At first, I was just interested in it because it was fun, easy and everyone was encouraged to join; since being in Ramallah and learning about the history, symbolism and significance of dabke in Palestinian culture, I’ve fallen even more in love with it.
The Dance: Dabke is a traditional folk dance that is performed not just in the Palestinian Territories, but in the wider Levantine region, which consists of Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, and in parts of Iraq and northern Saudi Arabia. Dabke is a mostly liner and at times, circular chain dance that is danced from right to left. To perform a dabke, you link hands with a group of people in a line, which is led by a leader who sets the pace of the dabke. It is a dance that is categorized by lots of stomping, stepping, jumping and at times, clapping. A basic dabke line may have three to five different steps that the line follows. Meanwhile, the leader—someone who is usually quite skilled in dancing dabke—improvises complex moves to the music that the rest of the line doesn’t follow.
The Music: There are different sets of traditional music that correspond with different styles of dabke. Traditional dabke music is folkloric and usually surrounds topics of love, life and struggle. Some of my favorite dabke songs are the ones that describe different villages and traditions specific to those villages such as dress and characteristics of their residents.
