Live and recorded performances are often deeply affected by the laws that govern the movement of people, the freedom to assemble, and the ability of artists to publicize their events in print. Throughout the twentieth century, the changing legal status of cultural production plays a significant role in suppressing the emergence of a vibrant Palestinian theatre. From the Ottoman era until the present, a survey of theatre related laws demonstrates the progressive transformation of Palestinian theatre from an unregulated civil art form to an illegal act of resistance under military occupation. After 1967, a series of documented military orders suppressed the theatrical movement throughout the West Bank, but unintentionally supported the flourishing of theatre in East Jerusalem in the seventies and eighties. While censorship under the Ottoman Empire and the British mandate took on various forms from early to mid twentieth century, the foundation of Israel and the near eradication of Palestinian cultural production in 1948 have left a significant footprint in this history of censorship. The extensive archival and oral records of controversial encounters between the Israeli authorities and Palestinian artists since 1948 suggest that the Palestinians have contended with a constant stream of closures, bans, and arrests. The struggle for the Permission To Perform, which serves as a reminder of the disparity in power between the occupier and the occupied, characterizes the relationship between cultural producers and the state of Israel. To perform, the artists had to survive the wrath of the Israeli office of censorship. The case of Al-Hakawati Theatre Troupe in the 1980s suggests that a legal superstructure drove Palestinian cultural producers to mount their productions in Jerusalem. The troupe’s battles with the censors on the ground, in media, and in the performance hall demonstrates that the Permission to Perform not only shaped the legal status of cultural production, it also influenced where, when, and how the Palestinian identity was publicly displayed.

Iranian poets of the 1980-88 war with Iraq employed mystical motifs to banish the fear of death, and to inspire young Iranian men to fight against the Iraqi forces. To draw an analogy between death on the battlefield and spiritual elevation of a mystic, they made reference to the mystical motifs and to legitimize the fight they used religious events, recounted in Shiite Islam. In my presentation, I will first examine how the war poets employ the terminology used in classical love literature, and by the medieval mystics, building on those traditions. For instance, in war poetry the battlefield is compared to the school of love and a soldier’s journey to the front-line is defined as a mystical path of perfection. Second, I explain how these martial poets used mystical Hallājian motifs to equivocate death on the battlefield to the death of Hosein Mansur Hallāj (d. 922). In the mystical treatises, Hallāj is the archetype of self-sacrifice, laying down his life for the sake of the Beloved. War poets employed Hallājian motifs to connect the fight against the Iraqi enemy to the spiritual self-denial that unites the mystic with the Beloved. In this section, I will analyze several Hallājian motifs frequently used in war poetry, such as the outcry of “I am the Truth” (bāng-e ana al-Haqq), “Hallāj and the gallows of ascension” (Hallāj-o dār-e me‘rāj) to illustrate how, within a political context, they serve to motivate Iranian youth to lay down their lives on the battlefield. Third, I will show that Āshurā paradigm is a living tradition in Iran, and how by means of poetry the tragic events of the day of Āshurā, are becoming a model for the Iranian soldiers to fight against the Sunni Saddam Hosein. The war poets, by comparing Hosein to a cupbearer, and martyrdom to mystical drunkenness, aimed to sketch a model of altruistic self-sacrifice for Iranian soldiers. The soldiers came to believe that they were the true followers of Hosein’s path. In sum, Iranians’ familiarity with classical mystical literature and historical events provides the poets with the opportunity to convince the soldier that his death is a path to spiritual perfection and eternal salvation.

During the Iranian Revolution of 1978-79, the melody of an Armenian love song, ‘Pretty Mountain Girl’, became a fixture within the Iranian music repertoire of the time. In a genealogical survey, this paper attempts to examine the transformation of this romantic song into a national song of protest, ‘The Winter Has Come to an End’. This revolutionary song, first presented by a Marxist political group called ‘The People's Devoted Guerrillas’, was adopted by the public, and managed to unite almost the entire opposition front. This paper will attend to three interconnected issues in the transformation of this song: the musical journey of the melody from Armenia to Iran, the dramatic change in its identity, and the process by which the tune became an inherent and inseparable part of the Iranian folk repertoire. The geographical proximity of the two countries, their shared socio-historical traditions, the increasing hybridity of folk tunes, and the ethnic and religious diversity within the Iranian culture are among the factors that have allowed for the journey of the song. The change in identity can be attributed to two important factors, namely, social forces and lyrics. Iran’s distressed political and economic situation was such that engaging with issues like love was viewed as irrelevant to the harsh and real everyday life. Adjusted to match the needs of the Iranian society, the Armenian love song now focused on the struggle against the despotic regime. The substituted lyrics were so powerful that the song in its new form became the flag of protest for Iranians. In an attempt to explore the tight association of the tune with the Iranian culture since the transformation, I endeavour to provide a relatively new definition of folklorization. Defining folklorization as a process that involves the natural transfer of folk material from its original ethnic setting to a foreign one, I specifically highlight the active process that necessitates human creativity to make it fit in its new context. Under such definition, the folk material becomes as representative of the new ethnicity as it is of the original, because it is given the freedom to divert from its original purpose, function, and meaning. This definition can be used to explain more instances of appropriation and adaptation that take place in the field of folk music in the Middle East, especially in light of the tunes used in the Iranian uprising of 2009 and the Arab Spring.

This paper examines the politics of national dance dress in twenty-first century Jordan by exploring the intersections between authenticity, entrepreneurialism, and political legitimacy. Methodologically, I focus on the repertoire of two national dance companies and use a practice-based approach that combines descriptive analysis, participant observation, and in-depth interviews. Investigating the relationships between materiality and meaning, I look into the design philosophy behind the production of national dance and dress and provide analysis of the larger structures of its meaning beyond the performance space. Inspired by Ronald Barthes conceptualization of dress as a generator of meaning (1990), I argue that the national dress articulates its own state institutional system of identity production, that at once performs and problematizes the political legitimacy of an authoritarian regime. The relatively little, yet subtly active space, for vestimentary contributions of company choreographers not only highlight critical issues around notions of artistry and authenticity, but also throw into sharp relief the complexities and contradictions in monarchal-supported state efforts at aligning values of tradition and authenticity with the themes of creativity, entrepreneurship, and individualism as new differentiating hallmarks of King Abdullah II’s vision of a modern Jordan. This paper builds on dance studies perspectives by framing dress both as a bodily practice and discoursing subject/object and moves beyond Eurocentric approaches in dress studies that privilege western dress culture and history.