ART 250 Opening

ART 250 - "Everyone is an Artist"!

Just thought I would share the below New York Times article with you, on the power of culture in the West Bank. It compliments my experience at the Ramallah Contemporary Dance Festival nicely, and puts it in a wide context of other fantastic international cultural initiatives in the area, and their positive effects on the people.

And now - on another aspect of the power of culture - this time in Dublin (thank God!), here is some info on a wonderful big democratic Art initiative that I am part of: "ART 250" in the building formerly known as Habitat on Suffolk Street - opening tomorrow, June 5th, 5 - 8pm! Get in early, play blindman's buff and if you're lucky you'll get yourself a masterpiece, for a song - €250. Or just get a painting you like (what a concept!). Hidden anonymously among the "pop-art" there will be a Donald Teskey, a Charles Tyrrell, a Mick Mulcahy, a Suzy O'Mullane, a Mr. Pussy (!) - and more. Check it out! All in aid of Cill Rialaig Artist's Retreat, County Kerry.

New York TImes Article on Music in Ramallah...

June 2, 2009

Amid West Bank’s Turmoil, the Pull of Strings

By DANIEL J. WAKIN

RAMALLAH, West Bank — The young man was handy with tools. A carpenter’s nephew, he liked to fix chairs, windows and door locks. At other times he would stand idly on the street corner.

Ramzi Aburedwan noticed him. Like the Pied Piper, Mr. Aburedwan, a French-trained violist raised in a Palestinian refugee camp, was trying to lead Palestinian children into the world of music: namely, a music center he was establishing in an old quarter of the town.

But he had other ideas for the young man. The center had received dozens of donated string instruments from Europe: instruments prone to cracks, broken bridges and damaged scrolls.

The young man, Shehade Shelaldeh, would become the violin repairman.

And so, two years later, after absorbing lessons from visiting volunteer luthiers and a three-month apprenticeship in Italy, Mr. Shelaldeh, 18, has his own instrument repair shop. It is in a former garage around the corner from the music center, Al Kamandjati (“the Violinist”). He has learned to fix instruments and replace the hair on bows. He has already made two violins, one with a tiny Palestinian flag on the tailpiece, which anchors the strings.

“It’s a beautiful feeling,” he said one day in late April. “I want to work here and teach people.” It is the precision of the work that appeals to him, he added, as well as the peace that comes from working by himself, late into the night.

In a place all too familiar with the sounds of gunfire, military vehicles and explosions, he said, “Al Kamandjati taught us to hear music.”

The center, and Mr. Shelaldeh’s acquisition of a trade born in the workshops of 17th-century Italy, are part of a recently kindled interest in classical music, both Western and Oriental, in the occupied territories. Parents, students and teachers here say it comes from the realization that culture is an effective assertion of national identity, particularly at a moment when the prospects for a Palestinian state seem to be receding. It is also a way to give idle young people something to focus on.

In Mr. Shelaldeh’s case, classical music means a career. One of his main teachers, Paolo Sorgentone, reached at his workshop in Florence, Italy, last month, said that while the young man had a lot to learn, he was a natural, “both in his hands and in his head.”

“From the beginning he showed a rapidity and intelligence to understand exactly what needed to be done,” Mr. Sorgentone said. “He has an intuition for this.” In a few years, he added, Mr. Shelaldeh will become an “excellent luthier.”

Mr. Sorgentone said he had advised Mr. Shelaldeh and his family that he should gain real training and suggested Newark College in England, well known for its violin-making and restoration program. He applied and is waiting to hear whether he has been accepted, and whether there will be enough money to send him.

Mr. Shelaldeh’s story, in a way, reflects the biography of Mr. Aburedwan, Al Kamandjati’s founder. As a boy in Al Amari refugee camp near here, Mr. Aburedwan was an industrious newspaper seller who slept in a room with his grandfather. Together they would listen to classical Arabic music on the radio. During the first intifada, which started in late 1987, he was photographed throwing a rock at Israeli soldiers. The picture was widely circulated.

One of his newspaper buyers, a vocal opponent of the Israeli occupation, would take foreign journalists to interview him. The same woman suggested to a visiting violin teacher from Amman, Jordan, that the boy might be a good prospect for a string workshop the teacher was offering.

