Dubke Class

We had been asked to give English classes at the local youth club in Abu Dis, which is near our community centre, but for the second time no students turned up. Instead there was a class in Dubke, the Palestinian national class. Having nothing to do, I decided to stay and watch it. I had already seen some Dubke being performed at a wedding party last year, but this was a well-attended class. It was mixed 8 teenage males and 7 females, and the people involved in it were clearly dedicated - there are about three or four classes a week. They are rehearsing for a performance in August. Often they perform at weddings.
Folk dancing in Britain and other European countries have a nerdish feel to them; they seem to be practised by people who would not be seen dead in an ordinary night club, people who are self-consciously excavating something archaic. It seems different here. I recognised some of our students from the centre. Ibrahim, who is into rap and makes his own tracks, was also here for the class, and a number of others are too. The dance consists of a complicated series of steps performed in unison, involving light backward and forward upward and downward movements, against a syncopated beat: da da-da da da, da da-da da the basic beat embellished with elaborate riffs. The speed is fast, every now and then the dancers throw themselves forward and down on to the floor on one knee. The dance is vigorous and physical also graceful exhilirating to watch. The dancers seem exhilirated as well.
The way the teenagers greet each other is interesting. There seem to be three overlapping systems. The teenage boys will sometimes use a traditional Arab greeting which consists of kissing a cheek, then the other cheek, then the first cheek again, then the second cheek again. Superimposed on this is the standard hand-slap right hand to right hand, which must be practised everywhere on earth, certainly my kids in Whitechapel do it. This must come from America via MTV, music videos gangster movies. Then there is also something that occasionally happens which is that someone will pucker their lips as if to mimic a kiss. There is an edge to this, a bit ambiguous, a bit aggressive. I have been in receipt of this a few times, once from a policeman in Bethlehem, and I notice that some of the kids occasionally do this to each other.
I have heard people say that Dubke is a way of asserting national identity and pride. I think of the sense of physical expansion for a people who are boxed in controlled, whose physical space has been taken away from them, who are restricted in where they can go, when they can go, who is allowed to travel where. (This has been an abiding sensation for me this time, the physical sense of restriction, the longing to get away). Watching the dance, I start to fantasise that this is not a dance but this is a magical form of stepping over and marking out a huge terrain. The dancers are like giants lightly and confidently leaping with gigantic strides over the earth.