São Paulo – Experimentus Cia de Dança, a dance company from Brazil’s Ceará state, is participating in the Ramallah Contemporary Dance Festival, which opened in Palestine on the 15th this month and will continue until the 25th. The group will perform next Sunday (21st) at 7:30 pm. The festival features 13 dance companies from ten different countries.
“The Palestinian audience enjoys Brazilian art, especially the dancing, which is quite familiar to them. We also have backing from the Brazilian embassy, which is very active here,” says festival director Khaled Elayyan. “It is very important for Palestinians to get to know Brazilian dancing, and also for us to invite foreign artists to see our culture,” he says.
The festival is held since 2006. This year, according to Elayyan, approximately 100 companies have registered to perform. “We watched a video submitted by Experimentus and we liked it. Their performance is aesthetically pleasing, and we find it important to cooperate with Brazil,” he says.
Experimentus is presenting the show Nada Além da Embalagem (Nothing but the Packaging) a critique of society’s emphasis on the appearance of people and things. The company was founded in 2005 by choreographer Paulo Lima, and it will perform in Portugal and Spain before arriving at the West Bank.
In addition to the Brazilian company, the Ramallah Festival is also featuring groups from Norway, Palestine, France, Greece, Switzerland, Ireland, Tunisia, Germany and the United Kingdom. According to Elayyan, audiences of up to 6,000 people attend the performances at the festival. “Attendance is growing with each new year,” he says.
The director also says that over the course of eight years, the festival has featured 110 companies and 1,800 artists. This is the second time that the event hosts a Brazilian company. The first was in 2007.
The festival is promoted by the non-government organization Sareyyet Ramallah-First Ramallah Group, which comprises three dance groups: one folk, one contemporary, and one for children. The NGO also maintains a dance school for children with 120 students.
The full program of the Ramallah Contemporary Dance Festival is available at http://migre.me/e9JBo.
*Translated by Gabriel Pomerancblum
