laGeste / Stereo48

Palestinian dabke. Hip hop. Capoeira. Circus. And a question that won’t leave the room. Badke was created in 2013 for a group of Palestinian dancers working with les ballets C de la B. It toured internationally for three years and then, like many things, went quiet.
Now it’s back — rebuilt from the inside out by Amir Sabra and Ata Khatab, two of its original participants, as Badke(remix). The starting point is still dabke, the traditional Palestinian folk dance. But the eleven performers on stage bring backgrounds that span contemporary dance, breakdance, capoeira, and circus, and what they build together is something that asks how much a form can transform before it loses itself — and whether that loss might also be a kind of survival.
The political context is never stated. It doesn’t need to be. It’s present in every choice, every adaptation, every act of cultural reappropriation the piece enacts.One of the most important works on this year’s program.