Month: August 2013

What Not to Expect in Egypt: A Year In Review

I just made my friend and myself the world’s worst pasta. I tried to mix cheeses, pepper, and mushrooms. But it glopped.

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And it was too late to order something for delivery or buy groceries to make something else.

Welcome to curfew life in Egypt.

For the first nine days, curfew started at 7:00PM. That meant that you had to figure out what you wanted for dinner by 5:00PM because all restaurants and shops close then. Nowadays curfew begins at 9:00PM (with the exception of Fridays): restaurants and shops closing at 6:30/7:00PM.

This has called for more home cooking than I am used to or qualified for. It has also entailed being homebound every single night, all night. All clubs and bars closed, except for a few strongholds in Zamalek, downtown and Maadi. No latenite chats at a cafe.

I may or may not have defied curfew twice, though. Shhh. 

Curfew also means no going to the movies or concerts in the evenings. No theatre or dance performances after 4:00. All closed. It has meant the classes I teach are scheduled earlier in the day. It has meant that we have turned to home workouts, reading books, watching far too much TV, online courses like Coursera, complaining about the lowsy wifi connections and blackouts, and wracking up the electric bill by our AC usage.

But things are safe, in that the military is control. Young guys in camo relaxing atop tanks on the corner. Muslim Brotherhood, Ikhwan, Pro-Morsi, Salafis and self-proclaimed Anti-Coup protesters do make their stance every once in awhile. Like Wednesday when there was some gunfire and residents were taking it upon themselves to cordon off the area and redirect traffic. And tomorrow there may be big protests.

In all honesty, my heart goes out to them. The young military and this set of protestors. Caught in a sad and sick and unrevolutionary algorithm. Where money and bodies are counted then multiplied by either national security or imposed Sharia. Where xenophobia, spin and blame are actually deafening. And revolutionary liberals and secularists sit back instead of planning the build-up they so desperately need before elections.

This week is the one-year anniversary of me coming to Egypt as a Fulbright Scholar. I first came here in 2010 as a UN Alliance of Civilizations International Fellow. Then I came for a week in the (post) revolutionary summer of 2011 to visit the friends I had met during that original trip. But a year ago, I came for something big. I had left my jobs in Chicago and was flying into an unknown future, as a professional, as a dance educator, as a single woman in her mid-30s, as a survival of sexual assault and harassment, as an American in the MENA region.

A Fulbright staff member met me at the airport, we negotiated the gender roles in the carrying of my bags and he took me to my Fulbright apartment where there was fresh fruit and milk waiting and the TV was turned on to CNN. He showed me where to do my grocery shopping and left me the keys.

Yes, I asked a male stranger to take a photo of me posing alone in Tahrir Square.

September 2, 2012. Yes, I asked a male stranger to take a photo of me posing alone in Tahrir Square.

A little over a week later, watching CNN led to me witnessing the “storming” of the embassy by Egyptian Salafis and other groups protesting a video most of them had never seen. I am now realizing these are the same groups I am now seeing as pro-Morsi.

Then in September I met a fantastic guy and I allowed myself the happiness of dating. I also walked into 57357 Children’s Cancer Hospital Egypt and described my vision of a dance program, applied to volunteer, and was invited to the sleepaway camp at the Health & Hope Oasis.

The semester began at the High Institute of Ballet and pedagogical differences both inspired and shocked me.

Then came October/November and the Constitutional mess of a referendum and shockingly undemocratic decrees. There were the liberal groups uniting to end the increasingly fascist rule of the Muslim Brotherhood and to remember those who died at the hands of the SCAF a year ago, many artists among the victims. And to honor all those liberal protestors who had been shot intentionally in the eye. These actions were the seeds of Tamarod. There was the power of Tahrir.

There was Halloween and Thanksgiving and Christmas in Egypt. There were unforgettable experiences with dance schools in Palestine, witnessing the apartheid in Hebron/Al Khalil, teaching at a university and community dance program in Uganda, seeing innovations in bringing electricity to the people there, a real African safari and baby elephant orphanage, and visiting the continent’s largest slum and then the unaccompanied refugee girls in the safehouse of Heshima Kenya. Then there was Azerbaijan and Michigan.

