Karakalla Dance Group

Lebanon has a dance group that it is very proud of. It is called Karakalla. Karakallah once came to Washington, DC (to the basement of the Kennedy Center) back in the 1980s when I was a student there. I had not seen them before but heard a lot about it. So I went to see it. Few minutes after it started, the American who was with me, looked at me with an expression of: are you kidding me?? But she was more embarrassed for them. They are an embarrassment. And they were so unprofessional and brought a boom box (remember those?) to play the accompanying music. Karakalla is the Orientalist vision of what Middle East music and dance should look and sound like. It is a festival of Middle East cliches drawn from the expectations of traveling Europeans. And they are commercial in everything. They can dance for a fee on any theme you pick. They recently performed a new show: called, Zayid (as in Shaykh Zayin of UAE) and the Dream. Oh, yeah. That is very creative. You have to read the idea of the show.