Dabke is most often danced at celebrations such as weddings, engagements and other festivities.
Many Palestinian young people that I have met have taken dabke classes at one point or another in their lives. Community centers such as El-Funoun Popular Arts Center—where I take dabke classes at the moment—take the lead in preserving dabke and appreciating and promoting it among Palestinian youth. Dabke is a dance of stories and through this dance, one can preserve his/her culture and heritage.
In a way, dabke is connected to the physical, social and political environment. Historically, it is said that dabke originated from when villagers would come together to help their neighbors repair their homes. Hundreds of years ago, houses in the Levant were made of stone, and the roofs were made from wood, sticks and mud. During the rainy season, the roofs would no longer hold together and needed to be compacted, so the homeowner would call on his or her neighbors to help them stomp on the mud to make it compacted again. In order for this to work, everyone needed to stomp in unison, and this was how dabke was born.
Since then, dabke has been used not only at festive occasions but has also been used to commemorate historical events in the Palestinian memory. It serves as a way to preserve Palestinian culture and identity after the wars and displacement of 1948, 1967 and even now while under occupation. It also has been used as a form of creative protest in the West Bank, Gaza and around the world.
