Al Zaytouna has a distinctive approach, fusing traditional Palestinian folk dance (dabke) with contemporary dance, theatre, poetry, music, and digital media to create inspiring pieces of dance theatre to tell powerful stories about Palestine, often focusing on identity and cultural resistance.

The troupe’s recent productions include Unto the Breach which debuted in London in 2012, and Between the Fleeting Words, which played in London and Slovenia in 2010, and in Switzerland and Germany in 2011. Earlier productions include Ila Haifa (Returning to Haifa) which played in London, Freiberg, Madrid and Newcastle (2008), Four Heartbeats, One Rhythm in Nottingham (2008), Leeds and Lincoln (2009), and Hassad Al Zaytouna (The Olive Harvest) in London (2007).

Al Zaytouna has collaborated with a number of distinguished artists, producing Palestine Dances Dabke at the Bloomsbury Theatre in London with Palestine’s leading dance company El Funoun (2007), and working with legendary singer Mohamed Diab from Al Ashaqeen on Ila Haifa (2008). Al Zaytouna has also collaborated many times with multi-talented singer and oud master Nizar Al-Issa, and recently teamed up with composer and guitarist David Randall from Faithless and Slovo, on Unto the Breach (2012).

The troupe also regularly performs at a range of cultural, social and charitable events across the UK.

It is a joyful and defiant dance characterised by rhythmic stomping of the feet, and is often, but not exclusively, danced in a line or other formation led by a leader who determines the steps.

Typically danced at festivals, harvests and weddings, this traditionally celebratory dance form has become closely associated with political and national aspirations in Palestine, and has come to represent Palestinian identity and cultural resistance in Palestine and the diaspora.

Whilst Al Zaytouna promotes and celebrates traditional Palestinian Dabke, the group also experiments with more contemporary interpretations of this vibrant dance form through the introduction and interplay of different dance influences and traditions.