Just days after October 7th, 2023, Leila Mire, a PhD student in the Department of Theater, Dance, & Performance Studies at UC Berkeley, delivered a talk on Zionism in modern dance for Sima Belmar’s “Dance in American Cultures” class. After a brief clip was posted online, it went viral, sparking both enthusiastic support and harsh criticism.
Now, nearly ten months into the genocide, Sima and Leila have come together to reflect on that conversation. In doing so, they explore the dance community’s aversion to the boycott of dance artists, analyzing what this reluctance says about how dance is depoliticized and exceptionalized in the context of Palestine.
Sima Belmar: Looking back, I’m astonished you gave your talk mere days after October 7.
Leila Mire: I was nervous about that. I thought you were going to ask me to censor it, but instead, you were like, “What kind of slides are we working with?” And I was like, oh… this is a tech question.
Sima: It didn’t occur to me that giving that talk could be risky. Perhaps you can explain what your argument was about?
Leila: I walked through how Israel and the United States use dance as a soft power. I looked at the history of modern dance in relation to Israel’s conception and normalization. I also examined case studies of Israeli dances and choreographers, addressing the appropriation of Palestinian dance. I concluded by explaining BDS and how it might be applied in a dance context.
Sima: After your talk was posted it was accused of misinformation, usually by folks who only heard a 30-second snippet on Instagram.
Leila: Yeah, I’ve gotten used to that. Strangers presume I don’t know what I’m talking about, as if this isn’t the culmination of my work and experiences. They also don’t know how thorough I am. I screenshot everything before facts are erased. I’m a junior scholar, and I make $34,000 a year, yet famous choreographers and senior scholars can’t wait to drag my name through the mud, claiming that I do this out of personal vendettas or for career mobility. I don’t care to engage with that narcissism. I have already lost multiple jobs because of my support for Palestine. That’s not why I do this. I do this because it’s what’s right and because if I love dance, it’s my responsibility to criticize it.
Sima: Well, certainly there is tremendous resistance to critiquing Israeli dance or choreographers like Ohad Naharin (and Batsheva), not only from Zionists (Jewish or otherwise) who equate anti-Israel rhetoric with antisemitism, but also from dance folks across the US who feel like dance, especially modern dance, should never be criticized at all because of its perceived second class citizenship among the arts and its very real lack of funding here. So, many are loath to call out bad Israeli actors for fear of being perceived as antisemitic, or “bad choreographies” for fear of kicking an art form when it’s down.
Leila: I attribute that to a couple of things. One is that the broader community wants to see modern dance as something that’s “free.” Acknowledging how racism is foundational to modern dance—that it has been orientalist and complicit in US exceptionalism and state-building projects, as well as appropriative of Black and Indigenous dances—gets in the way of that logic.
Sima: I’d love people to understand the difference between facing appropriating practices inside modern dance and appreciating how those practices can feel individually liberating. Dance writer Wendy Perron mentioned this in her Instagram comment on the clip of your speech. She wrote, “[W]hat I objected to in Leila’s lecture is that she seems to ignore the experience of Graham technique and Gaga as art practice and look at them ONLY as pawns in colonialism/imperialism. It’s possibly [sic] to be aware of both functions.”
Leila: Does it help that I took Graham from age 6-18?
Sima: Right. In my mind, there’s no reason we can’t face problematic histories within dance forms while also acknowledging and embracing the liberatory potential within an individual’s particular dance experience.
Leila: Plus, it’s a distraction from what’s important. This is a genocide. Dance was used to normalize Israel. And now it’s used to erase what Israel is doing.
Sima: Say more about soft power.
Leila: Soft power is around us all the time. The Cold War is just where the term became popularized. In the Cold War, modern dance’s supposed democracy and freedom were meant to juxtapose the USSR’s ballet, which the US painted as being stiff, menacing, and oppressive. Dance became the arena for a geopolitical pissing contest. Beyond combatting the threat of communism, dance was used for national state-building projects and normalization.
Sima: How does BDS subvert that imperial soft power?
Leila: In 2020, I wrote two pieces in Thinking Dance, where I touched on what we could do to progress BDS forward in dance. BDS has already named certain organizations and companies like Batsheva, and Ohad Naharin opposes BDS, saying it won’t accomplish anything. But BDS has proven quite successful. It’s a nonviolent method to cease international support for Israel’s oppression of Palestinians and to pressure Israel to comply with international law.
