Dance Is Not for Us review – desire and defiance as one revolutionary mover sweats it all out
Barbican, London Omar Rajeh performs out of frustration, resistance and a need to connect in this stream-of-consciousness solo at Dance Umbrella festival In August 2019, Omar Rajeh sat in his bedroom, listening to the sound of pounding percussion with his world in crisis. In the midst of political instability, Citerne Beirut, a theatre and cultural centre Rajeh had founded in his native Lebanon, was forced to close…
Key points
- Omar Rajeh performs Dance Is Not for Us at the Barbican as part of the Dance Umbrella festival.
- Rajeh founded Citerne Beirut, which was closed by local government order in 2019.
- The solo mixes calm reflection on choreography with bursts of physical instinct.
Omar Rajeh performs his solo Dance Is Not for Us at the Barbican in London, part of this year's Dance Umbrella festival. The piece grew out of events in August 2019, when Rajeh sat in his bedroom listening to pounding percussion while his world was in crisis.
That year, Citerne Beirut, the theatre and cultural centre he founded in his native Lebanon, was forced to close. The local government ordered it dismantled and planned to build an incinerator on the site.
Dance as resistance
Rajeh says that as a teenager, coming of age at the end of the Lebanese civil war, dance had seemed the most revolutionary thing he could do. More than three decades later he is still dancing, out of frustration, defiance, resistance and a wish to connect.
As the percussive score builds, his busy body works up a sweat. The review describes him as not always an especially elegant mover, but as someone who dances like it is a necessary thing to do.
He dances like it’s a necessary thing to do
— the Guardian reviewer
A choreographer's mind
The solo can look like an explosion of physical instinct, but it is mostly calm, considered musing on the nature of choreography, with its workings exposed. Rajeh sits and taps at a keyboard as his thoughts appear on screen, including the inspirations, decisions, vacillations and U-turns behind a performance.
He recalls the first choreographies he saw: a fight between two men, and people gathering in the streets to protest, bodies making choices and organising themselves in space. Rajeh, now based in Lyon, treats the creative and the political as one, and the piece is described as a heartfelt appeal to gather, witness and share pain and loss.
