REVIEW: Dance is Not For Us

Cie Omar Rajeh & Maqamat, Dance Is Not for Us, ©️ Giuseppe Follacchio for Orbita Spellbound

The title immediately plants a question. Dance is not for us? Why not? And who exactly is this “us” that dance supposedly excludes?

Omar Rajeh’s solo opens with a table, a chair and a potted fern. Dressed in loose-fitting trousers and a long-sleeved top, he enters carrying the plant, looking more like someone arriving for a rehearsal than a performer about to begin a show. Music plays at considerable volume, but he moves very little. He then sits at the table and opens his laptop.

Throughout the performance, text appears in English and Arabic on the screen behind him. The first passage recalls his childhood encounter with choreography: his earliest experience of it was watching people fight in the street, their bodies twisting and responding to one another. It is an arresting starting point, with the body taking precedence over any established dance vocabulary.

The text that follows moves between autobiography, historical context, quotations, musical references and what appear to be instructions to the performer himself. We are given glimpses of Rajeh’s thought process as he develops the work, almost as though watching a thesis being written and revised in real time. Beirut, Lebanon and France recur as geographical and emotional reference points. The 2019 economic and financial crisis in Lebanon forms part of the background, alongside memories of his childhood, the development of his dance company and the experience of moving between cities and countries. His body becomes a means of revisiting places and a past that can no longer be recovered in quite the same way.

When the body begins to move more vigorously, the ‘dancing’ comes in bursts of energy. The hands become the starting point for movement that travels through the rest of the body, while other passages bring the centre of gravity lower, with a stronger emphasis on the rhythm of the feet. There is a sense of the body searching for its own organisation, finding and abandoning patterns as it goes.

This relates to Rajeh’s practice of “maqam”, which he describes as a form of instant composition in which movement emerges through shifting centres within the body and its relationship with the surrounding space. The term also has roots in Arabic music, where a maqam is a melodic system that provides a framework for improvisation. In Rajeh’s approach, structure and freedom exist together: the performer works within a set of relationships while discovering the movement in the moment.

One of the most memorable images comes when Rajeh begins bringing out pot after pot of basil. What initially seems an oddly laborious task gradually transforms the space, filling it with green and bringing a faintly unexpected sensory dimension to the performance. The plants are connected to memories of his grandfather’s garden, and at the end, audience members are invited to take one home. It is a simple gesture, perhaps even a slightly calculated one, but an effective way of allowing something from the performance to leave the theatre with us. The basil gives a physical presence to the memories that the text has been describing.

Dance Is Not for Us is a sincere piece. Rajeh makes the thinking behind it unusually visible, allowing us to trace its influences, personal histories and points of departure, almost as though watching a thesis being written. In the post-show discussion, he described dance as a way of being, a means of confirming our existence through the full range of our senses. I find this idea persuasive, yet I was left with a gap between what I understood intellectually and what I experienced as an audience member, between the ideas underpinning the work and their expression through the choreography. Perhaps these ideas need to find a more tangible expression in the body, so that the audience can experience them through the movement itself, rather than primarily through the text.

★★★ 1/2

For more information, please visit: https://danceumbrella.co.uk/event/omar-rajeh-maqamat-dance-is-not-for-us/

Credits

Concept & Choreography: Omar Rajeh
Assistant Choreographer: Mia Habis
Dramaturgical Advice: Peggy Olislaegers
Music Composition: Joss Turnbull, Charbel Haber
Technician: Julien Laurent
Co-ordination & Diffusion: Valentin Crépain
Administrator: Sandrine Orlando

Presented by Dance Umbrella and Barbican

A production of Cie Omar Rajeh & Maqamat

Special thanks to CN D à Lyon, Sima Performing Arts, Al-Serkal Avenue, Amadeus école de danse et de musique with the support of the DRAC – Auvergne Rhône-Alpes

This performance is supported by the Programme international de diffusion artistique (PIDA)

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