Dancing for freedom
Danser pour la liberté
Danser la paix, de Damas à Amsterdam.
Danser, envers et contre tout. Danser au milieu des ruines, malgré la guerre en Syrie et les menaces… C’est le destin d’Ahmad Joudeh, dont les arabesques ont fait le tour du monde grâce au documentaire « Dance or die ». Repéré par l’Opéra national des Pays-Bas, il a quitté Damas et vit désormais à Amsterdam, où il continue à danser pour promouvoir la paix. Voici son histoire.
AMSTERDAM — Last summer in Syria, Ahmad Joudeh visited the demolished ruins of his family home in the Yarmouk refugee camp near Damascus to dance in the place where his relatives had been killed.
2. Behind him, separated only by a black curtain, was a group of rebel snipers who occasionally fired off a shot; in front, Syrian military personnel patrolled the terrain. A Dutch documentary filmmaker, Roozbeh Kaboly, was there too, capturing the moment.
3. Joudeh, though, remains calm and shows the cameras a tattoo on the back of his neck, the spot
where ISIS terrorists have chopped the heads off their victims: “Dance or Die,” it reads. “This is my message,” he says. “Many people are dead here. My uncles are dead here; I will dance” for their souls.
4. Kaboly’s 18-minute documentary, also called “Dance or Die,” was a turning point for Joudeh. It was broadcast last August on “Nieuwsuur,” a Dutch program akin to “60 Minutes.” Ted Brandsen, the managing director of the Dutch National Ballet, saw it and was captivated.
5. “He had something in his determination; a complete focus,” Brandsen said in a recent interview. “I thought: ‘There must be something we can do for this guy.'” The next day, Brandsen
started a crowdfunding initiative to raise at least 25,000 euros, or nearly $30,000, to bring Joudeh to Amsterdam.
FROM DAMASCUS TO AMSTERDAM
6. Within a few months, a visa, a residency permit, a program of study, housing and a plane ticket were all arranged. To Joudeh’s astonishment, he was soon saying goodbye to his mother, brother and sister in Damascus and leaving his homeland behind.
7. Now, less than a year since arriving in Europe, Joudeh has become a creative spokesman for peace in Syria, using dance as his platform. In
July he danced in front of the Eiffel Tower in Paris. He performed before 14,000 people in the Ziggo Dome in Amsterdam, in a concert to raise money for refugees; and he has danced at refugee-related events in Italy, France, Spain and Norway.
8. Meanwhile, he made his debut with the Dutch National Ballet in Brandsen’s production of “Coppelia,” and in September he started to perform a minor role in “Sleeping Beauty.”
9. Joudeh, who spoke with me at a cafe here near the ballet and opera, first encountered ballet when he was 8. He was singing in a school performance and the next act was a group of girls dancing. “I was moving with them from my seat,” he recalled, “and I went home I was trying to do the same movements. After that, I was dancing all the time, in the house, in the street, and if I heard any music anywhere.”
10. At 16, totally self-taught, he auditioned for the main Syrian ballet company, Enana Dance Theater in Damascus, and was accepted. There he was trained in ballet, gymnastics and modern dance, while also performing with the company, which relocated to Dubai in 2012. As he became more skilled he took on more solo roles, his teacher, Albina Belova, said, and he traveled extensively with the company in places including Qatar, Algeria, Tunisia, Jordan and Lebanon.
to perform se produire; ici, danser / before ici, devant / -related lié à. 8. meanwhile parallèlement / Sleeping Beauty la Belle au bois dormant. 9. to encounter ici, découvrir / performance ici, spectacle / act numéro (artiste) / seat siège, place assise / to recall se rappeler/souvenir/remémorer. 10. self-taught autodidacte / main principal, plus grand/réputé / to train former, entraîner / to relocate ici, s'établir (en un nouvel endroit) / as ici, au fur et à mesure que / skilled compétent, expérimenté / to take, took, taken on accepter / extensively énormément, beaucoup / Jordan (la) Jordanie / Lebanon (le) Liban. 11. In 2014, he was invited to be a contestant on the Arab version of the television show “So You Think You Can Dance.” “Bravo, bravo, bravo,” a judge said after his performance. “For a tall gentleman you’re using all your body, and you’re flying up in the air. Flying, looking for freedom.”
12. But as a rare male ballet dancer in Arab society, he was regularly vilified, even at home. His father subjected him to beatings so intense that they once broke his leg.
13. “It has nothing to do with religious beliefs,” Joudeh said. “Dance for men is just considered shameful. Dance is for girls, and for girls it’s also not considered polite.”
14. His mother divorced his father, and Joudeh and a friend set up a dance school in Yarmouk Camp; his mother managed the studio and Joudeh said he was happy there. “Before my house was destroyed, I had a great life,” he said. “I had my house, my studio with my friend, and we were teaching dance in the camp to hundreds of students.”
"HE WAS ALMOST FLYING"
15. Kaboly found Joudeh later, when his only place to practice was on a Damascus rooftop; he was still teaching dance to orphans and to young people with Down syndrome at SOS Children’s Villages, which help children who have lost family in the war.
16. “When people think of Syria, they think of men with beards and guns in their hands,” Kaboly said in an interview. “But that’s not the Syria I saw… I saw people who were trying to live their lives. I was looking to do a piece on the artists, athletes or people who were doing something different.” He discovered Joudeh on a website and was attracted to his energy: “He was almost flying.”
17. Soon after he arrived in Amsterdam, Joudeh got a second tattoo: the word “Free” in English on his left wrist. But when asked if he feels free now, he shakes his head. “You think, OK, you reach your freedom but all your people are not free,” he said. “Then you are not free. I cannot go back and visit my family, and they cannot come here. Any time that I can see my mother I will feel free.”
“Dance for men is just considered shameful”