Traveling El-Funoun ensemble has flourished in its promotion
of Palestinian culture through traditional and contemporary dance
Http://www.ecpaclive.com
6:07 PM
November 13, 06
The EG Mobile, my 68 VW Van
led to to a parking spot across
from Lang's Deli. It was still daylight.
I'd been writing all day, kinda
having a day off after an old night
Shindig at the Temple of Higher Consciousness
in honor of 11:11 Saturday.
I am still recovering.
I wanted to get a newspaper.
As I stepped out of the Van,
I was thinking how peaceful I felt
about my own Semetic roots,
that is until I left Langs.
Michael Khoury, who prints my Love Cures
down at his Postal Express called to
tell me how pleased he was with Janice Steinberg's
article in todays Union-Tribune about
the traveling El Funoun Dance Troupe.
Michael, and friends, have been promoting
this event for months.
The article by Janice has increased ticket
sales. Michael hopes for an attendance
of 1000 for the promotion effort that
is being done primarily by volunteers.
Michael was born in Lebanon, His wife
Mona, in Damascus, Syria, during what
for them has been called a diaspora.
There was a copy of the paper on the table
at Lang's. I read the story there. I did not
want to take the paper from the table
because maybe one Jewish person
might read it and be touched.
My spirit felt a little dampened reading
the story. Someone I had hoped this might
be a non-political event, but as Michael
says, whenever anything has to do with
Palestine these days, it is political.
I decided to have a bagel, a bagel
and butter. I would have had an everything,
but they were out, so I choose an Onion.
The bagel was 75 cents, but with the side
of a little dap of butter in a plastic container
about 1/2 inch thick at most, it came to $2.30.
I already had some feelings of price gouging
here in the past, and so decided to return the butter and
head down to the Von's.
As I waited to check out, I noticed a little
roach hanging out with the baked goods.
I did not have a heart to tell the blonde
haired girl behind the counter.
I figured the damage they would do
with sprays to kill the bug was far worse
that keeping my silence.
At Von's I discovered an AMAZEMENT!
They had O Organic butter, their own line!
I do not eat butter, except rarely.
I noticed tonight, it can make me bleed.
I bought it anyway, to support the store
and its Organic flow.
Then, I thought, well I know Heinz is now
making Organic Katchup.
So I went to see if the store had it.
They did not, but Vons', now a Safeway Company,
had their own O Organic line of Katchup!
I bought that to support the store.
I wanted something sweet,
so I went down the ice cream aisle.
They had little Soy Dream sandwiches.
I bought some of that.
I went looking for the manager.
He was behind a broken cash register.
I introduced myself.
His name is Joe. He is a Hispanic man.
I asked him if he might like other consulting
about what products to buy.
He gave me a form to communicate with
Safeway.
My mother shopped at Safeway.
It was my first Supermarket as a kid.
i see myself giving a Safari tour down
the aisles of this store, pointing out
the choices shoppers can make.
I will give my tour without judgements,
just point out which foods are GMO,
so people who want to grow an extra noise
can choose those.
I will point out where all the Organic
Foods are.
I will point out my favorite foods
and junk foods and the impact that
eating each gives me.
My bill at Von's was over $10.00
but I left the store happy I had well spent
my money.
I asked Angel at home, if she wanted the butter.
On occasion, I see a roach in our kitchen too.
I invite them out naturally.
Roaches are from God
and can send us where we need to go.
___
Here is Janice's story...
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20061113/news_mz1c13firm.html
___
by Janice Steinberg
For today's geo-quiz, can you name a city in the Eastern Hemisphere that has cosmopolitan art galleries, bustling cafes and a lively dance scene?
DORRIS BITTAR
In the production "Haifa, Beirut, and Beyond," El-Funoun recounts recent Palestinian history in terms of the fate of one village.
The city's El-Funoun dance troupe won praise from The New York Times for the dancers' “sweet and determined fearlessness” when they performed at Lincoln Center last year.
Need more clues? El-Funoun is Arabic for “the arts.” The company's full name is El-Funoun Palestinian Popular Dance Troupe.
And it's based in ... Ramallah.
Ramallah, less than 10 miles north of Jerusalem in the West Bank, entered many Americans' consciousness as a flash point in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The municipality of 290,000 is where the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat remained confined to his compound for four months in 2002, and it continues to be the site of clashes.
All of that makes Ramallah sound like a war zone. Yet, Ramallah is also a thriving arts center – “It's a place of mass contradictions,” said Bassemah Darwish, one of the local Palestinian-American organizers bringing El-Funoun to the East County Performing Arts Center on Wednesday.
