"Give me my freedom, release my hands/ I gave (everything) and left nothing behind/ Oh, your chains have bloodied my wrists/ Why would I leave them and what is left for me in you?"- Ibrahim Nagi, Al-Atlal.
In the contemporary translation and in the voice of Umm Kulthum, the mother of the Arab nation, a cry is directed at a forsaking god.
In a time in which culture is being displaced, the muses are silent and the heart is heavy, the motivation to create is replaced with the need to survive and to exist, seeds of beauty sprout within the shreds of war.
The creation arises from the ruins. Bodies are wrapped in shrouds, in stomping feet and bound hands, blows to the chest, demanding freedom. Disharmonious rhythms meet in the transcendental beauty of the masterpiece "Al Atlal".
This dance is a lament of lost lives and lost faith. “And the land was chaos”. The dancers moan and beseech for the healing of the pain of two nations.
Two languages are woven together, tones blending into a communal reading, exposing their primal union. The music, the language and the voice infuse the dance to become "Tarab"- an ecstatic elevation. The poem is about a dying love between a man and a woman and becomes a story about a decimated world, about the relationship between man and place, Earth, Nation.