There was my mother’s cancer battle accompanying this entire year story. Her humor comforting us and our messages comforting her.

There was the 35-day Egyptian artists’ sit-in, occupying the Ministry of Culture, led by my friends and colleagues.

There was a joyous revolution, with artists as catalysts. There was a feeling of accomplishment followed by the evacuation of current US Fulbrighters.

Then there was a shocking and disturbing mass military killing of civilians, armed or not, terrorists or not.

Then more American artists arrived here in Cairo with gusto to begin their own unexpected year or two.

Then there was Curfew Life and my goppy pasta.

Oh, what a mighty year. Please stay tuned…

Egypt: Moving Through the Boom, Boom, Boom

It is not easy to get over a love, or a loss. And it feels strange in itself…the concept of getting over, stepping over someone or something and moving forward. Maybe through is a better preposition.

Egypt seems to be getting through this.

Gas station on Gameat Al Dewal opens each day but closes at 6pm. Photo by Mohamed Radwan.

Gas station on Gameat Al Dewal opens each day but closes at 6pm. Photo by Mohamed Radwan.

With aggressors, murderers, innocents, warriors, and love on all sides, it is messy. Personally, I feel the Muslim Brotherhood was mighty dangerous holding full power. I believe strongly in June 30. I believe in Tamarod and the artists who stepped up to bring the Ikhwan domination and immunity down. Yet I do not believe the MB is a terrorist organization; criminals among the members, increasingly armed, bad ideologically, fascist, xenophobic, repressive, anti-democratic, dangerous, anti-culture, but not terrorist.

As my liberal friend said, “We are talking about my family.”

Journalist Sarah Carr stated in her piece yesterday that, “The Brotherhood has shown that it has access to arms. It has not condemned the church attacks in any meaningful way (and remember that Morsi oversaw the attack on the cathedral) raising suspicion that Morsi’s  supporters are involved in the attacks with the Brotherhood’s tacit blessing. Is it a full-on terrorist organization? The issue is that whether it is or not is not as important as the fact that the military needs it to be and has deemed it so, and the media are not only being force-fed this line but being forced to regurgitate it.”

And in general, this is not the fight of my revolutionist friends here. As Sharif Abdel Kouddous stated, “Today, many of the revolutionaries who fought the country’s successive authoritarian regimes—first Mubarak, then the Supreme Council of Armed Forces, then the Muslim Brotherhood—now find themselves sitting on the sidelines, pushed out of the discourse and forced to watch as the bloodletting continues.”

I also believe I hear intermittent gun shots during curfew hours, have witnessed the Neighborhood Watch checkpoints constructed of everything from park benches to metal shelving units from shops, and heard of friends mourning those killed and then defying curfew with football games in the streets and going to the open cafes. Maybe it is for the best; for a nation going through such turmoil and violence, and with millions stuck inside respecting the curfew more than in the past, you think they could have selected better TV programming than Machete, Gladiator, V is for Vendetta, 28 Days Later, Inglorious Bastards, and Air Bud 3.

Most of the news channels have the headline banner, Egypt Fights Terrorism. Pro-Morsi friends are using a yellow square with four raised fingers (the hand signal for hailing a minibus to Rabaa) as their profile pictures, a way to say “We will never forget” the massacre there and what that protest stood for. My clever liberal friends have created alternative versions for their stance.

And then this one emerged…

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Yesterday and the day before I felt safe to leave my apartment. Back to work this afternoon. As we move through, I am going to ask myself and all the others in Egypt to do the following.

