El-Funoun Palestinian Dance Troupe

PO Box: 4145

Al Bireh, Palestine

www.el-funoun.org

Tel:+97022402853

About Us. El-Funoun Palestinian Popular Dance Troupe is an independent, non-profit artistic organization that is virtually entirely volunteer-based. El-Funoun was established in 1979 by a small number of enthusiastic, tal-ented and committed artists. Since then, El-Funoun has been crowned as the lead Palestinian dance company in Palestine, as well as among Pales-tinians in exile. It holds an impressive track record of over one thousand performances locally and internationally. It also produced 12 productions and over ten dance scenes. El -Funoun has won several commendation certificates and awards over the years.

Since its inception, El-Funoun has aimed at expressing the spirit of Arab

-Palestinian folklore and contemporary culture through unique combina-

tions of traditional and stylized dance and music. The Troupe’s reper-

toire comprises folkloric dance forms, called “dabke”, in addition to more

elaborate choreographed forms that embody El-Funoun’s own unique vi-

sion of Palestinian dance. El-Funoun is widely recognized as the cultural

entity that has played the most significant role in reviving and reinvigor-

ating Palestinian dance and music folklore.

Our Vision.

Developing and promoting contemporary Palestinian dance

through reviving Palestinian folklore, and building on it by add-

ing El-Funoun’s unique dance style. This style is a product of El-

Funoun’s own social and artistic perception influenced by Arab

and international dance experiences.

US Portugal Italy UK

Syria US Bahrain Jordan

Germany Lebanon Iraq Egypt Morocco Holland Bahrain Kuwait

China Qatar Egypt Italy Russia

United Arab Emirates Sweden

US Cairo France Cairo United

Arab Emirates Austria Canada

Current Production. Tallat ...

Bara’em El-Funoun’s dance production Tallat is based on “Zajel”, a CD of folkloric songs, which comes to us from a time of critical markers in Palestinian history and the history of El-Funoun Dance Troupe. The female figure is at the center of its songs, like an echo of the earth, the revolution, the mother and the lover. It takes the audience on a journey towards the inner most language that travels both within them and beyond, within a context that reclaims the ab-sent and retrieves the abandoned. It is a group of dances that tells not one story, but all the stories of El Funoun’s Bara’em, stories that have surged from their chests and reached upwards towards the sun. It carries their dreams and feelings, which we believe will push through the dark clouds and give space and light to things that may shine down on us again.

Upcoming Production.

Ashira Ashira, the new production of El-Funoun culminates more than three decades of its history and artistic work. Ashira is a multi-media production that combines mythology with contemporary is-sues lived daily by Palestinians connecting as such authenticity with modernity. The stylized dance and music are produced with the concerted efforts of El-Funoun’s artistic and administrative teams joined by the creativity of renowned Palestinian artists. This multi-disciplinary artistic medium includes an intensive use of theatre and cinema including screening of films compiled from Palestinian archives; the music is specifically composed for the production while the story unfolds with lyrics sung by a choir and individual vocal-ists giving a correlation of myth and reality. The 80 minutes long production includes 21 scenes where dance, music, theatre and cine-ma are intertwined; soloists and groups of dancers express the dif-ferent themes through a stylized combination of folklore-inspired and modern dance styles, coupled with the singing, the sound and light effects and strongly supported by the film screening on three screens that form a backdrop to each scene.

Joint Productions. El-Funoun believes in building cultural bridges with the world, both to have a healthy exchange of experi-ence, ideas and techniques in performing arts, and to present the long-suppressed Palestinian culture before other nations.

El-Funoun Palestinian Dance Troupe

www.el-funoun.org