Dance is not for us
concept, choreography, scenography: Omar Rajeh
co-creator: Mia Habis
music composition: Joss Turnbull, Charbel Haber
dramaturgy: Peggy Olislaegers
lighting design, technical director: Christian Francois
administrator: Ilitza Georgieva
duration: 60’
premiere: Theater Le Monnot, Beirut, 2023
production: Cie Omar Rajeh & Maqamat
with the support of: DRAC Auvergne Rhône-Alpes
special thanks: CND Lyon, Sima Performing Arts, Alserkal Avenue-Dubai, Amadeus School for Dance and Music – Beirut
“Art is simple”, yet artistic creation is a quest to ask the most complex questions of being. It is, as well, a need to comfort our souls and minds with a tune, an image, a gesture, especially when the answers are always hidden… It might have been weird on many levels that I chose dance in a country that was coming out of a civil war, destruction, death, and loss. However, dance at the time seemed to be the most revolutionary, the most provocative, and the most confrontational. I thought that I could break through dance the taboos of the past and the future; within and outside the city that I grew up in. With time I discovered that these taboos are not only in the social but also in the cultural. Dance is for us, the artists. Dance belongs to the everyday life, to the streets, to the individual citizens in the audience…
Omar Rajeh
A new solo creation choreographed and performed by Omar Rajeh, where he takes us into his dance and autobiographical universe, looking into the ‘performance’ as a gathering and a shared experience. The dancing body creates its own rules, its own structure, and its own inspirations, as an act of hope, in opposition to structures of power that diminish such dynamics towards normality and fear. Rajeh travels back into the past. Alone onstage, he dances and speaks of an intimate past that exists no more, of a fading image, and a deceiving one as well. A past that did not transfer into a future. The images, the meanings, the feelings, the people, the happy moments, everything froze. As if today he deals with a World with no past.
Omar Rajeh, a critically acclaimed choreographer and dancer, is a leading figure of the contemporary dance in Lebanon and the Arab world. He founded Maqamat in Beirut in 2002. In 2019, he moved to France and established his company in Lyon. He was distinguished by the French Minister of Culture the title of Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters. He holds a BA in Theatre Studies from the Lebanese University and an MA in Dance Studies from the UK’s University of Surrey. Author of more than twenty choreographic creations, his works question the perception of the unity and singularity of the body, seeking an extraordinary physical presence through vigorous movements with strong socio-political connections. He has spent over 20 years weaving, exploring and refining his choreographic language and his work leaves a powerful imprint on the audience. He performed with his company in more than a hundred different cities around the globe, at the major international festivals and venues such as the Bolshoi Theatre Festival, Festival RomaEuropa, Edinburgh International Festival and Athens Festival to name a few. He is the founder of Beirut International Platform of Dance–BIPOD, one of the most important dance festivals in the region. Since 2004, the festival offers a rich international program of performances, workshops, lectures and meetings. He is co-founder of MasahatDance Network which is a regional contemporary dance network across Lebanon, Syria, Palestine and Jordan. This ambitious regional connection was further extended into the Moultaqa Leymoun platform, which Rajeh created to provide the space and opportunity for young and established Arab artists to showcase and develop their work. In 2017 he has founded the highly anticipated new performing arts space in the heart of Beirut - Citerne Beirut - which is set to nurture and further propel the existing projects of Maqamat towards an enriched experience, while reaching a wider audience than ever before. Citerne Beirut was forced to be dismantled in August 2019, due to the economic and political collapse in the country. He is the co-founder of the digital cultural platform Citerne.live.
Omar Rajeh narrates, with his physical creativity, an existential crisis.
© Independent
