The IBDA Palestinian Youth Dance Troupe
Dheisheh Dances - Dheisheh Refugee Camp

Sponsored by Middle East Children’s Alliance, Arab-American Anti Discrimination Committee, National Palestine American Congress, Arab Cultural Center, Arab Women’s Solidarity

Recorded October 10, 1999
Martin Luther King, Jr. Middle School, Berkeley
Produced by Berkeley Citizen
Copyright 1999
All Labor Donated
First viewed on Berkeley Public Access Television as part of the cable series, "The Activist Hour: Speaking Out in Berkeley".

 

Palestinian Dance Troupe

"Ibda means 'making something out of nothing,'" said Barbara Lubin, a Middle East Children's Alliance board member. "And clearly living in Dheisheh refugee camp is not nothing. It's a very tight-knit, strong community. In some ways there is more community in those camps than we have here in the United States."

The dances were bittersweet. Colorfully dressed peasants celebrated and worked the fields with cardboard picks and scythes. Inevitably, black ghosts came to spirit the peasants away or shackle their hands. Each dance ended with the hope that national pride would galvanize the Palestinians against the black ghosts, which organizers said were symbols of Israeli occupation.

In dances and autobiographical poems, the 11- to 14-year-olds expressed sorrow, anger and optimism. Jews are not their enemies, they said, but they voiced anger with the settlers.

"My color -- white, black, yellow," a young man read. "People have all different colors of skin, but red is the color of blood, which flows through the heart of all people, no matter where they come from."

"My hopes are simple," said another speaker. "To live without checkpoints and soldiers, to have a room to myself, to play in a playground, to have water every day, so that I can take a bath and go swimming."

Dheisheh Dancers