emirates man
apr/may 2015
| FEATURE | GAZA Self-taught, E A
self-funded, and isolated: the
breakdancers of Gaza
hmed Ghraiz is wrapped up warmly against the cold. It’s dark inside the dance centre in which he sits, the occasional teenage voice echoing loudly in the background. There is no electricity and little light, while a car battery has been wired up to his laptop in an attempt to generate power. The moment the internet router is turned on, the battery dies. “I tell
you, I’m really suffering in this situation,” he says with exasperation. “I finished college five years ago and trained as a nurse, but there
is no work. There are no jobs in Gaza, just a lot of people waiting around for nothing. Should I just wait until I get a job? Should I do nothing with my time? No. So I decided to teach dance up and down Gaza. That’s how I’m living. This is how you find me now.” Ahmed is sporting a trademark beanie hat when we talk and is doing his best to sound upbeat. Sometimes he succeeds, other times demoralisation creeps in. “You know, if I wasn’t a dancer I wouldn’t be alive,” he admits. “When I walk in the street I see people around me who are not alive. Their lives have the same routine, the same tedium. This is what the situation in Gaza has done to them. It has worn them down. “Dancing is inside me, but every dancer will never be complete.
Every person should learn new things every hour and every day and even if I think I’m complete as a dancer and I don’t need to learn, the opposite is true. I need to learn. I have to learn and this is what frustrates me about our situation in Gaza. We aren’t learning. We are on our own.” At 25 Ahmed is older than many of the other members of the
Camps Breakerz Crew, a group of breakdancers and body poppers who first came together in 2003. Formed primarily as a reaction to the harshness of life in Gaza, the group has attempted to forge a new lifestyle for itself and for the teenagers it teaches in the Nuseirat refu- gee camp, one that is based on peace and love rather than violence. Mixing breakdance moves with drama and elements of self-expres- sion, Camps Breakerz is essentially resistance through hip hop.
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