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Palestinian Dabke – Levantine Arab/Palestine [Traditional]

If you are going to do Arab “folk” dancing in the Levant (Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan) at a wedding, party, or other celebration, it is highly unlikely that it would be something other than some flavor of dabke. For the American international folk dancer, whose only exposure to Arab dance has probably been the dance Jeitili, which comes from Lebanon via a diaspora in Los Angeles, true Levantine debka—especially village non-choreographed—is hard to come by. There are a few Israeli dances using “Debka” in the name that actually do contain Arab dabke step patterns (e.g. from choreographers Moshiko Halevy & Moshe Eskayo) and then there are many that do not resemble dabke at all, other than throwing in a couple of stomps.

Dancing

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Dance Name:	Palestinian Dabke
Country of Origin:	Palestine
Arabic:	دبكة
Pronunciation:	DAHB-kee
Translation:	stamping of the feet
Region:	Palestine
Aliases:	debke, dabkeh
Choreographed:	Traditional
Year:	Very Old (1,000s of years)
Dance Type:	Circle/Chain/Line: non-partner
Dance Category:	Village Traditional/Living
Dancer Formation:	Open Circle
Skill Level:	Beginner to Skilled
Energy Intensity:	Moderate to Lively
Hand Hold:	Shoulder, V, Fortress, Halay, Individual
Leads to:	Right
Time Signature:	2/4
Song:
Date Taught:
Teacher:
Posted:	March 22, 2024
Updated:	March 25, 2024

Dabke is a genre of music and dance rather than being a singular entity. The variants are driven by region, music (songs; instruments; speed), and dance formation (with or without a leader; men only, women only, mixed; single or multiple lines; individuals). The most common form of village dabke is Al-Shamaliyya (الشمالية), where a skilled leader, known as the lawweeh (لويح), interacts with the band, singer, audience, and the dabke line to establish tempo, rhythm, and steps and also shows off his dabke mastery with jumps, drops, spins, and fast steps. It is the job of the next two or more experienced people in the line to support the lawweehs tricks and copy his steps to provide a solid dance foundation for the rest of the line. The lawweeh spins a handkerchief, masbha (a string of prayer beads, similar to a rosary), cane, or sword.

The closest thing to a dabke us Euro-centric international folk dancers have in our repertoires is probably Greek dancing, where leader does tricks and does some step variations. Where the two diverge is that dabke has many step variations. However, most of these variations are for the leader and the “wingmen,” because they take skill and coordination. In village dabke, there seems to be a traveling step and an in-place step to do while the leader & crew do their thing. Speaking of crews, dabke crews are a big thing. Performance dabke is where advanced moves come in as part of rehearsed choreography, and a group that does this is often referred to as a dabke crew or troupe. If one had a well-trained dance group, the leader could call out dabke steps by name without having a pre-arranged choreography.

More Info on Dabke
Take a look at Don’s Dabke page on Folkdance Footnotes for lots of great info on Levantine forms of dabke that I would just be duplicating here (especially what he copied directly from the Wikipedia article on Dabke and other sites that have copied the Wikipedia article.)

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