Abstract
Ballroom dancing legend Pierre Dulaine will discuss his 'Dancing Classrooms' method which he applied in his award winning documentary 'Dancing in Jaffa' to bring Arab and Jewish children together through dance. Mr. Dulaine will speak about the film, his journey into the world of dance and his experience as a Judge on the Arabic version of the TV show 'So You Think You Can Dance.' Talk features audio-visual presentation and free lunch.
Speaker Bio
Pierre Dulaine was born in Jaffa, Palestine in 1944 to an Irish father and a Palestinian mother--both of whom fled the area in 1948. After eight months of moving several times, Dulaine's family settled in Amman, Jordan. In 1956, the Suez Crisis forced Dulaine's parents to flee the country, eventually resettling in Birmingham, England. In 1994 Dulaine founded the Dancing Classrooms program in New York City's public schools in which he encouraged children from various backgrounds to dance together. He later traveled to the city of his birth, Jaffa, to visit his childhood home and to make a film, 'Dancing in Jaffa,' where he brought Israeli Arabs and Jews together through dance and music. His life was also fictionalized in the film Take the Lead starring Antonio Banderas. More recently, Pierre Duaine has gained much acclaim in the Arab world for his role as Judge on the Arabic version of the TV show 'So You Think You Can Dance' where he encouraged young Arab men and women to pursue dance as way of dealing with difficult circumstances and certain outdated social taboos.
Sponsors: Stanford Language Center, CDDRL's Program on Arab Reform and Democracy, the Arab Film Festival, Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies, Taube Center for Jewish Studies, DLCL, Department of Comparative Literature, ITALIC, Hillel, Arab Student Association at Stanford, Jewish Student Association, and the Stanford Arts Institute.