Sharaf DarZaid:\u00a0<\/strong>The Popular Art Center was founded in 1987, in the first Intifada, in the time when the Israeli occupation was just not looking to occupy land, but also to steal our heritage and our identity and our culture. And even the colours of our Palestinian flag were forbidden. And if any Palestinian tried to raise their Palestinian flag, they would arrest him or her. In this kind of situation, the Popular Art Center came established in order to save culture, identity and dabke. And to create a dance school to teach to children, from 5 years old until 16 years old, dabke, the pure traditional folkloric dance. And not just to teach them the technique of the dance, but also the importance of the dabke dance and the story behind it and why we are doing it and how it’s related to our heritage and how we can use it to express ourselves.<\/p>\nWe started with the Heritage Festival to keep the dance groups alive and to have the space to present their creation to the audience. And of course, all kind of dabke dance production is always talking about resistance, about Palestine, its history, about reigning, about Palestinian agriculture, about fighting, about Palestinian animals that we use, whether in agriculture or in the fights, sharing different stories. And we also have one of the programs that we called \u201coutreach program\u201d, where we go to different villages and refugee camps to work with children. Especially at the second Intifada, those children faced a lot of harms and problems due to the occupation. And what we actually do is to go and establish dance groups or to develop dance groups that they already established there in these places.<\/p>\n
We don’t do like branches for the Popular Art Center, no, we build partnerships with organizations with community-based organizations, because we believe that everyone is in their own city, they are stronger. So it’s not a business thing, it’s a non-governmental and non-profit organization. And we established hundreds of dance troops, and the Heritage Festival is a place for them to present and to perform, not just in Ramallah where we live, and also in other cities in Palestine.<\/p>\n
We also started in 1993 the Palestine International Festival, where we are trying to invite local and international dance and music troops to perform, in Ramallah and also in other cities to present their own culture, their own art, and to share it with Palestinians and also to see Palestine with their own eyes and to experience passing through checkpoints, through apartheid, the separation wall and also to visit villages and refugee camps to see what’s going on in Palestine. And this is also to build cultural bridges with the whole world.<\/p>\n
Also one of the group programs that we worked on is to record old songs and traditional music, to record them and to put them available for artists and groups from all over Palestine, to come and to listen and to produce new productions inspired by the folklore. There are our roots and this is our heritage, this is our culture, this is our identity, that we are presenting, and keep them alive and share it with people. We don’t want this kind of art to stay just in the museum: we want it to be spread out and to be all over the word. This is like one of our missions in the Popular Art Center.<\/p>\n
AT:\u00a0\u00a0So you are building an archive of recordings. Is it available somehow for people from abroad, on your website?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\nSD:\u00a0<\/strong>You should come and listen to it in the Center.<\/p>\nAT:\u00a0\u00a0Ah, so we have to visit you if we want to listen to it. Do you have any plan for putting it available for the world online?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\nSD:\u00a0<\/strong>We do have plans, but we still are stuck in some technical issues and also the copyright, because we don’t have the copyright to put it on the website. We just record them and archive them, so people can come, listen, and produce their own. If I want to put it online for people all over the world to use it, I need copyright.<\/p>\nAT:\u00a0\u00a0Is this your job? Can you make your living with this?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\nSD:\u00a0<\/strong>Yes, this is my job but actually I do art management and I do dance, so I’m not just professional dancer. I wouldn’t have enough money to to live just as a dancer, because being a dancer it’s a bit risky in in Palestine: if there’s a project, you work. If you don’t have a project, you don’t work. And actually, in our dance troupe I’m a volunteer, I dance as a volunteer, I train as a volunteer and I also choreograph as a volunteer. And I travel abroad with the company as a volunteer. I don’t take money, and I don’t want to take money, actually. Even if they had money I would ask them to save it, in order to create new productions. So we are more than 100 members in the dance troupe, but all of us are volunteers. And this is basically one of the very important things that makes the organization keep going and keep alive and not stopping, because it’s volunteer-based.<\/p>\nHow we define professional? For us, a professional dancer it not about taking money from the dance. For us, professional means that you are loyal towards the idea and to have a common mission with the dance troop and to present Palestine, especially due to the current circumstances, the situation that we are living under occupation, and to be on time, to give all your effort, put all your energy, power\u2026 This is professionality for us. It’s not about money at all.<\/p>\n