  1. Refrain from knowing
  2. Think with your uterus
  3. Dance

I am not Egyptian, but I love you, the Egyptian people. I do. I am calling on us here to please stop knowing. There is a habit in this country of knowing something when you do not. Any answer seeming to be better, more helpful than none; when it is not. It starts with something small like giving directions, but when on a more serious issue like body counts, blame, reasoning spouted for retaliation and sectarian violence and conspiracies… I must tell you that we do not know. We can’t. Not now. The full truth, the evidence, facts are so mightily construed on all fronts. Now is time to acknowledge varying perspectives on history and on current situations, allow for ambiguity. No one, and each one, could be right or partially right. It is ok not to know, to believe some of both camps, to question all sides. We mourn all the victims.

Kouddous continues, “Both sides leading the conflict, the military and the Muslim Brotherhood, are playing a zero-sum game, based on a false binary demanding that Egyptians choose one or the other. Both are defined by hierarchy, patriarchy, secrecy, mendacity and a blinding sense of their own superiority. Both are juggernauts in the Egyptian body politic that have heedlessly clawed away at Egypt’s social fabric in their struggle for power, proving time and again that their own political and economic interests trump all.”

Egypt is the mother of civilization. A mother caught in a web of a redeveloping civilization, unfortunately based on phallic aggression. I am pleading that we start thinking with our uterus. All your children have their qualities. We (my Egyptian liberal friends, Ikhwan and self-defined anti-coup friends, and international/expat networks) must demand an asset-based transitional government, a group that focuses on the assets and strengths of each of her Egyptian children. How could each of your kids contribute to a peaceful and revolutionary road towards freedoms, bread/economic development, and social justice?

This post by Marwa Farid does a great job offering some suggestions on ways forward. But she leaves out the Artists. Egypt, none of your children here need to be rounded-up, eradicated, dissolved. There must be a better way to confront the armed assailants. Are there any international models of this without destroying civil and human rights? There has to be.

Prophet Mohamed PBUH was engaged in many wars. And God (Allah) protected Him and His family, followers, ancestors. My favorite story is the army elephant sent to attack who then sat and refused to move. When it comes to any calls for you to hate, blame, ignore the abuse of, or attack… we gotta be that elephant.

And we need to remember that actual children are watching. Here is a telling Facebook post by a friend of mine…

When my 1 year old son brings the remote control to his father asking for “boom, boom, boom” which means Al Jazeera because he wants to see the violence scenes, I just feel like throwing the TV from the balcony!

 

Now is the time for us artists to step up for…

-securing human and civil rights: including the right to protest, due process

-making sure people are safe and weapons being collected

-journalist protection, free press and media collaboration

-finding a common cause

-cleaning and rebuilding damaged churches, mosques and schools

-getting people what they need: gasoline, food, banking, hope

-helping Egyptians express themselves and hear each other

-asking questions within family units and heterogeneous contexts

Couple attending a pre-curfew engagement party. Photo by Mohamed Radwan

Couple attending a pre-curfew engagement party. Photo by Mohamed Radwan

And dancing. Now is the time for dancing. It helps you process emotions physically. Dancing reconnects you to others when words and differences are in the way. Dancing celebrates the good in life despite the darkest of hours. It even makes you laugh healthily when you think you’re bad at it.

Oh Masr, I love ya.

We hoped it wouldn’t happen

Last night was nice. I attended a great conversation at the Opera House cafe between a journalist/former US ambassador and a group of the Egyptian artists active in the June sit-in at the Ministry of Culture. We discussed how the artists’ occupation of the ministry evolved and how it connected to Tamarod and the National Salvation Front. We talked about artists as documentarians, historians, catalysts and change makers. Americans and Egyptians alike talked about how the United States has had a “lack of imagination” when dealing with the revolution here and addressed various conspiracy theories and definitions of terrorism. We all had different opinions of the military under General Sisi’s leadership. Some artists told horrific personal stories of the violence by the SCAF in 2011 and 2012. I reminded them of what I had learned about Basiony‘s story. Some artists showed evidence of recent violence by the Muslim Brotherhood/pro-Morsi protestors, kidnapping a friend of theirs and torturing him at the Rabaa site the day before. The discussion was above-all passionate and ended with friendly goodbyes and and a shared bill.

