In 2002, Omar Rajeh returned to Beirut from Surrey, England, where he had just finished a Masters in dance studies. Trained in contemporary dance and choreography, he found himself in a city where the genre was almost completely absent. Undaunted, he decided to take matters into his own hands. He founded Lebanon’s first contemporary dance company, Maqamat, recruited a small team of dancers and began to create his own productions. In 2004, he launched the first edition of BIPOD, the Beirut International Platform of Dance, an annual festival featuring world class performances by international and regional choreographers. Omar Rajeh Now, more than a decade later, the cultural landscape has changed profoundly, and it’s largely down to Rajeh. When I ask him to tell me about the dance scene in Lebanon before Maqamat, he laughs gently, then apologizes. “It was non existent,” he says. “There wasn’t a
India is a British-Indian freelance writer and journalist. She was based in Beirut for eight years from 2011 to 2019, reporting on Lebanon and the Middle East. In 2019, she spent six months reporting from Latin America and since 2021 she has been based in Istanbul.
