IBDAA Dance Performance Tour

by Andrew Parks

dance

Getting a passport can be an ordeal. While preparing for a Tahitian getaway may mean waiting in line for a whole 15 minutes, imagine being a Palestinian refugee. First you have to receive permission to exit the country from the Israelis. Then you have to secure a visa from the U.S. government, which isn't exactly a fan either.

"And now Israel is building a barrier that will be two times as high and three times as long as the Berlin Wall," adds Kymberlie Charles, program assistant for the American Friends Service Committee.

Palestinian youth dance troupe IBDAA originally planned on touring the United States in February and March, but was forced to reschedule after it was denied entry. The AFSC and local activist group SUSTAIN (Stop U.S. Tax-Funded Aid To Israel Now) secured Philadelphia for the group's revised summer itinerary. The young performers merge monologues and singing with the traditional Palestinian dance debkeh (think a politicized Riverdance crossed with clogging).

"I sort of learned it before," Charles says, laughing. "But Arabic music has a distinct rhythm to it. Us Westerners don't have that in our ears, so it's a bit hard to get your body moving with it."

Always on the sidelines, too, is politics. "As nice as it might be for them to stay in a hotel, travel on a train and have people flocking after them, this isn't their home," Charles says. "Palestinian refugees don't want luxury. They want their human rights."

IBDAA Dance Performance Tour, Thu., July 31, 6:30 p.m., $15, Community College of Philadelphia, Bonnell Large Auditorium, 17th St. (between Spring Garden and Callowhill sts.), 215-241-7062.

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