This morning I awoke to a friend saying to turn to the news. The pro-Morsi sit-ins were being dispersed by force. We knew it was going to happen. We also thought it might not happen, maybe not. We hoped it wouldn’t happen. We hoped that if it did happen, my friend’s family (Salafi, MB supporters) would not be there. We had hoped that if it did happen, it wouldn’t be like this. We didn’t know it would be today. Even though we disagree with the pro-Morsi protestors, we think they have a right to be there. And them being martyred is a tragic, awful, sickening and stupid strategy by the military and interim government.

Some say all the protestors were unarmed. Some showed pictures of them with machine guns and homemade weapons. ON TV showed ammunition-filled suitcases and other weaponry that had been confiscated. State TV showed a different story. Some say there was no warning and no safe exit for the protestors. Some say there were bulldozers being used as weapons, protestors burned in tents, police in armored vehicles, tear gas, live ammunition on both sides, and mass arrests.

All I know for sure is that pro-Morsi protestors started to set up camps and march in other places in the city, including near my apartment in Mohandaseen. My boyfriend went out for a few much-needed groceries and found the main street where I had danced with happy Egyptians during a street party on July 3rd, now void of traffic and peppered with brick barriers, marchers, tires on fires, tear gas. All my flatmates and myself (Egyptian, European, American) received calls that we had the day off from work. For a big city usually abuzz with life, today was eerily quiet on the streets other than the pops of gunfire. I live off Gameat El Dewal and for the very first time during my 12+ months in Egypt in the past three years, I was concerned enough to obey my friends’ warning not to leave the apartment.

I turned to Twitter. People who supported June 30 were saying today was the real coup. Some called it a massacre. Some said the military had to do something. Some showed a photo of a police vehicle pushed off a bridge, with officers inside. Some say Islamists had retaliated by burning Christian homes and 18 Coptic churches, including two of the oldest in the nation, killing a 10-year-old girl. Some say dozens of police officers were killed. Officials said 149 people died. Muslim Brotherhood said 2200 were murdered near Rabaa alone. Journalists were going into mosques, morgues and field hospitals, reporting their own counts of bodies.

The images on TV and Social Media were graphic.

Despite my far less important personal battle with cabin fever, I stayed home and kept on the phone and online.

@rabihalameddine: If I go back to bed, can we rewind to the night before? What happened in Egypt is horrifying, confusing, and utterly familiar.

@Ikhwanweb: #WeStandTogetherForEgypt show your support for the #AntiCoup #Prodemocracy movement in Egypt under attack by own military and police

@KLF33: A call to all Muslims. We will rebuild our churches.  Yes I said our.

@AhmedKadry: Churches burning down, Egyptians being murdered, journalists being killed. Not “the revolution continues”, it has yet to start.

@monaeltahawy: I repeat: I do not know whose death toll figures to believe. That’s how meaningless truth and accuracy are in #Egypt today.

@Amiralx: Rejoice for interior minister has promised no more sit-ins anywhere ever and a return to pre-2011 revolution security. High fives all around

I turned to @MadaMasr for translations of the speeches.

Reports confirmed the killing of the daughter of a MB leader and the arrest of 8 senior MB members. Reports confirmed the deaths of journalists.

I Tweeted my personal experience of ballet class being cancelled and being afraid when my friend just went out for bread, milk and sugar. Somebody read what I wrote and decided to publicly call me a f@%kwit because of the triviality of my post.

I just know I felt things feel so wrong, so sad.

Then a State of Emergency was declared, with a 7pm to 6am curfew for a month at least. My friends and flatmates, having been through this before, took this news in stride. Naively, I don’t know what this means for my dance classes scheduled  for the evenings and for my commute home afterward. I wonder what this means for those who work late shifts. I wonder what this means for the economy and healthy public dialogue that are generated by night life activities. I wonder what this means for human rights. I wonder what this will mean for the few American artists headed to Cairo in the next couple weeks who have reached out to me to show them around when they get here. Evidently, after a couple days restaurants and cafes will stay open and people will simply be asked to go directly home after a night out.

