Floating on a Dead Sea' national tour begins at Longford's Backstage Theatre

There is a story about a farmer in the Alsace region of France who was interviewed in 1946. When asked by a journalist what was the war like, he said: “First the Germans came, then the Americans came, all the time life went on.”
Conflict is eternal, but life has a water-like ability to flow around it.

The cyclical nature of war is being played out in the Middle East at present as Israeli ground forces clash with Hezbollah fighters in southern Lebanon. This is a headline that could just as easily have been pulled from 1978 as 2024.
The genesis of that conflict is over 100 years old, bubbling away since the Balfour Declaration of 1917. All that time, lives go on.

On Saturday, Catherine Young Dance presents ‘Floating on a Dead Sea’ at Backstage Theatre as part of a national tour of the show. It's a piece rooted in the century old struggle over land played out in the Middle East.
Inspired by Young’s time in Palestine it features a cast of international dancers, stunning visuals by filmmaker Luca Truffarelli and live music directed by Martin Schärer.

Also Read: Mystery Movie Monday nights to take place for Longford's LGBT+ community

The work presents two interconnected pieces: Truffarelli's documentary, and Young's take on her Palestine experience through her choreographic lens.

It's a weaving of movement, film, live music, and text into the daily lives of Palestinians, giving expression to a voice often unheard.

“I was working with asylum seekers and refugees during the height of the refugee crisis back in 2016,” Catherine Young told the Leader during a break from rehearsals in Backstage, “I wanted to find a way to connect with the new communities and dancing is what I do.”

Around that time Catherine was commissioned to provide a piece for the Festival of Welcomes, Féile Fáilte, in Kerry and put out an invite to refugees to participate: “Ahmed Lulu joined the dance project. He was from Gaza, so he taught us Dabke, which is the traditional Palestinian dance form. I'd never experienced it before, it ended up in the show.”

That show was a joyous cultural conglomeration of dancing styles from Syria, Afric and Ireland and others. Remounted for a performance as part of Limerick's Culture Night offering, a trailer for the show made its way to the head of the Ramallah Contemporary Dance Festival,

“He saw this trailer made by a UL student and asked us to bring the show to Palestine,” Catherine recalled, “There was a problem, the dancers were in the process of asylum applications, but 13 of us went out to Ramallah in 2017, and worked with a dance company to restage the show collaboratively with Palestinians and Irish, and we performed it in Ramallah and East Jerusalem.”

Also Read: Former Irish rugby international appears in court over alleged bank theft of over €500k

In 2017 the West Bank was an area of volatility: “That trip changed everybody's lives. You think you know what's going on, you intellectually understand human rights, but when you actually go and physically visit the country it's just a whole other ballgame. I think the thing that struck us most was how coloured we are by the media's portrayal of Palestine.

“We weren't prepared for the love, the welcome, the hospitality, the humour. It was a really positive, really beautiful experience. That's what you don't get to see on the television and in the media. It's always the bad stuff.”
The adventure left a lasting impression: “When we were leaving after the show in Jerusalem, we asked the dancers, “what can we do to help”, and they said, “tell people”,

“The first trip was a lot of rehearsal, I didn't get to travel around too much. So I went back in 2019 with the filmmaker. We travelled around, we met people, and interviewed people, and got a much better sense of the country.

“Art is a permanent representation of the transience of life. Catherine put her Palestine experience into her work: “I decided I would attempt to make a show, little did I know that the whole thing would pan out,” she tells, “I went back, we recorded, and it felt like the show was jinx, because we were supposed to do it in 2020, and then Covid happened, and I couldn't fly any dancers in, so then myself and Luca Truffarelli started going through the footage.”

The choreographer was struck by a major message presenting itself: “The big theme is the inability to move, the lack of freedom to move, which as a dancer is a really challenging thing. We put the documentary together, in 2021, it was like, oh it's open, we're closed, we're open, we're closed.

“The first version of the show hit the stage for the Dublin Dance Festival. They decided to do a winter edition between lockdowns.”

Also Read:Gardaí seize over €278,000 worth of drugs following search of residence in Dublin

Though the inspiration is very personal, Floating on a Dead Sea tackles topics beyond the Middle East: “I wanted to do a show about my experience of Palestinians. It's the beauty, the culture, the dance. Their sense of community that we don't really have in the West any more, a community that capitalism has almost destroyed, because capitalism hasn't taken so strong a hold there.

“We try to portray the positive things we experienced in Palestine, the strength, the resilience. When we toured in Jerusalem, we had a really horrendous experience at a checkpoint, they were trying to send our dancers home.

“When, after three hours, we got to the other side of the wall we were destroyed, but the Palestinians were like, “get it together, we're showing in three hours”. They didn't fall apart, there's a strength, and a resilience I think I've learned from them. As well as warmth, and humour.”

The show is two interconnected works: Truffarelli's documentary and the dance performance that has been rehearsing in Longford's Backstage for the last number of weeks: “It's about experiencing the beauty, the joy, and the richness of Palestinian culture, especially the dancing. Dabke is such a beautiful dance form.

We have wonderful live music, some Irish tunes, Bahá'u'lláh, sung on a Middle Eastern scale. It's a show with a rich and diverse musical offering.”

Floating on a Dead Sea's national tour starts off in Longford's Backstage theatre this Saturday, October 12, 2024. Check out www.backstage.ie