IZA HAWA

Lebanese star choreographer Ali Chahrour with an affectionate swan song for his home city Beirut

In Lebanon, the devastating economic crisis has a creeping poisonous effect - and not only on cultur- al productions. It seems like a miracle that the now world-renowned choreographer Ali Chahrour is still able to create in his homeland. His latest interna- tionally co-produced creation "Iza Hawa" (Arabic for "to fall in love and also to fall") premiered in Beirut in the spring. Here, the city becomes the backdrop of a tragedy in which it actually plays the leading role. The main question is simply how one can continue to live as a human being in a completely bankrupt economic system when one's own age slowly gains the upper hand? Chahrour brings together on stage the iconic intellectual couple of the Lebanese art scene, actor/ director and theater scholar Roger Assaf and his partner actor/author, and cultural activist Hanane Hajj Ali, and juxtaposes the intimacy of their love with the bat- tered everyday life of their city home city, Beirut: A city that is falling apart, while their love holds together like the cement that still supports the few cracked walls of the city. The work focuses on what is left for an aging body to give, at the edge of its limitations. Chahrour's choreography focuses on what is left for an ageing body to give, at the edge of its limitations. Challenging the movement to dance and express, therefore relying on the power of gestures and the depth of bodies that carry within the intensity of their personal stories and the overwhelming weight of years of both political and social activities. Alone at the dawn of their city's almost fall, they cling to what remains.