This participatory interpretive dance experience will stay with me for a long time. The piece affected me in ways I am not yet aware of; there were many subtleties in the show that participants passively accepted during the performance but were laced with meaning. For example, participants were asked to practice whistling at the start, and we did this without thinking and interrogating this action and what it meant.
The performance piece started outside ‘The Warehouse’ at Fruitmarket. Farah Saleh explained that we were going to go on the journey of a refugee, and as a consequence had to participate in various activities. These included handing in an ID, for our safety; transferring our personal belongings to a plastic bag; taking a selfie as it might be the last time we are in our home country; and having a drink of water as we don’t know when we might get another. This part of the performance was uncomfortable- we were having a drink of water yet knew that another drink was easy to access after the show. Many of us had so many belongings that they wouldn’t all fit in the plastic bag we were given- these were just things we had with us for a day, not the entirety of our belongings. I felt reluctant to hand over an ID, being a person who easily loses things and having been taught from a young age that this is not a good thing to do. Whilst I did know deep down I would get it back, there was still an element of a forced trust relationship and a feeling of uncertainty in the action. These feelings stayed with me for the rest of the performance.
When we entered the warehouse we were given a ‘Landing Card’ with various questions to fill in. These questions covered topics people do not often think about, and I ended up fabricating some of my answers; the questions forced me to do this and in hindsight, this could be interpreted as a metaphor for the complications of categorisation and how it criminalises displaced people. One example of the questions was ‘Colour of your first bedsheet’, which since leaving the performance piece has gained a greater meaning as I read in the news that there is a shortage of beds in refugee camps.
We were split into two groups, those born after midnight and those born before midnight. This categorisation is arbitrary, as everyone was born before one midnight and after another. The necessity placed on the participants to choose an arbitrary category is, I believe, a trivialising metaphor reflecting on the unjustly complicated legal asylum processes refugee’s face, predominantly without legal or financial aid. The comparison between the metaphors in this piece and the reality they were referencing could be seen as uncomfortably trivialising. However, I believe by making us feel uncomfortable, it worked to highlight our privilege.
Each group was shown a video, one from each side of the room. The videos were of dance artists. Farah Saleh moved alongside the videos, eventually asking us to copy the moves too. The projector setup was moved to another location halfway through, spanning the rafters and walls whilst the video still played. This was disorientating, and the unrelenting dancing whilst being physically moved worked as a metaphor for the lack of freedom of movement displaced people face. We were told at the end that the dance artist Shadi Jaber committed suicide because of the refugee process and status. This affected the group markedly; copying his dance moves had connected us to him in a way I cannot really define, by requiring concentrated looking and thought regarding his body movement.
At the end of the video pieces we were invited to sit down again and Farah Saleh told us a bit about her own experience being a refugee. She told us about jokes she made whilst under curfew. These included telling her friend her father had been killed by the Iraqi police when in fact he hadn’t. I found this shocking and humourless. She also recounted how at school in Italy she would retaliate to her friends laughing at her with ‘I’ll kill you’ which they found shocking. She explained how this word has become meaningless with over-usage for her. These anecdotes worked to emphasize the difference in our experiences and the absence of human rights displaced people have. The anecdotes were accompanied by Farah Saleh’s interpretive dance. The movements emphasized the meaning of the words and made them more impactful. One such example was the way she seemingly stretched space into a thin fabric, pulling the air between her hands. This was done to emphasize the trivialisation of the word ‘kill’ through its commonality in her life, the word becoming transparent as thin material with overuse.
At the end, we all had to reenact a movement we had witnessed. Farah Saleh told us that one movement in which you used your right hand to push your shoulder backwards was actually a movement encompassing Shadi Jaber’s brother who was shot in the shoulder. After learning this, and remembering the various movements we had seen, we were called to interpret their meanings, many of which I interpreted in ways which were shocking and upsetting; falling off a thin plank, rolling and rolling and rolling.
Asking the audience to encompass these meaningful dance moves with their bodies included the audience in a visceral way; it made the experience occupy you in a stronger and longer-lasting way. This participatory dance piece will remain with me for a long time, and I recommend going to see Farah Saleh perform; she was a wonderful dancer and choreographer. I will be looking out for an opportunity to watch her dance in the near future.
Images courtesy of Fruitmarket Gallery