Dance Is Not for Us review: Omar Rajeh sweats out defiance at Barbican

Omar Rajeh's Dance Is Not for Us opened at London's Barbican as part of the Dance Umbrella festival, more than three decades after he first decided that dance was the most revolutionary thing he could do.

The solo has a specific origin. In August 2019, Rajeh sat in his bedroom listening to pounding percussion while his world collapsed around him. Citerne Beirut, the theatre and cultural centre he founded in Lebanon, had been forced to close. The local government dismantled it by order and planned to build an incinerator on the site.

That's not a metaphor. That's planning law.

Where does the piece come from?

Rajeh came of age at the end of the Lebanese civil war, and he tells the audience that dance then seemed like the most radical act available to him. The show returns to that conviction. He now performs, in his own framing, out of frustration, defiance, resistance and a desire to connect.

The percussion gathers momentum. Rajeh's busy body builds up a sweat. The Guardian's review describes the work as "this stream-of-consciousness solo", and the phrase fits: it's a danced monologue rather than a polished composition.

He is, the review notes, "not always an especially elegant mover". It hardly matters. He "dances like it's a necessary thing to do", which is a better verdict than elegance.

What does the solo actually do?

Structurally, the piece runs on accumulation rather than narrative:

• one performer, alone, for the full solo

• a percussive score that gains momentum as the body escalates

• spoken material situating the work in Lebanon's political instability

• a physical vocabulary closer to necessity than to refinement

The comparison that suggests itself is testimony: a witness delivering evidence through the body, sweat standing in for emphasis.

Why does the Barbican date matter?

Rajeh founded Citerne Beirut as a cultural institution, and the state replaced it with an incinerator. A festival commission in London is a modest counterweight. The piece carries that history without editorialising about it; the facts do the work, the body does the rest.

Rajeh is still dancing at three decades' distance from his first act of defiance, and on this evidence he intends to keep going. The frustration hasn't cooled. The percussion, one suspects, hasn't either.