Dabka and Allegories: balad-terra- by Gruppo ONCE

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Dabka and Allegories: balad-terra- by Gruppo ONCE

Dance Performance

gruppo_once

The performance is divided in three parts.
It begins with Dabka, traditional Arabic dance performed by Farah Saleh.
The second piece is a video projection where the Palstinian dancer speaks about the relationship between her migration experience and her art. The third part consists of a theatre-dance piece, about the Irael-Palestinian conflict, performed by Gruppo Once: "Allegorie: balad-terra.

Dabka is a traditional Middle East male dance, performed in Lebanon, Syria, Palestine and Iraq. The name comes from the Arabian verb yadbuk: to stamp the ground. It represents the love for one's country and, mostly, pepole's unity. The dance expresses joy and is usually performed for weddings, births and harvests. In Middle Eastern countries there are different types of Dabkas but with strong similarities. They are all group dances: the dancers are in circe or semicircle and proceede in line, with their right hands held in the back and left hands in front.
The dance is always counter-clockwise.
The dancers' gaze turns to the center of the circle, or of the semicircle, depending on the step or type of dabka they dance. The first dancer of the line is leading the others who follow the variations. The dance is always accompanied by traditional Arabic percussions like the Darabouka.
The steps are very important for all types of Dabka, as the name suggests. The dancers beat the ground with their feet to marches or different sorts of rhythms variating throughout the dance. Dabka is not only accompanied by music but also by songs, as most of the music is intended to be sung. The dances are often introduced by particular poems, mawwal, characterised by rhymes and words with double or triple meanings.

a production Straligut Teatro
realised by Gruppo ONCE
with Bonnie Eldred and Farh Saleh
director Sara Due Torri

Where & When

MATER FESTIVAL
Montepulciano (Italy), ilCAntinonearte Teatri - 16th of March 2009, at 9.15 pm

Gruppo Once
Founded in 2006 from the encounter between Sara Due Torri, Bonnie Eldred and Farah Saleh.
The dance company works at the Corte dei Miracoli of Siena.
The artistic line of the company is: relation between concept, improvisation and coreography. The company's research embraces defferent disciplines as theatre, music, writing and painting. The contamination of different forms of art is coherent with the eterogeneous background of Gruppo Once members. This richness of different art forms merges in their performances and improvisations.
The company is promoted by Straligut Teatro and constantly collaborates with Corte dei Miracoli.

Farah Saleh born in Damascus in 1985, she moved to Palestine in 1996. In 2003 she started her first year at the Università per Stranieri in Siena (Italy). She has started her ballet training at 6 years old, then moved to contemporary dance, but, as all Arabic children, Farah Saleh was born with the rhythm of belly dance. She is a co-founder member of Gruppo Once, contemporary dance company and improvisation research group. She teaches belly dance at the Corte dei Miracoli of Siena.

Bonnie Eldred (USA) BA in Dance and Psychology at Bennington College (USA). In College she started to explore improvisation, composition, new dance and pshyco-physical dinamics in Psychiatry. In New York City and Boston Bonnie studied with New Dance and Contact Improvisation masters. In Italy, she collaborates with companies like Company Blu, the Associazione Nu, and with Massimiliano Baracchini. Her work was shown in Italy, in USA and in France. In 2003 her work was enriched by taking part in a seminar on Integrated Movement for people with psychiatric disorders in Siena, in collaboration with the Associazione Riabilita onlus. Bonnie is currently concluding her fourth year of Feldenkrais Method School in Florence and is teaching it at the Corte dei Miracoli di Siena.
In 2006 she co-founded the Gruppo Once with Farah Saleh and Sara Due Torri.

Sara Due Torri is attending her second year of Graduate Studies in Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology in Siena University, Literature Studies. She is co-founder of the Gruppo Once with Farah Saleh and Bonnie Eldred.
She worked as a dancer for two years in the ballet corp of the theatre company "Gli amici di Jacky"(Genoa-Italy), and as movement and dance educator with the cooperative "Il formicaio" for the rescue of "children from the historical centre of Genoa". She worked in various performances and organised improvisation workshops. She is also teacher of relaxing techniques, massage, contamporary dance and improvisation.
Sara has partecipated to the "Festival- Arlecchino d'oro", urban and scene theatre Festival in Mantova where, in 2006, she presented her productions Aracne and, in 2007, "La Donna con La Barba".

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