DANCE IS NOT FOR US by Cie Omar Rajeh & Maqamat – ★★★★☆

Omar Rajeh’s solo is urgent, pure expression. Drawing on maqam, his practice of instant composition, he dances against a screen of his own working notes for the show, half-formed ideas projected as he moves. It collapses the idea of “performance” and invites the audience to discover, alongside him, what might happen next.

What unfolds is a story of life, of war, and of the political and personal choice to keep on dancing. Rajeh’s movement is quick and piercing one moment, floating the next, at times almost a blur. It’s charged with hope and defiance, every gesture seeming to say: Yes, I will continue to dance.

The stage is black, white and green: stark text on a screen set against living plants. It’s a contrast that brings to light how hard it is to talk about loss, especially the loss of land and the natural world, and how inadequate words can be. As one of the closing slides puts it: “This past that we are leaving now is searching for a future to continue its story. A dance story that we (all of us) own.”

Throughout, basil plants sit on stage as a sign of life and hope, and a reminder that we can all share something. The piece ended with Rajeh handing them out to the audience, and we all held them up: as a thank you, as a shared act of resistance, as celebration. We each left with a plant, reminiscent of the land and home that, in many ways, Rajeh was dancing for: Lebanon.

This was the London premiere, part of Dance Umbrella 2026.

By Shope Delano

★★★★☆