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DATEBOOK
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El-Funoun Palestinian Popular Dance Troupe
7:30 p.m. Wednesday (performance begins at 8 p.m.); East County Performing Arts Center, 210 E. Main St., El Cajon $20-$60; (619) 440-2277 or http://www.ecpaclive.com
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A contradictory mix of art and politics also characterizes El-Funoun.
“We don't want to be placed in a political box,” said Omar Barghouti, the company's trainer. “It's really important for us to be judged on our own merits as dance artists.”
As Barghouti described it, however, even the founding of El-Funoun in 1979 was a political act.
“(Former Israeli Prime Minister) Golda Meir boasted that there was no such thing as the Palestinian people,” said Barghouti. “We did not exist in the eyes of the colonizers.”
Meir's 1969 statement, published in The Sunday Times of London and The Washington Post, was, “There were no such thing as Palestinians. When was there an independent Palestinian people with a Palestinian state?”
Although Meir later said she'd been misquoted, the comment was seen as reflecting an attitude held by much of the world. And the handful of artists who founded El-Funoun set out to prove that they indeed had a national identity, giving even their most lighthearted dances a political purpose.
True to the Palestinian tradition of using dance for celebration, the troupe's earliest productions evoked weddings and harvests. The choreography included folkloric forms such as the dabkeh, a line dance found throughout the Middle East; baladi, which became known to Europeans as belly dance; and sahji, a line dance with a poetic call-and-response.
“At that stage, (El-Funoun was) dancing our identity, reviving our roots,” said Barghouti, whose brother, Nasser, is one of the San Diego event organizers.
Over time, El-Funoun incorporated a wider range of the forms its artists encountered in the global cultural marketplace.
Barghouti, for instance, spent 11 years in New York, earning a bachelor of arts and master of arts in engineering at Columbia University, and performing with a contemporary Palestinian dance group, before he moved to the West Bank and joined El-Funoun in 1994.
He's part of the company's current roster of 70 members, which includes dancers, musicians and administrators, virtually all of them volunteers. There's also a youth group, and members of the company teach in a variety of settings, including refugee camps.
The group's current U.S. tour – its fifth – brings 22 dancers to Boston, Chicago and Detroit, as well as San Diego. Although company musicians are not traveling with them, the recorded music includes songs by noted Lebanese artists Marcel Khalife and Ziad Rahabani.
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El-Funoun's eclectic combination of folkloric and contemporary dance has resulted in a distinctive style. “Professional dancers from Europe who see us tell us they can't categorize us,” Barghouti said.
The more profound development that's taken place, he said, is in El-Funoun's themes – going beyond connecting with the artists' roots to asking, “What type of modern Palestinian identity do we want, as progressive, secular artists who wish to live in an open, free, democratic society?”
That has meant challenging strictures within their own culture, especially involving the repression of women – although Palestinian society, with its mix of Muslim, Christian and secular Arabs, is relatively tolerant of women dancing. In contrast, the Iraqi national dance company no longer performs at home, fearing fundamentalist reprisals against women displaying their bodies onstage.
Inevitably, El-Funoun also addresses the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and recent work has reflected the members' experiences of living under occupation and sometimes under siege.
Barghouti, who lives near Jerusalem with his wife and 10-and 13-year-old daughters, choreographed a dance in which “people are trapped in a circle and battered from all directions, while trying, as much as possible, to remain steadfast.”
El-Funoun's program in San Diego will include a tribute to Beirut and Gaza, and a dance in response to the U.S. abuse of detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
Politics have also affected the company members' lives outside of the dance studio. The troupe's founders experienced travel bans and random arrests, Barghouti said.
El-Funoun has joined with many Palestinian organizations in calling for a boycott of Israeli arts groups and academics unless they denounce the occupation, and they would insist on a similar condition before working with any Israeli dance company. “We see that as giving a deceptive image of harmony despite oppression,” he said.
The company has not denounced acts of violence on the Palestinian side. Barghouti cited the difference between Israeli government policies versus acts by independent Palestinian groups: “There is no symmetry between oppressor and oppressed,” he said.
“Having said that,” he added, “it is crucial to emphasize that El-Funoun strongly subscribes to and practices civil resistance.”
However one feels about El-Funoun's position, they're advancing it peacefully, through words and dance. That's a significant reason that the organizers of Wednesday's concert – many of whom, like Darwish, have participated in Jewish-Palestinian dialogue groups – are bringing them here.
“Growing up in the U.S. (from the age of 3), I was bombarded with images of my people represented as terrorists,” said Darwish, who experienced Ramallah's arts scene firsthand when she took a leave from her El Cajon school last year and taught at Birzeit University.
“A lot of Palestinians grow up with this burden, this conflict of trying to be proud of who you are and afraid your people are hurting people,” Darwish said. “This dance company will bring the beauty of Palestinian culture and ancestry.”
Union-Tribune
November 14, 06