Notes from Abroad

Samar Haddad King, Artistic Director

I've been traveling to the Middle East since I was a child. While I grew up in Alabama, the Middle East always felt like another home. It still does, more than ever. It is different, though, when working there. I can't assimilate as well. There is a different scale of exposure, of vulnerability. There are personal questions (often asked when speaking under the umbrella of YSDT), "Who are you? Who do you identify with? Where do you come from? How does this influence your work?" The funny thing is that I've given up on trying to answer most of them. It's interesting having parents from two distinct cultures. Both lovely, and very special. I think about it all, but instead of dwelling on where I belong I'm beginning to let the answers be many and forever changing. It is true, sometimes I feel more Palestinian, sometimes I feel more American, and sometimes I don't even think about it. What was interesting in taking a piece like "The Store" on tour was that it was the cocktail that represents the many cultures that constitute YSDT, with a message about how we are different yet connected, the same yet distinct but never isolated. This felt very representative of what we are as a company, of who I am as a person. It was nice to be able to say, "I don't know who I am, but if you come to our performance maybe you can help me figure it out?" It often worked.
Expectations are funny. Everyone says not to have them, but is this possible? Never would I have guessed that a show in a classroom packed with smiling angels, where we danced on tiled floor with no backdrop, no lighting, no glamour, would be perhaps the most touching moment of my life. When the little girls clapped, I fought tears; eventually they won. Never did I guess that traveling to the Dead Sea with a group of American artists mixed with Palestinians would be a life changing experience for us all. We floated for solidarity. When I was asked to teach a dance workshop for children with mental disabilities in the West Bank, I was scared because it was something different; they were different. Nope, they were beautiful, fearless, and marked with a sense of joy and appreciation that is beyond admiration. Nor did I know that performing in Jerusalem, in honor of my mother, my aunt, and grandmother, would be the place where the company would come together celebrating our past and present without words but with, dare I say, dance.
My expectations became things of the past; this experience could not have been imagined until it began, and I look very forward to it continuing.