The teacher showed him a viola. “Immediately I fell in love,” said Mr. Aburedwan, now 30. He began studying locally, and the American and European teachers who periodically passed through took an interest, struck by his curiosity and rapid absorption of technique. He spent a summer session at the Apple Hill Center for Chamber Music in New Hampshire. The French Cultural Center in Ramallah gave him a grant to study viola at the conservatory in Angers, France.

Toward the end of his eight years at the conservatory, Mr. Aburedwan decided to establish a music school in his hometown. He rounded up donations of money and instruments, invited colleagues to the area for workshops and pushed for the renovation of a building in Ramallah’s old town. Al Kamandjati opened in January 2006. Operating on a shoestring budget of about $400,000 a year, it now has about 400 students studying both Western and Oriental instruments.

“I want these children to achieve something,” Mr. Aburedwan said. “That’s my dream, that they have a way of expression, a way of living. I want these kids to participate in the building of a Palestinian cultural future.”

Mr. Aburedwan said he saw the young Mr. Shelaldeh, whose family — including eight children — lived nearly next door to the center, loitering about. He eventually lured five of Mr. Shelaldeh’s siblings into music lessons. The oud and the violin did not quite take with Mr. Shelaldeh. But Mr. Aburedwan knew of his propensity to work with his hands.

“He was like a technician of everything,” Mr. Aburedwan said.

So when two violin makers, one French and one Belgian, came to work on the center’s instruments, he pushed Mr. Shelaldeh to spend time watching. They gave him small tasks, like cleaning tools, and began showing him basic woodcutting skills.

Every few months, luthiers sympathetic to the project would visit to fix instruments and pass lessons on to Mr. Shelaldeh, giving him the kind of personal attention the average violin restoration student would not normally receive.

“The instrument makers were touched,” Mr. Aburedwan said, and gave as much as they could.

The first thing Mr. Shelaldeh learned was how to cut wood for tools and how to hold a knife. Some Italians taught him how to make bridges, pegs and a sound post. An American showed him how to fix bows. Gianluca Montenegro, an associate of Mr. Sorgentone, came from Florence for a month, and they worked together all day, every day. Mr. Shelaldeh learned how to make a finger board.

Then he was invited to Italy for three months, starting last July, to apprentice with several firms, spending a week in Cremona, the Italian violin-making center, where he bought a special machine used to curve wood.

There he finished his first instrument, a violin based on a Stradivarius model, with a small Palestinian flag decal on the base. He also took back books on violin-making and history. Mr. Sorgentone gave him a video on violin-making, Mr. Shelaldeh said, “if I forget something.”

He built his tool collection slowly. The center bought a batch, and visiting luthiers left some behind.

In his workshop a string held bridges lined up by size. Another string held five violins in various forms of undress. Tools were arrayed on the wall over his work bench: a row of chisels (not nearly enough, he said), a tiny hacksaw, needle-nose pliers, clamps, curved instruments used to get inside the violin through the f-holes. A yellow paper outline of a violin was pasted above, the shape of the Guarneri del Gesù King Joseph from 1737, a renowned instrument.

At work one day, his hair fashionably gelled upward, Mr. Shelaldeh applied himself to replacing a poor-quality, ill-fitting bridge on a Chinese violin. He clamped a block of wood to his workbench and put the new bridge in a slot on the block. He removed the blade from a plane and carefully sharpened it on a moistened stone, then passed it over a lathe. Sparks flew.

“My dream,” he said, “is to become a famous instrument repairer.”

No Smoke without Fire - the facts about the boy

After putting my last post on www.nowpublic.com yesterday, some amazing information came back to me from an anonymous person who corroborated what I had heard, with a news story naming the boy who was killed - Mohammad Ali Nuwwara, 16, from Al Jalazoun refugee camp in Ramallah. Thank-you anonymous person! (This is a great case study for how crowd-powered news can work).

