Por Amal

TO AMAL

We dedicate TO AMAL to a seven-year-old girl who crossed our path in 2023, just before the targeted assassination of her father, Palestinian scholar and poet Refaat Alareer. In this piece, Amal embodies all the children of Gaza, both those who have died and those who are still alive. Her name means Hope in Arabic. Hope is not a form of waiting, it is an action: to try to give meaning to the world, to search for reasons to believe in humanity, while enduring or witnessing the atrocities. Refaat Alareer and so many Gazans have demonstrated this by their examples. In the play we transit through the memories of the Lebanese choreographer, Nada Chouaib, who became a war refugee when she was two years old, to progressively confront the urgent need to deal with the emotional and political impact of the live streamed genocide. These realities are told not only through text, but through the integration of modern oriental dance, Sufi art and Palestinian dabke with an experimental and contemporary version of traditional oriental music. Together, the elements form a scenic poem that travels between slam poetry, the epic, the meditative, and the hypnotic.

Created and performed by Exilio Tarab: Nada Chouaib & Marius von der Fehr

Costume design: Sara H.