Dancing may be the last thing on your mind if you’re trying to survive a genocide, there are far more urgent matters: food, water, shelter, safety, medical care. Yet, the fortitude that is required to persist in the face of such relentless cruelty, is itself rooted on something much deeper than the instinct to merely survive. To not only survive, but to survive with your dignity intact. For Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, this bare minimum of human dignity has been denied both at home and under the watch of the global community they’ve pleaded with for a ceasefire. How do you maintain your dignity despite this onslaught? For El-Funoun Palestine Popular Dance Troupe, the answer to that question has always been in the form of a choreographic gesture. Specializing in the Arab-Palestinian dabke tradition, El-Funoun was founded in 1979 with a mandate to “contribute to liberating the individual and society at large.” For this company, dance has always been, above all, an expression of freedom, a wand of defiance, a weapon of resistance.

Prior to the October 7th attack by Hamas, the troupe—constituted by 268 volunteer dancers—used to perform regularly in schools, community centres, and performance venues both at home and abroad. They represented a Palestinian identity that was free from the shadow of their occupiers and animated by the ambitions of artistic cultivation. They toured domestically and internationally, stomping on stages as far wide as the USA, Canada, Portugal, Sweden, France, Germany, and more. Speaking with Cannopy from Ramallah in the West Bank, Khaled Qatamesh (Director) and Noora Baker (Head of Production) express a yearning for their touring days to return, to be able to take the Palestinian cause to the world again, a world whose sympathy for Gaza’s plight has grown exponentially—and yet not enough. When it's safe to travel again, the troupe’s hope is to be met with a long list of invitations, a hope in the courage of programmers and organizations willing to put their money where their morals are. Such invitations, symbolic though they may be, would be a show of solidarity to the dignified existence of Palestinians everywhere. In the meantime, Qatamesh, Baker, and the rest of El-Funoun must contend with the more domestic side of their mission: to stay put, to keep the faith, to not cede ground, come what may.