Here it is, as reported on Al Jazeera. In fact, it doesn't change my story at all, except that the boy was 16 years old, instead of 9. No smoke without fire, as they say. And the director of the Dance festival played the incident down completely - which is why I didn't even have the boy's name. My focus was the dance festival. This sad incident being wrapped up in it is a bit shocking for us Westerners. Well, RIP, and here's hoping peace and the easy living we take for granted here in Dublin and in the Western world will come soon to those people. Let's hope Waiting for that won't be like Waiting for Godot (Is that naive? Utopian? Am I dreaming? Probably!). Please note that the report below doesn't allude to the fact that the poor boy was due to participate in a Contemporary Dance show entitled, significantly "Vertical Exile: West Bank Dreamerspass" two days after he was shot dead. No, just that he "allegedly" was throwing a molotov cocktail. So - dream on.

Also - I just want to emphasise what an amazing dance festival it is, celebrating life in the middle of all that terror and easy death. No wonder the Ramallah Contemporary Dance Festival Director didn't want to highlight such a negative incident. But, you know, it happened.

Palestinian youth killed near Ramallah

Saturday April 18, 2009 07:08 by Saed Bannoura - IMEMC & Agencies

Israeli occupation terrorist soldiers shot and killed on Friday at night a Palestinian youth and wounded another near the West Bank city of Ramallah. The Israeli occupation terrorist army claimed that the youth attempted to hurl a Molotov cocktail at an Israeli military jeep. The incident raises the number of Palestinians killed on Friday to three.

The youth was identified as Mohammad Ali Nuwwara, 16, from Al Jalazoun refugee camp in Ramallah.

Medical sources at the Ramallah governmental hospital reported that Nuwwara was shot by a live round in his chest.

The sources added that another youth, identified as Mohammad Balaysha, 19, was injured by military fire.

The two came under Israeli military fire near Beit Eil Israeli settlements, north of Ramallah.

Israeli military sources claimed that the soldiers opened fire at Palestinian youths after they hurled Molotov cocktails against home in Beit Eil settlement, killing one and wounding another.

It is worth mentioning that a few months ago; a Palestinian youth was shot and killed in the same area. The army also claimed he attempted to hurl a Molotov cocktail at soldiers and settlers.

Lucky, IMDT, & Ramallah Contemporary Dance Festival

“Dance First. Think Later. That’s the natural order.” Ramallah Dance Festival 2009, made me think of Lucky's utterance in Samuel Beckett’s play “Waiting for Godot”. In this case I was the lucky one, to be there with Irish Modern Dance Theatre, who, supported by Culture Ireland, were touring their zany and joyous choreography “The White Piece” to Ramallah, Bethlehem, and Haifa.

First impressions? Upon arrival, our phones bleeped, poetically: “Marhaba. Smell the Jasmine and taste the olives. Welcome to Palestine”. Instead of hassle, as we walked down Ramallah’s bustling streets a chorus of “welcome”, and “you are welcome” wafted towards us on the warm air. One emotional tea-shop owner even hugged choreographer John Scott and cried, saying “I don’t want your money – thank you for coming to Palestine”.

I guess they don’t get a lot of tourists here.

We found ourselves in an open-minded place, where culture is revered, women are unexpectedly empowered, and Christians co-exist easily with Muslims. Khaled Elayann, the softly spoken Director of Ramallah Contemporary Dance Festival, for example, who is Muslim, is married to a Christian.

When I interviewed him, it was me who veered eventually from the topic of dance to “so – does the conflict here ever impact on the festival in any way?”. He mumbled something about having to cancel performances sometimes out of respect. “What do you mean?”, I prodded. “Like if someone has died”. “Really? Could you give me an example?” He spoke on in a vaguely inaudible fashion, that had me repeating ‘what?’ and sitting on the edge of my seat. They had to cancel the first show of this year’s festival, in Jalazon Refugee Camp, where Scandinavian “Public Eye” dance company had been working with the locals, creating a choreography called “Vertical Exile: West Bank Dreamer’s Pass”. On April 19th, the day it was to preview, a little boy involved in the production had been playing within gunshot range of nearby Israeli Beit El settlement, and was shot dead by a settler. So, (to answer my question), out of respect, they canceled that night’s show. It happens. A week later, the boy’s friends were bussed to Dheishish refugee camp, where the show went ahead, without the boy.