The arts may not have the same profit margins as corporations, but its influence serves the state. But when I say that, people are offended. They think it’s suppressing the arts. They fear the work of great artists won’t be seen. But if they want to use that argument, they should think about all the Palestinians whose lives were prematurely stolen from them. They could have been artists, scholars, etc.
An artist like Naharin is called a “genius.” But what conditions allowed him to get where he is? I’m at Berkeley, a school with some of the “best and brightest.” But as I sit through classes I have to wonder if we’re the best and brightest or if we’re just the ones given the chance, the ones willing to sit squarely in the confines of respectability politics.
BDS simply says that we won’t support artists who accept money from Israel. In response, people often say, ‘well, then, why don’t you boycott the US?’ But this argument doesn’t hold because the US doesn’t fund its arts like Israel does. The vast majority of us are not getting state money, and if we are, it’s usually symbolic.
Sima: It’s also interesting the way nationality does and doesn’t attach to modern/contemporary dance companies. Like if Wim Vandekeybus’ Ultima Vez comes to the US, I don’t receive them as Belgian. Or Anna Teresa De Keersmaeker’s Rosas, I don’t receive them as Dutch because of the way modern dance operates transnationally with a rhetoric of universality, eluding national attachments when it tours. I think Batsheva is received that way. Its attachments to the state of Israel are invisibilized. Those outraged by the idea of boycotting Batsheva in the US want the company both to be Israeli and universal, both associated with the state and apolitical.
Leila: And that’s tied to privilege and relation to Empire. Universality still falls under “First World” or “Third World” baggage as affiliated political projects. If a company is from Cuba, it’s Cuban. If it’s from Russia (or another country we’re afraid of), it’s tied to national origin. Other times it’s tokenized to advance state interests (e.g. Shen Yun criticizing China or Ukrainian allyship with the US). Modern dance is ideal because you can argue both subjectivity and abstraction. It can mean nothing and everything so the state can use it.
Sima: Yeah, a lot of the anti-BDS rhetoric centers on the individual artist and how unjust it is that they should suffer just because their state is committing war crimes. Even hearing myself say that, it’s bonkers. However, this response suggests a complete misunderstanding of what BDS is. This is about opposing state-sponsored violence, an illegal occupation—ask the International Court of Justice. So even though Batsheva and Naharin become collateral damage, it’s not personal. Plus, it’s minor in comparison to what’s happening in Palestine. I can’t help but feel that the anti-BDS folks are spitting in the face of actual material suffering of Jews, Arabs, Israelis, Palestinians, historically and today.
And, I’m certain this will be an unpopular opinion, but I’m not moved by arguments like, “Oh no, this artwork will never be seen!” As you said earlier, who knows how many of the children murdered by state violence would have become artists with amazing work to share?
Leila: Exactly. Dance is resistance. It can be liberatory. But that doesn’t mean it always is. It can be co-opted, and it’s on us to maintain its integrity and to criticize it to ensure that it goes where we need it to. It isn’t devoid of politics. It is politics. We’re watching a genocide. As artists, we cannot fall under some naive assumption that the arts are above the realities of that or that seeing a dance piece is more important than the lives of Gazans. We have a responsibility to this movement. Disappointment over missing a hypothetical new work shouldn’t be something we’re willing to think much less voice. These are lives we’re talking about. We need to get some perspective here. We must do everything in our power to reckon with our past and be critical of our work. Dance is potent and it’s about time we act like it.
This article appeared in the Fall 2024 issue of In Dance.
Leila Mire (she/her) is a researcher, performer, choreographer, community organizer, and educator. She is a current PhD candidate at UC Berkeley in the Theatre, Dance, Performance Studies Program and is an alumni of New York University and George Mason University. Her research looks at how dance is co-opted, appropriated, and performed for state and anti-imperial interests, particularly as it pertains to Palestine and its occupation.
Sima Belmar, PhD, is a Lecturer in the Department of Theater, Dance, & Performance Studies at UC Berkeley. She has been a member of the Bay Area dance community since the early 1990s as a dance critic, columnist, podcaster, educator, choreographer, and dancer. From 2019-2022, Sima was writer-in-residence at ODC where she created and hosted the ODC podcast Dance Cast. Her writing has been featured in a variety of local, national, and international newspapers, magazines, and academic journals. She currently dances for Andrew Merrell’s Slack Dance and works as an editor and writing coach for students and artists.
