With Aswad, Beirut Contemporary Ballet steps into the spotlight

In a country gripped by economic crises, the fledgling dance company is setting the stage for a cultural comeback in the capital

The company's founders hope to retain Beirut's artistic talents and export their creations worldwide. Photo: Beirut Contemporary Ballet

In the dark theatre of Beirut’s Metro Al Madina, black-clad dancers seemingly float across the stage, popping in and out of spotlights and fading into the gloom again. Choreographed to the rhythm of the pulsing yet melodic music, the dancers fine-tune their steps as they rehearse for a coming show.

Title Aswad ("black" in Arabic), the 35-minute performance – to run from Wednesday to Friday with music written by Palestinian composer Makimakkuk – is a tribute to the ability to overcome adversity and find strength, hope and redemption.

The show is the latest work by Beirut Contemporary Ballet, a professional dance company founded in 2018. While it has produced a few shows since its founding, and collaborated with dance companies abroad, Aswad marks the fledgling company’s official entrance into the Lebanese cultural scene, seeking to fully step into the spotlight and present itself as a major player.

The company was dreamt up when its artistic directors, Jana Younes and Jens Bjerregaard, first teamed up on And So Do I, a dance film project directed by Younes. Impressed by Bjerregaard's approach to choreography, having been formally trained in Denmark, Younes invited him and fellow dancer Wafa Bouty to unite and address Lebanon’s lack of professional dance academies and cohorts.

“We spent a year in the studio, testing the waters, getting dancers in the studio through word of mouth and seeing what it feels like to actually have a structure for a dance company in Lebanon,” Younes tells The National. "We believe that greatness and innovation are possible when talent and desire are finally given the right platform to come together. One year later, we named the company and launched our premiere in Dubai.”

In 2018, the team travelled to China to collaborate with local dancers in Kunming and Changde, broadening their experience. In 2022, they performed Bodies of Water in Hamanna village in Lebanon, and later took it in different forms to Cuba with their partner company Ballet Contemporaneo de Camaguey. There are currently about 15 dancers in the company.

Making Movement, a short documentary following the creative process of recreating Bodies of Water in Cuba, is screened before the Aswad performance, alongside One for the Dreamers, a dance film directed by Younes and Tarek Korkomaz.

It’s important to understand the context that the company operates in, as the past few years in Lebanon have been challenging for myriad reasons, but the arts have also faced hurdles for decades.

Once home to renowned institutions like the Grand Theatre des Mille et Une Nuits (Grand Theatre of the Thousand and One Nights) and Cinema Opera House, Beirut no longer has platforms such as these, or national performance institutions. The Grand Theatre has been a derelict shell since the Civil War, and the opera house building was restored, but is now used as offices and shops.

Therefore, with only a handful of places to perform, mostly small independent theatres or flashy commercial establishments that stage generic shows for easy consumption, Lebanon doesn’t have national dance or theatre companies. The closest thing to a professional dance company is the world-renowned Caracalla Dance Theatre, which only performs folkloric dance.

“There are many schools for dance in Lebanon, but they’re more for hobby dance for amateurs,” says Bjerregaard. "Part of the job as a company is to ensure that we have regular foundational training, to compensate for the lack of formal education, especially with the dancers coming from very different dance backgrounds. But this can also be a positive because we install that foundation work and can create a good identity as a company – how we understand movement, expression etcetera.

“We can feel that with some of the dancers who started training with us two years ago, who are in Aswad, that they now understand being part of greater choreography and artistic concept; they are knowledgeable, rather than just doing their steps and thinking no further."

Typically, dancers practising in Lebanon find themselves working as background performers for music videos or live singers. Those seeking to pursue more artistic avenues often create small-scale solo or duet shows – with little or no profits – so have to travel abroad to join professional dance companies. The Beirut company is hoping to change that, offering alternatives for dancers looking to make the art form their sole profession.

With the onset of the economic collapse, which began in 2019, followed by the Covid-19 pandemic, the culture sector took a big hit. People struggling to afford food had no interest in the luxury of supporting arts, and the pandemic forbade live performances.

Things in Lebanon are still in flux, but the cultural scene has recorded an uptick in the past two years, with new galleries opening and artistic initiatives being organised.

“We're trying to bring this opportunity to them so that we don't export the people anymore, but we start exporting the work instead for international audiences,” says Younes. “They can have something they can thrive off, not only financially, but also in terms of craftsmanship. This is the gap we’re trying to fill.

“During the pandemic, we actually had the opportunity to have the dancers come into the studio without distractions. When dancers have come from these generic backgrounds, they have a hard time dedicating themselves to training and taking classes every day for hours, even if they don't have a performance because they’re used to only training when they have a gig. While everything was going crazy outside, we were building our foundation inside, which was making us stronger and ready once the audience was ready again for us.”

In 2022, the company started Project Bedrock, a training and development programme for young dancers that leads to their first choreographic projects and gives a taste of what a ballet company can offer. The next edition will take place next year.

Another major Lebanon performance, titled Azzifaf, is also in the works for next year where the audience will be invited to the show as wedding guests. Younes hopes that this bigger step into Lebanon’s cultural offerings will also bring something new to the local audience, to whom contemporary ballet is a rarity.

“A lot of people don't even know that this company exists, but are happy to know that it does when they hear about it,” Younes says. “There are many people who are traumatised by contemporary dance having seen performances they don’t understand and thinking they will see people shaking on stage for half an hour.

“And there are people who think ballet is a three-hour show like The Nutcracker and might fall asleep during Christmas. Obviously, these are two extremes, and right now, we want to give audiences an understanding of what we do because the moment they understand, then they can become our audience, enjoy the experience and come back next time. We want to change their mind about what they think they know of contemporary dance and ballet in Lebanon."

Aswad runs until July 19 at Metro Al Madina, Beirut