{"id":6369,"date":"2022-10-22T07:06:29","date_gmt":"2022-10-22T07:06:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gulftimes.ae\/lebanese-dance-group-mayyas-wow-audience-in-dubai\/"},"modified":"2022-10-22T07:06:29","modified_gmt":"2022-10-22T07:06:29","slug":"lebanese-dance-group-mayyas-wow-audience-in-dubai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gulftimes.ae\/?p=6369","title":{"rendered":"Lebanese dance group Mayyas wow audience in Dubai\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\nDUBAI: When Sam Bardaouil and Till Fellrath began planning their curation of the Lyon Biennale, in March 2020, the world was just waking up to the dangers of COVID-19.<\/p>\n
\nNaturally, the disruption and damage of the pandemic ended up having a major influence \u2014\u00a0not just logistically (it was delayed for a year), but thematically.<\/p>\n
\nBardaouil tells Arab News that the conversations he and Fellrath had with creatives all raised similar concerns. \u201cWe\u2019re all so conscious of our fragility and our mortality, how vulnerable these structures we\u2019ve built are \u2014 one virus and we\u2019re building from scratch. So there was this sense of hopelessness. But, at the same time, people started to find ways of resisting.<\/p>\n\n\nA work by Aref El-Rayess on display in the \u2018Beirut and the Golden Sixties\u2019 section of the Lyon Biennale. (Supplied)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\n\u201cWe thought it would be important to talk about how this consciousness of weakness could be the basis for a new way of thinking about forms of resistance that allow us to use this fragility as a stepping-stone, instead of always pushing it to one side and always wanting more, stronger, better.\u201d Hence the biennale\u2019s theme: \u201cManifesto of Fragility.\u201d<\/p>\n
\nBardaouil, who now lives in Berlin, is a native of Beirut, which, aside from the pandemic, also went through financial and political meltdown and the horrific port explosion of August 2020 \u2014\u00a0all of which he believes has left the city\u2019s inhabitants at a lower ebb than ever before.<\/p>\n
\nThe curators wanted to find a way of \u201cshedding light on that antagonism that has been going on for decades (in Beirut) \u2014 between moments of prosperity and well-being and a sense of self-confidence and achievement, and these lows where you feel you\u2019re at a dead end.\u201d<\/p>\n
\nBut they knew they couldn\u2019t simply shoehorn Beirut into the Lyon Biennale. As it turned out, they had no need to. History provided.<\/p>\n\n\nA piece by Huguette Caland on show in the \u2018Beirut and the Golden Sixties\u2019 section of the Lyon Biennale. (Supplied)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\nAs the pair began to research ideas, they discovered the two cities have been linked for hundreds of years, ever since Lyon was a major center for silk production and the area around Mount Lebanon became a vital source of raw silk for the local merchants. \u201cIn terms of size, it wasn\u2019t the biggest,\u201d Bardaouil explains. \u201cBut in terms of how much power they had to monopolize the market, it was very important.\u201d<\/p>\n
\nWealthy families in Lyon began to acquire land in Lebanon, where they built factories for raw silk production. By the 1850s, it was a vital export and Lebanon\u2019s farmers shifted away from food crops to plant mulberry trees.<\/p>\n
\nBut then came the First World War. \u201cAnd then,\u201d Bardaouil says, \u201cthere\u2019s starvation. Because you can\u2019t eat the leaves of mulberry trees. So lots of people are forced to leave \u2014\u00a0this huge wave of emigration from Lebanon in the First World War to North America and other parts of the world, but also even earlier, because of (Lyon\u2019s) monopoly, the farmers were always in debt to the agents who were supplying their money. So people started emigrating in the 1870s and 80s, and women started going into the work force. A lot of things we see today \u2014 the social standing of Lebanese women; emigration; the rise of families who are still some of the most dominant in politics and society \u2014 all go back to the silk and Lyon.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\nFrom the \u2018Beirut and the Golden Sixties\u2019 section of the Lyon Biennale. In the foreground, Simone Baltax\u00e9 Martayan, The workers, ca. 1950-59 – On the right three works by Georges Doche. (Supplied)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\nThe ties deepened: Lyon\u2019s silk merchants affected the selection of the first French High Commissioner in Lebanon, and supported the Jesuits who set up many of the country\u2019s schools \u2014\u00a0not out of generosity, but to gain free child labor.<\/p>\n
\n\u201cIt\u2019s a very intriguing and ugly and beautiful history, all at the same time \u2014 a conflation of religion, politics, education and economy,\u201d Bardaouil says.<\/p>\n
