Palestinian crew shares tradition with CSUF by means of dance | Life-style

The SouthWest Asian North African Club and Resource Center gave Cal State Fullerton college students a style of the upbeat music and dynamic actions of the standard Levantine Dabke dance at their Thursday workshop.

This occasion, that includes Palestinian dance troupe El-Funoun, mixed schooling with group as college students and workers engulfed themselves in Dabke whereas studying about and destigmatizing the tradition it comes from.

Nadia Al-Said, SWANA Resource Center coordinator, helped arrange the occasion alongside the student-run SWANA membership on campus. The SWANA Resource Center opened as part of CSUF’s Diversity Initiatives Resource Center final yr. 

“It’s a new center — ‘SouthWest Asian North African,’ is a decolonial term to describe the Middle East,” Al-Said mentioned. “This year, I wanted to come up with programs that would be engaging and educational, but more in a practice way, and not so much as a classroom lecture kind of way.” 

Open to all college students, the workshop featured easy but spontaneous routines that allowed everybody to work collectively and be taught extra about this fashion of dance from the Levant area.

“Being able to have both SWANA and non-SWANA students as you see here, engage in a workshop like this, of cultural production, dance and music, it really allows for people to destigmatize our people and our cultures, and to learn the history and the background, and engage in something that’s new,” Al-Said mentioned.

Al-Said was related with El-Funoun by means of Sawa SoCal, who have been excited to attach with faculty college students as a Palestinian non-profit that often works with youngsters.  With this occasion, Al-Said was not solely capable of present group for the scholars at CSUF, but in addition for herself.

“I am a Palestinian, and so a lot of times, our identity is associated with a lot of trauma and violence and just a lot of repression and oppression that has happened to our people throughout history,” Al-Said mentioned. “Being able to have a space where we’re experiencing joy with one another and sharing our joy as Palestinians, sharing our heritage with one another – I really hope the students get to feel that joy today.”

Similarly, Reem Joudeh, an El-Funoun dancer who joined the troupe when she was eight, sees Dabke as a strong software in bringing her nearer to her heritage. 

“For me, it’s about the connection with the land and also connection with the people that I’m dancing with,” Joudeh mentioned. “I think Dabke also brings out my personality — my real personality — on the stage. Everybody says that on the stage I will be smiling all the time because I really enjoy it and it brings out the best of me.”

For Joudeh, Dabke isn’t solely simply part of her life, it was woven into her childhood. Growing up in a household the place music and motion got here collectively, she discovered her inspiration to hitch El-Funoun near house.

“We’ve been dancing for a really long time. My uncle is a dancer there,” Joudeh mentioned. “I was inspired by him, and since I was a kid, even before joining El-Funoun, I was always loving to move, to dance and to express myself with dancing and with Dabke specifically.”

This connection extends past simply household. Dabke, as Joudeh describes it, is rooted in her heritage however can be ever-changing.

“Dabke wasn’t started by professional dancers. It was started by farmers, just working together and enjoying and having fun together and making this connection with the ground,” Joudeh mentioned. “We also take inspiration from other dances, like hip-hop, like African dance, like ballet. So we mix, we use our souls in it and our culture — 
that’s how we make it.”

Joseph Mudawar, a second-year enterprise main and honorary SWANA membership member, has huge hopes for what folks will acquire from coming to occasions like these.

“They will be taught concerning the custom and the tradition,” Mudawar mentioned. “They will get informed on what something really is and the story behind it.”