Paper Short Abstract:

This paper explores unwriting and memory activism, examining the site-based work of Palestinian choreographer Shaden Abu Elasal and the dance ethnographer’s praxis. Through performances of Palestinian women dancing in modern local cities, Abu Elasal retrieves memory and reclaims space and history.

Paper Abstract:

Manar Hasan employed the term “memoricide” in reference to the 1948 war and the process by which the destruction of the Palestinian cities obliterated from collective consciousness not only the cities but also the women who once lived and played highly visible roles within them. This paper enters into conversation with Hasan’s argument through an exploration of the site-based work of Palestinian choreographer Shaden Abu Elasal as memory activism and a form of unwriting Zionist constructions of space and memory, and my role as a dance ethnographer and activist in documenting, interpreting and theorizing her work. I show how by reintroducing specifically Palestinian women dancers as elements of “flesh and stone” of urban settings, Abu Elasal resurrects both the city and the women, revealing the obscured and retrieving the forgotten. Within the ongoing struggle in Israel/Palestine over narrative, memory and consciousness, and within a political climate that denies, silences and censors expressions of collective Palestinian identity, Abu Elasal employs dance as a nonverbal means of expression and presence, free from the chains and risks of language. Finally, in turning the lens to my own practice of writing moving bodies, I suggest that this minute praxis gives form and structure to experience – in this case Abu Elasal’s simultaneous rerooting and uprooting, reentering and transcending the land through dances that serve to reinforce Palestinian presence and identity.