Name: Community Dabke Dance Circle!
Start: 2024-11-03T17:00:00-05:00
End: 2024-11-03T19:00:00-05:00
Location: Lawrence Public Library

Please join us for a free Community Dabke at the Lawrence Public Library on Sunday, November 3, 2024. We'll lift up Palestinian voices collectively in a joyful dance event. This program will include a presentation on Palestinian culture, learning movement of the dabke circle dance, and a shared meal.
We'll also be welcoming special guests, Malikat Al Dabke (Queens of Dabke)! This is the first all-female dabke troupe in the DC, Maryland and Virginia (DMV) area, specializing in performing and teaching Palestinian, Lebanese and Iraqi dabke/chobi, and zaffe. They are flying in just for this event!
Our program will start with a performance inside the auditorium from Malikat Al Dabke, and then a Community Dabke Circle on the Library Lawn. We'll then share a community meal inside the auditorium.
This event is made possible through a generous grant from Charlotte Street Foundation and the Spencer Museum of Art. The Community Dabke Circle, organized by local artist Fally Afani, is one of 10 recipients of the 2024 Rocket Grants awards, a re-granting program of The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.
About Malikat Al Dabke
Fairouz Foty, co-founder of Quartertonez Music School, was inspired to create a space through dabke for women based on a mutual love for dance and Arab/SWANA culture to spread its joy across generations.
This space naturally developed into a collaborative, professional dance troupe, starting in January 2023, and is made up of dedicated Arab and Arab American women who work everyday to preserve their identities through dabke and resist erasure and appropriation.
Each member of the group has over a decade of Dabke experience performing and teaching hundreds of students through volunteer and educational workshops. They have performed across the country, and helped to raise more than $65k to aid Palestinians through prominent organizations such as UNRWA USA and Heal Palestine, among others. They continue to dance to raise awareness of the Palestinian genocide and occupation through countless events and protests.