Dance or Die: How stories shape our lives
By Kristen Lawson
Ahmad Joudeh is the grandson of two Palestinian refugees who fled to Syria in 1948. His moving memoir Dance or Die: From Stateless Refugee to International Ballet Star (Charlesbridge Publishing) demonstrates the powerful role that storytelling plays in our lives, for better and for worse.
The day Joudeh first encountered ballet shaped the rest of his life — he wanted to be like the dancers whose elegant movements reminded him of swans’ wings. When he asked why his parents had never introduced him to ballet, his mother replied, “You can’t be interested in it — it’s a woman’s thing.”
He danced secretly in his room, mimicking the movements of the women he had seen onstage, until his father caught him and forbade his “effeminate” dancing. Robbed of his one outlet for self-expression, Joudeh became depressed. His mother encouraged him to continue dancing in secret, helping him audition for Enana Dance Theatre. At 16 he was entirely self-taught, but was accepted to train immediately, and was performing with the company within a year.
Intolerance in his family wasn’t the only hurdle Joudeh had to overcome. In 2011, the Syrian civil war broke out. His family lost their home to a car bomb. An insurgent pointed a gun at Joudeh and yelled, “This is not your country. Get out of here.” Both he and his father had been born in that building. For his grandmother, this was the second time in her life she had lost everything and had to begin again.
Some parts of Dance or Die are disturbing to read, but they’re necessary to understand life in war-torn Damascus. The reader is brought into the story when Joudeh describes the experience of being bombed in the second person, putting us in the room. “The shock wave strikes, and you think you’re exploding… glass splinters rain in all directions like projectiles — you can hear them flitting by your ears.”
When Joudeh was accepted to compete in the Lebanese version of So You Think You Can Dance in 2014, he wanted to put a human face on the millions of refugees worldwide, “…proving to the world that we, stateless, are human beings, who deserve opportunities and rights to live, to be safe, to have homes.” His story inspired millions — audience members rushed the stage in anger when he was eliminated.
Back in Syria, teaching children to dance allowed them to escape from the trauma of their everyday lives, and communicate what they were experiencing. Joudeh received death threats for this work, yet he carried on, believing in the healing power of dance.
Dutch war reporter Roozbeh Kaboly, inspired by Joudeh’s story, filmed him dancing among the ruins of his neighbourhood. After this reportage aired in Europe, Joudeh received a flood of offers from dance organizations around the world. The celebrated dancer got to start a new life in October 2016, with a visa, a job, and an apartment waiting for him in Amsterdam. Four years later, where the narrative of Dance or Die ends, his mother was still in Syria with his stateless siblings. His father was living in a camp in Berlin, awaiting a decision on his asylum claim.
Dance or Die demonstrates how stories can breed both love and hate, leading people to act in extraordinary ways — from the cruelty that can emerge from learned intolerance to the compassion that can come from understanding one another. Keep a box of tissues nearby as you read this captivating memoir, you will need it.
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