Words by Maxine Flasher-Duzgunes.
“Palestine is not only a litmus test politically, it’s also a microcosm of all of the oppressive forces in the world,” says Hallie Chametzky, organiser of Dancers for Palestine (D4P), founded in January 2024 as part of the cultural front in solidarity with the Palestinian people and against censorship and institutional complicity in the dance field.
D4P began their campaign with an open letter calling out the relationship of dance with cultural imperialism and how this relates to the Palestinian struggle for freedom. Since then, a lot of D4P’s work has been guided by the principles of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) Movement specifically its first component, the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI), which advocates for a boycott of academic and cultural institutions who remain complicit in Israel’s illegal denial of Palestinian rights. The open letter has been signed by almost 2,000 dance artists (and counting), and stipulates that the dance community will not remain remain silent or neutral on the issue of Palestinian freedom and likewise will hold dance institutions accountable for uplifting Israel’s settler colonial pursuits, including the current genocide in Gaza and ongoing oppression in the West Bank and across Palestine.
D4P organizer Nadia Khayrallah, who identifies as Arab-American, describes their background feeling alienated from the contemporary dance world in terms of identity: “In some ways, that was about the lack of representation, or about Orientalism in stereotypical depictions, but also, a big part of that was the hold that the fantasy of Israel had on the contemporary dance world via the proliferation of Israeli contemporary dance.” As stated in their letter, the propagandistic messaging of Israel’s cultural supremacy over Palestine in the dance world was perpetuated with Martha Graham’s founding of Batsheva, 16 years after the country’s founding. For both Israel and the United States, art and dance was seen as a way to further colonial, racist, and capitalist narratives and to make dance workers feel alienated in the fight for liberation. Artwashing continues to drive both governments’ rhetoric that art should unite us, but in effect remain politically neutral.
After leading a dance workshop for organisers shortly after the events of October 7, D4P organiser Nikolai Mishler, who affiliates with Palestine from a Jewish perspective, says both himself and Hallie “realised that dance and physicality is an important piece of a liberation struggle, and that it shouldn’t be a side effect, or an afterthought, that it’s essential to that struggle and the movement.” Despite the prevalence of these sentiments in the dance community, D4P has expressed how difficult it is to actually mobilise people who are reluctant to put their careers at risk, especially because dancers rely so heavily on self-promotion and don’t want to disqualify themselves from any opportunity for being pro-Palestine.
This ties back to the inevitable leverage of dance institutions in dancers’ lives – one in particular, Gibney Dance, described as a dance hub at the “intersection of art and social justice” in New York City. D4P and its supporters sent 2,224 letters communicating written demands to Gibney on the basis that they cut financial ties with the Israeli government, having historically received funds from the Consulate General of Israel in NYC and very publicly promoted their “First Tour in Israel” in 2023. To follow, in March, D4P led a one-week boycott of Gibney’s open classes and studio rentals. While D4P never received a direct response from Gibney and those who sent the letter received a watered-down response claiming that “Gibney does not, and never has, affiliated itself with the policies of any governmental or political entity,” D4P’s demands to Gibney remain to cut future funding contracts with the Israeli government, as long as the apartheid system continues, to take a step towards signing a PACBI pledge, and to issue a public statement in solidarity with Palestine.
Key strategies that D4P has identified in their approach to organising and in their communication with the BDS National Committee is incrementalism: “incremental progress towards boycott is still progress,” says Hallie, giving the example of getting that one-person fiscally sponsored dance company to sign PACBI as an incremental step towards revolution and liberation. Scare-tactic laws like Anti-BDS Executive Order 157 have historically discouraged arts organisations from signing PACBI, and while it hasn’t been actively enforced, it seeks to create a blacklist of institutions that advocate for Palestinian rights and overall exists as an unconstitutional attack on freedom of speech. D4P, along with Artists Against Apartheid and Theater Workers for a Ceasefire, have recently urged New York state arts organisations to cosign for its repeal.
“To be very literal here,” says Nadia, “the oppression of Palestinians directly relates to the oppression of New York arts organisations, right? They can’t say and do what they want because their government is supporting an apartheid state.” D4P has continually supported the growing force of the labor movement, including the recently-formed New York Live Arts Union, and has identified strength in numbers to be its most powerful tool in sharing ideas and turning them into actions. Since its founding, D4P has partnered or worked with Chris Masters Dance, The Dance Union, Writers Against the War on Gaza, Lampblack, PAGEANT, Cypher 4 Gaza, Brooklyn Institute for Social Research, and Parijata Performance Project to create a network in the face of censorship. “Organised labor is one of the strongest anti-colonial tactics that we have,” continues Nadia, referencing the numerous unions that have endorsed the BDS movement, but admitting the difficult reality of organising work because the dance field is not very unionised. One recent and stunning example is the termination of all dancers at Dallas Black Dance Theatre by their leadership after the company voted unanimously to unionise with the American Guild of Musical Artists in May.
“If we can build a dance world that sees Palestinian life as sacred and human and just as important as defending any other life, then we’re rising the tide for labor rights,” says Hallie. D4P forwards the notion that we can build a dance world where every life is worth fighting for, as long as dancers take responsibility for an art form that can be free from the binds of capital and power, that can be a movement for liberation.
To learn more about D4P and to sign their open letter, visit their website. Follow them on Instagram at @dancers_for_palestine.