As the 7pm (turned 9pm) curfew approached tonight, I worried that my friends would go home in time. I also realized that I wouldn’t be able to go to the grocery store for four days because I don’t have cash and today was the day I was supposed to go pick up my replacement ATM card. And all banks are closed tomorrow; then it is the weekend. Guess we will turn to ramen noodles and prayers for the nation.

My flatmates and I are now taking a break from the news, watching a Dwayne Johnson movie on tv instead. I turned online one more time before logging off for the evening…

VP El Baradei has resigned because he “couldn’t accept the responsibility of decisions he did not agree with.” The photos of the cloaked bodies started appearing everywhere, Morsi supporters turned into martyrs.

@MagyMahrous: Despite curfew, I can still hear ikhwan sit-in from my house! #Maadi

I can’t keep up and will just stay close to friends into the quiet night and through to see what tomorrow will bring. Somehow the goodness that went along with the artists’ movement and June 30 and the mission of the 2011 revolution must burst through this darkest of days.

Calling All Artists to the Feast

Eid begins tomorrow. Summer heat continues. School will probably start here in Egypt in about a month. Who knows what this country will look like then but there will be a new US ambassador. It is almost time to countdown to the end of Ramadan. One last day of fasting.

 

Arabic countdown for English-speaking beginners like me

١٠ 

ashara = ten (looks like a one and a dot)

٩ 

tisa = nine (looks like a nine)

٨ 

temeynia = eight (looks like an upside-down V)

٧ 

sabaa = seven (looks like a V)

٦ 

sitta = six (looks like a seven)

٥

khemsa = five (looks like a circle)

٤

arbaa = four (looks like a backwards three)

٣

teleta = three (looks like a backwards seven with an extra bump)

٢

itneen = two (looks like a backwards seven)

١

wahid = one (looks like a graceful one)

 

HAPPY EID!

Teaching dance in a Northwest Bosnian village in 2011

Teaching dance in a Northwest Bosnian village in 2011

 

Now I was supposed to go to Greece recently for the UNESCO CID World Congress on Dance, but I was robbed. And the stolen passport and visa created too much drama. In the end, it became impossible to make it to Athens on time. Fortunately, the guts of my presentation were read aloud in my absence. You can read it here under the 26 July section. This non-happening trip was funded in part by a grant from Donna’s Good Things. Since the flight was nonrefundable, I feel a need to do a bit of a project to fully respect the grant.

So I had an idea.

Eid means feast. Let’s cook up some artistic goodness with all the momentum growing from the Am I a Dancer Who Gave Up? response. This is what I’m awkwardly, charmingly calling the August Feast of Artsy Good Things.

I am asking all artists reading this (define artist as you like) to go out and do good things this month. Here are some examples of what you could do:

  • play an instrument in the treatment room while children are getting chemotherapy
  • go to a shelter or hospital with your camera, set up a photo shoot area, and do lovely family portraits
  • bring your children to an elder care facility and all dance together for an hour
  • paint a portrait of a child in Hospice
  • bring a dance company to perform all throughout the halls of a summer school
  • join a Board of some kind and talk like an artist
  • create and donate costume pieces or fashion accessories for children in a Ronald McDonald House
  • set up an instrument petting zoo in a public park or hospital lobby
  • talk to a teen who is facing hardship (medical, economic, social), learn from them, then co-teach something and help them set up a kick-butt portfolio
  • lead an arts workshop in a divided or insular community, faith-based institution, or refugee camp
  • take an arts-based class in a neighborhood you’ve never been to before
  • work with a veteran to compose an original song, poem or screenplay
  • teach children of the incarcerated how to create beautiful things with shadow boxes
  • teach seniors how to create beautiful things with video and digital media
  • whatever show your working on, invite someone unexpected (politician, nurse, homeless teen, security guard, cleaning staff) in on a rehearsal

The idea is to get out in the world and do some good with the arts. For an hour or two this month, or much more extensively if you wish. Please write in the comments section below what your Good Thing is. These will then be passed on to folks at Donna’s Good Things so they can see all the artistic good being done in Donna’s name.