AT:\u00a0\u00a0You are very young, so you didn’t found yourself the Popular Art Center. You said it was founded in 1987.\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\nSD:\u00a0<\/strong>I was born in the same year. The Forum Dance Troupe was established in 1979. And in 1987 they decided to establish the Popular Art Center because they didn\u2019t want their dancers to be, as I told you, paid as dancers. They wanted to keep the volunteer-based work. And at that moment they thought about having their own dance school. Then, their members and Forum Dance Group could be paid trainers, professional trainers at the Popular Art Center. So, they are actually two organizations: one is producing art volunteer-based and the other one is presenting art and teaching art on a professional level.<\/p>\nSo personally I do dance voluntarily but, at the Popular Art Center, I work as a manager as my every day I have office work from 10 to 18. Dancing comes before, we have a studio upstairs in the building. I dance like 2 hours before my work starts and, afterwards, after 6, I dance with Forum Dance Troope. But I have eight hours a day to work, because, you know it is a bit risky to work just as a dancer and we don’t have an insurance even. If you fall, for example, on your leg and you can’t dance anymore, no one will give you a wage, a salary. And I think this is not just in Palestine, I mean, it\u2019s everywhere, but in Palestine it’s much more difficult, because we don’t even have support from a cultural ministry or from the government. We need to have our own funds and in the Popular Art Center we refuse to take funds from Sweden, from the EU, from the United States, from the British Council. All the funders put political conditional funds. So we decided not to take money from them. And from those who give the right for Israelis to start their genocide in Gaza we also decided not to take a money from them.<\/p>\n
In this so beautiful video you’ll see Sharaf performing with the El-Funoun Palestinian Dance Troupe:<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/mcusercontent.com\/993c677d53044839b1b39b2dc\/video_thumbnails_new\/3d9ad15b9f3a6003ccf0e1fd9b384e1c.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\nAT:\u00a0\u00a0So how do you keep the organizations going on economically? How can you found your own salary?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\nSD:\u00a0<\/strong>Our society helps.<\/p>\nAT:\u00a0\u00a0You mean the Palestinians\u2026 they buy tickets\u2026<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\nSD:\u00a0<\/strong>They buy tickets, they are participating in the dance school, they support us, they help us\u2026 It’s not a problem.<\/p>\nAT:\u00a0\u00a0I have one last question. You are talking about dabke. It’s not only in Palestine, but this dance is also in other countries too. Are you able to bring also foreigner dancers to dabke dancers from other countries?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\nSD:\u00a0<\/strong>Yes, of course. As I told you, we organize the Palestine International Festival where we annually invite different dance and music artists from all over the world to come to Palestine, and to perform as well, and to work with the Palestinian artists. We also work on a project at the Popular Art Center: our dance students travel and they do exchange programs. Last year, nine of our students went to Poland and they worked with different students who are learning dance and they teach each other their own culture. Last summer, ten of our students went to Morocco to learn about Morocco and their dance and also to meet other children from different countries, to share experiences together and to teach each other\u2019s dance. And they bring this experience back to Palestine and we give them the space to develop it more and more.<\/p>\nAT:\u00a0I have one last question. You are talking about dabke. It’s not only in Palestine, but this dance is also in other countries too. Are you able to bring also foreigner dancers to dabke dancers from other countries?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\nSD:\u00a0<\/strong>Yes.<\/p>\nAT:\u00a0So you can go to the Consulate of Poland or Morocco and you apply for the Visa and if you are given a Visa for Poland, you have a Visa for the Schengen area.\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\nSD:\u00a0<\/strong>Sometimes they give it just to Poland but recently they do the Schengen Visa. I have a Dutch Schengen Visa that I can travel with. I came here with my Dutch Schengen Visa.<\/p>\nAT:\u00a0Is it more or less easy for you?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n
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I hope well. I\u2019m doing well, although I can\u2019t stop being shocked by the political situation in my country. After all the awful things we\u2019ve seen following the floods, there\u2019s now a series of terrible corruption scandals. And when I look at the world, I feel like crawling under my bed and never coming out. But anyway…<\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/mcusercontent.com\/993c677d53044839b1b39b2dc\/_compresseds\/6be8848b-b661-6a51-bd7d-de8e84f4942f.jpg\")
With Hudaki and with Vig\u00fcela I feel something in common. They are the last ones doing what they are doing. And right now, I think no one else is doing what they are doing.\u00a0But as Juan Antonio Torres (on the picture) from Vig\u00fcela says, Aunt Marina la Chamarreta, from whom he learned so much, has passed away, and nothing has changed\u2014the music continues, and music is music, and the melodies will stay. Those who want to learn it can do so, and those who don\u2019t, simply won\u2019t. I believe that if this is lost, we will be a little poorer. Juan Antonio agrees on this. It is sad that we will leave the art go.\u00a0He has just told me that that it’s a shame that acorn-fed hams are no longer cured, and we settle for standard cured ham instead.\u00a0I hope the metaphor is clear.\u00a0And probably Sharaf DarZaid, one of the protagonists of this edition, thinks the same way we do.<\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/mcusercontent.com\/993c677d53044839b1b39b2dc\/images\/86cdc244-9052-187c-32e7-213a4f1f76cd.jpg\")
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<\/a>About ArteGanza, I will make a summary of some content from\u00a0![](\"https:\/\/mcusercontent.com\/993c677d53044839b1b39b2dc\/images\/7228624b-1119-350d-6ebf-ad7b8acc7c78.png\")
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As I explained in the previous edition of the newsletter, in October I attended the Fira Mediterr\u00e0nia in Manresa, where I made an interview with Sharaf DarZaid from the Popular Art Center of Palestine. Sharaf was performing at the Fira and he also participated in a panel called “Artistic Diaspora and Cultural Rights”.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/mcusercontent.com\/993c677d53044839b1b39b2dc\/images\/e4cc15be-039c-d887-70a8-4fee5e9b136c.png\")
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