How to dance like Haraka Platform

HaRaKa Platform is an arts production company and a creative collective that started its first productions in Cairo in the season of 2003–2004. While they weren’t formalised under the name ‘HaRaKa Platform’ until 2006, the company created award-winning and cutting-edge performances that premiered at places as diverse as Cairo Opera House and Townhouse Gallery (Egypt), Hebbel Am Ufer Theatre (Germany), or MoMA PS1 and La MaMa ETC in New York (USA). Known for their style that mixes choreography with expanded cinema and live vocals, HaRaKa Platform was founded by its artistic director, choreographer and curator Adham Hafez.

1. Find movement where you think dance does not exist.

2. Look at children running, look at babies swaying to rhythm and music.

3. Spend time with trees, gazing at how the wind moves the branches, and how nature dances too.

4. Be curious. Be humble.

5. Never stop learning how to move differently.

6. Remember: the essence of dance is movement, the essence of movement is a pulse and a drive, so connect to your inner drive, to the pulse of your inner movements, move with your breath, move with your thoughts and your feelings.

7. Have you been to a Zar already? If not, go to a zar! Look at alternative histories of dance and of movement that they don’t teach us in schools anymore!

8. Raqs Baladi? We love it! It is more than just folklore, it is a somatic practice, it is a way of realigning the body, and yes, men and women get to enjoy it too!

9. Be moved by something, take notes, leave them overnight. Wake up in the morning and read them again. If they still work for you, put the music on (any music you like!), and move to the music!

10. Once you have created your first dance-score, learn it by heart, then change the music. Does it still make sense? Does it need that original music? Does it do well without music at all?

11. Consider dancing in silence.

12. Consider dancing outdoors.

13. Remember, dance existed before they invented dance studios or theaters.

14. Dance everywhere.