Together we will feast on the arts this Eid. And just see what happens!

Am I A Dancer Who Gave Up? A Follow-Up

So I have this here website. The URL is simply my name because I had to setup a portfolio site back in 2006 as part of a masters thesis project grant requirement. The site had been up with the same content for seven years (embarrassingly) before I revamped it prior to heading off to Egypt last summer. The Fulbright Commission highly promotes blogging, so I thought I would give it a go even though I’m not trained or practiced as a writer.

And I have been chronicling my experiences here this past year on a personal level. When big things happen in Cairo, and blogger friends are kind enough to share a link, my posts have reached an impressive 1,800 readers. That has happened twice.

But something strange started happening with my last post. I watched the number of hits surge past 5,000 with scary speed. And these weren’t just shares by friends and family. Am I A Dance Who Gave Up? has now been read by 78,000+; received 22.2K likes; was picked-up by Huffington Post and was the featured blog post on Huffington Post Arts, crazy enough, thus reaching a bare minimum of 47K more; reposted by Regional Dance America, Answers4Dancers, Association of Teaching Artists, and from both former professors and former students; shared over and over on Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest; and was commented on by 90+ people (all but 3 were positive). In addition, I was the recipient of 37 beautiful and passionate e-mails from strangers, some sharing their own stories, some inviting me to a conversation or project.

Viral. If even a bit. Wild.

You can understand why I am absolutely floored. This post wasn’t about a experience in Egypt: this wasn’t a story about cancer. It was nothing completely new, it was not a manifesto or even a completely thought-out argument of any kind. It was a personal exploration of professional identity.

But what is so powerful is that this massive and passionate response isn’t about me. My sharing of my story kicked open a lil something in the world. My friend Liz articulated it best,

“There is something big here that you’ve uncovered, something that clearly resonates with tens of thousands of people who want something more from their art.” 

Messages are coming in from artists ages 16 to 78, from Spain to Iraq to Bosnia, from musicians to dancer/urban planners, from military veteran artists, and from recent arts graduates and their parents. Even Liz Lerman herself. Some people found the post inspiring and comforting. Some people are stopping to reflect on their own definitions and stories.

One person asked me to do a follow-up post about “that crucial moment when things changed.” The reader went on to tell me, “I find it daunting now to know which steps to take, what organizations to contact, how to learn.”

So I thought I should definitely respond to his request. Starting with this…

 

Realization One: Take risks and get off campus

There was a senior choreographer at Millikin when I was a freshman. Instead of auditioning a piece for the semi-annual dance concert on campus, he rented out the downtown theater and produced his own evening-length dance show covering subjects from rape to war. His name is Chad. And he was the cool artist, social entrepreneur before I even knew what that was.

 

Realization Two: Religion and international understanding are important

On September 11, 2001, I was in to Day Two of my experience living and volunteering as a youth arts worker with young offenders in a predominantly Muslim community in East London. The only American around. I realized pretty quickly that religion and foreign policy matter. I must dance with people, their whole selves and identities, not just the dancer parts.

 

Realization Three: There is an actual field

Community Arts, Arts Integration, Teaching Artistry, Youth Arts Development, Citizen Artists, the Informal Arts, Cultural Diplomacy, Dance and Movement Therapy… they exist. And there are conferences, journals, courses, books and people available who have been doing this for decades, all around the world. Since Hull House. I just had to look.

 

Realization Four: I’m tired of talking to and dancing with dance people

In a one-month span, I went to a dance conference in Milwaukee and a dance competition outside of Chicago. I found myself skipping sessions at both and pretending to have a headache so that I didn’t have to talk to anymore dance people. Dance people are great: I am one of them. But when we get together, I find the conversations excruciating. Picking apart some detail of ticket sales or outreach or technique or evaluation. How to keep rich folk and philanthropists happy. I get geeked by some of these concepts, but having the same conversation on loop… no thanks. And I was pretty sure the audience was stuck on the same set of faces.

