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Paper short abstract:

My contribution aims to showcases the ways in which contemporary dance participates in the construction of spaces where an alternative Palestine is lived, shared, and imagined. Dancing becomes a "politics of disobedience", through which the existence of a futurity is affirmed against the odds.

Paper long abstract:

In Global Palestine, John Collins (2011) pointed that, paradoxically, the more visible Palestinian situation became at a global scale, the more Palestinian actual territory shrank at a local scale. During the last ten years, this tendency has increased, and the existence of a geographical Palestine seems more and more endangered. However, Palestine is more than territorial islands in the West Bank, or the narrow Gaza strip; it is made of social relationships, desires and imaginations, and this existence has been built, affirmed and performed in the creations of many Palestinian artists all around the world.

My contribution aims to showcase the ways in which contemporary dance participates in the construction of spaces where an alternative Palestine is lived, shared, and imagined by diverse actors. Similarly to the Matsutake growing in the ruins of capitalism (Tsing), this Palestine is built in the interstices of the Zionist project and the military occupation, but also in those of (neo)colonial relationships with European countries and their international cultural programs. Dancers and choreographers create against the odds. They oppose movement to the immobility generated by physical and administrative constraints, and build creative connections against Palestinian political and geographic isolation. They finally refuse to be confined in the past through dance and movement innovation. Dancing becomes a "politics of disobedience", through which the existence of a futurity is affirmed (Vergès, 2021: 22-23). My contribution builds on a five-year long ethnography among Palestinian dancers and choreographers in the West Bank, Israel, and Europe.