Dance Is Not for Us review – desire and defiance as one revolutionary mover sweats it all out

In August 2019, Omar Rajeh sat in his bedroom, listening to the sound of pounding percussion with his world in crisis. In the midst of political instability, Citerne Beirut, a theatre and cultural centre Rajeh had founded in his native Lebanon, was forced to close, dismantled by order of the local government, who planned to build an incinerator on the site.

Rajeh tells us that as a teenager, coming of age at the end of the Lebanese civil war, dance had always seemed like the most revolutionary thing he could do. Now here he is, more than three decades later, still dancing – out of frustration, defiance, resistance and a desire to connect. As the percussive score gains momentum, Rajeh’s busy body builds up a sweat. In this danced stream of consciousness, Rajeh is not always an especially elegant mover, but he dances like it’s a necessary thing to do.

Part of this year’s Dance Umbrella festival, Dance Is Not for Us is a solo that appears at times like an explosion of physical instinct, but it is mostly calm, considered musings on the nature of choreography, with all its workings exposed. Rajeh sits and taps at a keyboard as his thoughts appear on screen, all the inspirations, decisions, vacillations and U-turns that go into creating a performance.

He tells us of the first “choreographies” he ever saw: a fight between two men, people gathering in the streets to protest, bodies making choices and organising themselves in space – which is what choreography is, after all. The creative and the political are one to Rajeh, who is now based in Lyon, a major loss to Lebanon’s creative life. This piece is an insight into a choreographer’s mind, and it’s a heartfelt appeal to gather, to witness, to share our pain and loss – to look and to listen.