the story to readers of Ahmad Joudeh over two years ago. We shared how, in the middle of the Syrian crisis, despite danger and dire straits, he continued to dance and teach dance to his young students. With a special interest in the Middle East, after studying Arabic and also teaching dance to […]
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. […]
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.
Dancing is good for you, but the Harlem Shake is a cringe-worthy global phenomenon that’s spawned a thousand epic fails: the YouTube dance craze’s been done underwater, on commercial air flights over the Grand Canyon, and now, by soldiers in the Israeli Defense Force. “It’s just a sign of the times when you see soldiers dancing and […]
Israel’s Vertigo Dance Company made its Australian debut at the Brisbane Festival in September. They performed a piece titled Mana, which means “vessel of light” and comes from the Zohar, the Jewish mystical text. Mana featured eight dancers exploring the contrasts between dark and light, male and female. Both the moon and sun were powerful […]
Swedish NGO uses Hayatuna – creative arts to provide new perspectives to kids in the Middle East As a Dance and Anthropology double major and an Arabic minor at Montclair State University, my interests slip right into the mission of Spiritus Mundi, a Swedish NGO that sees the arts as forces in social change and […]
Get a Bollywood belly by dancing in Dubai Half a century ago, Chubby Checker (ironically) popularized the waist-whittling dance, “The Twist”. Twenty years on, Jennifer Beals’ Flashdance foot-stomping fueled record-breaking sales of leg warmers: required apparatus for burning off surplus 1980’s calories. Micro-shorted Richard Simmons challenged TV audiences to “Sweat to the Oldies”. Suburban strip malls […]