What seemed unbelievable to my Western ears, apparently was an unremarkable event, just par for the course here. I double-checked it with French Photographer Eric Boudet who had been in Ramallah for the entire month giving a dance photography workshop. Boudet shook his head when I alluded to the unfortunate boy, saying “He was only nine years old”. Despite my efforts, I found no trace of the incident, or the boy’s name either in the press or in general conversation.

And the dance went on. While Irish Modern Dance Theatre were giving workshops, and rehearsing, I sat among happy children from the refugee camps in Ramallah’s charming 350-seater Al Kasabah Theatre enjoying “The Jungle Book” by Washington DC based “City Dance” company. (Cheering these children up is part of the festival’s remit). The previous day, the American company had been held up for almost 8 hours at the Jordanian border, en route to Ramallah.

On May 4th, when John Scott’s powerful post-modern choreography “The White Piece” premiered, it was lauded as the most radical of all 18 dance companies at the festival – from America, Scandinavia, South Korea, and all over Europe to Algeria. His eclectic cast featured renowned Irish and international contemporary dancers, versatile young Palestinian actress, Riham Isaac, and new Irish survivors of torture who he found through Dublin’s Centre for the Care of Survivors of Torture. Ugandan-Irish survivor of torture Immaculate Akello made a moving connection with the audience after the show when she spoke of her first-hand experience of the effects of war on mothers and children. Scott drew parallels with Northern Ireland.

John Scott says that he has been “electrified” by the creative energy he has experienced here, since his first trip to Beit Jala in 2008 to choreograph dance film “Eternal” with film-maker Steve Woods. Scott has also performed in many Holocaust choreographies, and is careful to praise the many Jewish achievements – especially those of Karl Marx.

Elayann, himself a lefty choreographer, underlined that Ramallah Contemporary Dance Festival is an NGO, aligned with neither Fatah nor Hamas. Yes, he has indeed been invited to participate in a dance festival in Tel Aviv. But “even if they were from the left parties”, he cannot entertain the possibility of cultural exchange with Israel until there is a Palestinian state.

That could be like waiting for Godot. But in the meantime, like Lucky, in Beckett’s famous play, at Ramallah Contemporary Dance Festival they are throwing their arms up in the air, and dancing. I can’t help thinking that Beckett would have been proud, could he have seen Irish Modern Dance theatre in Ramallah’s Al Kasabah theatre, dancing their strange, and beautiful dance.

"I Saw Ramallah" - with IMDT

"I Saw Ramallah" - with IMDT.

Just to borrow a phrase from Mourid Barghouti's fabulous memoir, "I Saw Ramallah" - I saw Ramallah too - and here is some of what I saw!

First of all, the mobile phone alert, once safely in Ramallah: “Marhaba. Smell the jasmine and taste the olives. JAWWAL welcomes you to Palestine”.


In terms of Ramallah Dance Festival (which is why I was there), I saw Al Kasabah Theatre with IMDT - look at them outside the theatre the minute we found it. Look at how disoriented we were when we got there, on a Friday, and it was like a ghost town because their Friday is like our Sunday. Where is everyone? we wondered. We soon found out on our next foray into town, which bustles like nobody's business! I saw First Ramallah Dance rehearsal space, where IMDT rehearsed and gave a workshop. That's Riham Isaac, Palestinian actress with them on the steps outside. I saw Khaled Elayaan, and his wife; and Raja, another festival board member (all in these photographs). I saw "Stars & Bucks" (!) cafe, and went in - it has the best view in Ramallah city centre. And, unlike Starbuck's, it has Argulas, or Sheesha - bubble smoke pipes. Coffee shops, grocery shops, and - Arafat's tomb - a really peaceful and pristine place. They refer to him as "Abu Amar". There's a Mahmoud Darwish poem there in Arabic - can anyone translate it? I saw random street scenes, and Baladna ice-cream shop. The ice-cream here is famous. Something about bubble-gum. Also - here are a few views from my hotel room when I was in the Grand Park Hotel. So - now you too have a window into Ramallah. I'll add some more here when I get another chance. But in the meantime - have a goo.