The UK-based theatrical dabke troupe is comprised of volunteers from a variety of national and professional backgrounds who work tirelessly to provide diverse audiences with the opportunity to experience Palestinian culture and hear the Palestinian story through a variety of performances and workshops.

The group has a distinctive approach, fusing traditional Palestinian dabke with Western influences resulting in an innovative contemporary style. Al Zaytouna is unique in the way it combines its contemporary dabke style with theatre, poetry, literature, music, digital and other media to tell powerful stories about Palestine, often focusing on themes of identity and cultural resistance. This approach enables the group to explore and celebrate a broad range of Palestinian culture and artists.

Al Zaytouna has produced and performed a number of shows at theatres across the UK, including How Palestine Became Israel and Hassad Al Zaytouna (The Olive Harvest) in London and Four Heartbeats, One Rhythm in Nottingham, Leeds and Lincoln. Al Zaytouna has also worked with Palestine’s leading dance company El-Funoun, bringing the group on a rare trip to the UK and working with them on a series of collaborative workshops to produce Palestine Dances Dabke, which portrayed the difficulties of life Palestinian Children face under occupation.

Al Zaytouna’s production of Ila Haifa (Returning to Haifa) an adaptation of Ghassan Kanafani’s story of the same name, debuted in London in 2008 to over 1000 people, before traveling to Freiburg (Germany), Madrid (Spain), and Newcastle.

The group’s latest production, Between the Fleeting Words, premiered in London in the spring of 2010 before the group took it on tour to Slovenia in October 2010. The production continued its successful tours and premièred in Nottingham in March 2011, Zurich, Stuttgart & Freiburg (Germany) in November 2011.

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.