Seyyide and a couple of dancers from her troupe Sarab will present some dances from the Middle East and North Africa, sometimes referred to as Arabic style “belly dance”. With every sinuous movement, they’ll weave together centuries of tradition, rhythm, and cultural expression.
There will be a sound system set to play recorded music. We might be lucky and also get a drummer to play tabla/derbake (Arabic drum) live, and add even more livelihood to this show.
Seyyide performed as a soloist at Arlington Porchfest 2022 (on the stage at Whittemore Park, in front of the Cyrus Dalin museum) and also on Bubblefest 2020 — the replacement of Porchfest during pandemic. And she performed with her troupe Sarab back for Arlington Porchfest 2019 (on a private garden/porch offered by one of our local residents on Jason St.).
Hi Seyyide,
I’m Emily, and I’ve been organizing with Arlington for Palestine, which has been seeking to raise awareness of the situation in Palestine and engage in civic action to stop the bloodshed. We are putting together a visibility walk around 4-6 PM during the day of Porchfest to highlight and humanize voices from Palestine. The visibility walk will be designed to respect Porchfest performances and not compete with them in terms of noise.
We’re wondering if you’d be interested in giving us a short few minutes of mic time either before your performance or as a short intermission. If you’re interested, we would decide upon a time for our walk to stop at your performance location to promote our local initiatives and read some poetry written by Palestinians. Our hope is that we can use this opportunity to get more people involved who are concerned about Palestinian lives but may not already know about our community.
Please let me know if you are interested or if you have other questions!
Thanks,
Emily