DANCE PEOPLE
Edinburgh International Festival
★★★
“As the sun sets, darkness transforms the space, and the lighting takes full effect”
An empty courtyard. A red ribbon separates the performance space from the audience area. Lebanese-French dance company Maqamat takes the stage—or rather, the quad. We’re in the Old College Quad, surrounded by lights, a dance floor, movable red stairs, and rolling platforms. Choreographers Omar Rajeh and Mia Habis have promised us an interactive dance performance.
The dancers greet the guests warmly. This is a charming company—open, inviting. We are given instructions about the rolling platforms: we may join the dance if we wish, or watch from the sidelines.
An announcement begins. We are addressed as citizens. We are told, this is a work about people—about movement and motion, leading and following, conforming and resisting.
The ribbon is cut. We are invited into space. Humans do what is natural: we move toward open spaces. We migrate, infiltrate, collect, and immigrate. We watch as people find places. The best place—a place where they can lean or sit. Survey or interact.
This piece merges the kinesthetic world of the dancer with that of the viewer. Here, there is no distinction—we are all citizens of this space. The company deliberately erases and annihilates the boundaries between stage and audience, performer and observer—this is a common space and a shared dance.
Thirty minutes into the piece, the kinetic part of the dance begins.
It becomes clear that this contemporary dance company has its distinctive kinetic style—movement initiated centrally, flowing from the core to the periphery of the body. Motion fluid with percussive, vibratory, ricocheting elements—full of rebound and drive. There’s a strong sense of contact: with each other, with the space itself.
The choreography incorporates basic locomotor actions—skipping, galloping, stomping, leaps —executed with spontaneity, at times improvised, movement in waves that swell outward and then fall back into the body’s core or the pack’s center. Though it seems improvised, it is clear that the vocabulary is deeply understood and embedded in the company’s practice. This group knows and understands itself and the process of doing what they do.
Movement happens solo, then in duets, until eventually a collective energy forms—something like a rave, a dance pack that migrates draws the audience into participation. Soon, everyone is dancing. The work is fully immersive. The music is live with a live DJ also mixing our aural world.
As the sun sets, darkness transforms the space, and the lighting takes full effect. The audio engineer roams among the crowd. Platforms roll. Lights pulsate a-rhythmically. The Old Quad buildings get bathed in light and projection. New spaces are defined and isolated. A visual artist makes several works. There are introductions, interviews with audience members recounting their lives and occupations. Letters are addressed and announced to all kinds of individuals. Movement instructions appear on the walls. The audience follows or resists. In the final moments, all the taped red divisions and marked boundaries are ripped away, and worn as a final dance costume. The boundaries and demarcations are the outer casing.
Dance People claims in its publicity to explore power structures, the collisions between democracy and dictatorship, activism and politics. It promises bold new forms. Yet much of what unfolds feels familiar—maybe that’s the point. Unthreatening dictators dictate and direct our lives and actions. We follow and often enjoy where we are taken, or we resist and do our own thing.
The ingredients of this work are interesting, concepts and images we’ve seen before. Symbolic red objects ultimately do not transcend their abstract metaphor. In the end, it feels less like a radical act and more like another immersive performance in an unconventional space. Been there before. Done that dance already. I’m sure I will do it again.
DANCE PEOPLE
Edinburgh International Festival
Reviewed on 8th August 2025 at Old College Quad
by Louis Kavouras
Photography by Tommy Ga-Ken Wan