\nThe curators have highlighted that history with their customary flair. \u201cWe like to find entry points that bring a project into direct contact with its local context then branch out into something more universal,\u201d Bardaouil explains. So the biennale is in three stages. The first focuses on an individual: Louise Brunet, a woman from Lyon who took part in a revolt in 1834 against the terrible working conditions of the silk weavers, got sent to prison, then emigrated to work in a silk factory in Mount Lebanon, where she led another revolt.<\/p>\n
\n\u201cFor us she became this symbol of fragility and resistance,\u201d says Bardaouil.\u00a0 \u201cWe thought, \u2018How many Louise Brunets are there in the world, throughout history?\u2019 She could be a black woman brought from Senegal to pretend to be the wife of some Zulu leader at the colonial exhibition in 1894 in Lyon. She could be a Japanese immigrant in America sent to a concentration camp after Pearl Harbor. She became a metaphor, a symbol. In this section, we\u2019re talking about the fragility of race, the fragility of our bodies, of our desires. All these things.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\nView of \u2018The many lives and deaths of Louise Brunet\u2019 at the Lyon Biennale, showing works by Giulia Andreani, \u2018The Betrothed\u2019 and \u2018The Dream of Ulysses.\u2019 (Supplied)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\nFrom there, the show expands to look at an entire city as a symbol of fragility: Beirut. Specifically its \u2018Golden Age,\u2019 from the end of the French Mandate to the start of the Civil War, in five stages, covering artists\u2019 representations of Place, Body (including the women\u2019s liberation movement), Form (the various styles that artists in Lebanon adopted), Politics, and War.<\/p>\n
\nFor the show\u2019s third section, \u201cA World of Endless Promise,\u201d Bardaouil and Fellrath invited artists from across the globe \u201cto think with us about our fragility and different forms of resistance. How do we move forward using this fragility as a platform? How do we live in the world?\u201d<\/p>\n
\nThrough the works on display in the show\u2019s middle section, Bardaouil says, \u201cWe wanted to celebrate these artists and say, \u2018Look, this city has given so much. It\u2019s been a major contributor to the language and practice of modernism.\u2019 But at the same time, it\u2019s a bit of a cautionary tale. Because if it was such a golden age, then how come we had a civil war just a few years later, the repercussions of which are still with us today?\u201d<\/p>\n
\nThe nostalgia surrounding this period of Lebanon\u2019s history is something Bardaouil has been familiar with since childhood \u2014\u00a0when clich\u00e9s like \u201cThe Arab Riviera\u201d or \u201cThe Paris of the East\u201d were common.<\/p>\n
\n\u201cAs a child, of course, your eyes sparkle; it\u2019s so exciting to hear,\u201d he says. \u201cI grew up in the thick of the civil war, so this was completely alien. But, still, you absorb it and it inspires you. And, at some point, people stop questioning whether it\u2019s true. Because you want to hold on to this idea that if it happened before, it might happen again \u2014 it becomes a form of potential redemption.\u201d<\/p>\n
\nWhile Lebanon did become a revered cultural hotspot in the Fifties and Sixties \u2014 home to an influx of activists, artists, writers and intellectuals who had no platform in their own countries \u2014 this brought its own problems, Bardaouil points out.<\/p>\n\n\nLouis Boulanger, ca 1849, Moorish woman – on display in \u2018The Many Lives and Deaths of Louise Brunet\u2019 at the Lyon Biennale. (Supplied)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\n\u201cIt became a thriving place for all these ideas and projects and, at times, irreconcilable ideologies. And at some point, it became untenable,\u201d he says. \u201cThere were people who were benefitting from this and there were people who weren\u2019t. Some people felt empowered, some felt marginalized. And all these things escalated until it came to a head in 1975.\u201d<\/p>\n
\nBardaouil talks of an \u201cadoptive amnesia\u201d that has afflicted his homeland. \u201cThis is one of the biggest issues we face in Lebanon,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s almost like a national myth. But once you start looking at it, you get a better understanding of why we are where we are. The problems of the moment are related to what happened back then.\u201d The topics raised in the biennale can, he hopes, lead to \u201cmoments of crystallization.\u201d<\/p>\n
\nThe attempt to open up such conversations can be seen as a form of activism, he argues, \u201cbecause you\u2019re trying to challenge people on what they\u2019ve adopted as fact. And we can never find a common way forward if we\u2019re all coming from completely different ways of thinking about our past.<\/p>\n
\n\u201cThis is where this exhibition becomes about more than just beautiful artwork,\u201d he continues. \u201cIt\u2019s saying, \u2018Wait! This is not as simplistic or linear as we think. It\u2019s much more convoluted, and we need to disentangle it to find something we can all agree on.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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