At the same time I started to meet cool non-dance people through personal circumstances and networking. Kids and families who face childhood cancer are some of the most amazing people you will ever meet. I have a new friend who survived a concentration camp and torture in northwest Bosnia. He went on to start an arts camp for children and to produce a film. I have Egyptian artist friends who launched a sit-in at the Ministry of Culture. I have the honor of being friends with The Violence Interrupters, the youngest member of the European Parliament, journalists in Palestine and Syria, pediatric oncologists and climate change researchers. These were the conversations that started bring life to my life. And when I spoke to these new friends, I needed a better answer to the question, “So what do you do?” And I needed to build and join more tables.

Myself and a few fellow members of the British Council's TN2020 during the SDA/NATO Conference in Brussels on the role of culture in conflict prevention.

Myself and a few fellow members of the British Council’s TN2020 during the SDA/NATO Conference in Brussels on the role of culture in conflict prevention.

 

Realization Five: Kids face cancer, genocide, dangerous streets, revolutions, and things I couldn’t imagine; People die but before that, they live; and Dancing means so much to them all 

Donna Quirke Hornik and I at Performing Arts Limited studio in Chicago, IL. 2009.

Donna and I at Performing Arts Limited studio in Chicago, IL. 2009. RIP. [Donna’s Good Things]

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One of my former dance students in Chicago, now an employee of the Museum of Contemporary Art. He’s a brilliant dancer and an inspiration to me.

A student of mine dancing in the former war fields of Northwest Bosnia.

A student of mine dancing in the former war fields of Northwest Bosnia during the Most Mira festival.

Liberal groups take over Tahrir Square. Cairo, Egypt. November 2012.

My view of the power of Tahrir Square. Cairo, Egypt. November 2012. [Artists as Catalysts]

When it comes to resources and places to start, the list is exhaustive. But I think the best service I could do at this point would be to share some of the organizations and projects that have reached out to me because of this blog post:

Exit 12 Dance Company Through movement, they educate audiences about the reality of war, advocate diversity and mutual understanding through cultural exchange, and champion the humanity and dignity of all persons.

ASTEP- Artists Striving to End Poverty is a networking force for artists to use their gifts working with children in extreme situations. Working in NYC with refugee kids, Florida with migrant kids, Africa with HIV affected kids, India with kids from the slums and lowest caste, and Ecuador for extremely poor kids. They just started a partnership this year with The Hole In The Wall Gang Camp with kids who are facing life threatening illnesses.

Keshet Dance Company provides daily programming with a customized curriculum for incarcerated youth at the state juvenile detention center; programming integrating dancers of all abilities, including dancers with physical and/or developmental disabilities; weekly dance programming for homeless youth; international exchanges with Israeli communities….etc

Genesis Sarajevo Dance Theatre has a mission to spread dance & artistic opportunities throughout the world with a more specific focus on post-conflict and developing countries/regions.  Their work has been focused on Bosnia and Herzegovina and this year they have an opportunity to expand to Cambodia, so we hope this is a reality in our near future.

UW Study of Learning in Embodied and Artistic Disciplines

Yes, You Can Dance! is a vehicle to share the joys and benefits of dancing with others.  They run a ballroom dance program for Special Needs students, provide dance opportunities for Senior Citizens and support a Dance for PD in Pittsburgh.

The DanceOn Network

Peer Practice  

The Healing Network

Center for Creative Placemaking provides expertise on how to utilize the arts and culture as tools for community, social and economic development.

Liz Lerman’s book of essays Hiking the Horizontal

 

Thank you to those of you with dreams you don’t give up on, but rather allow to get bigger. The tens of thousands of us who want more from our art.

Photo by Mohamed Radwan

Photo by Mohamed Radwan

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