Orly Portal

פקרוני فكروني Fakarouni
“This dance is a love song for love, for all my loved ones and lovers, A song of praise for the ability to be a loving woman who is not dependent on love.”

Fakarouni is a dance of passion, a temperamental ritual revealing the intimate connection between the temporal body and enduring love, set to a live recording of singer and musician Umm Kulthum, the “voice of a nation”. Orly Portal’s first choreography for male dancers is accompanied by the voice of the Lady who made her way in a man’s world to become a cultural icon, a source of inspiration for freedom and proud female expression. The dancer joins the Star of the East in a timeless duet, accompanying the men who in turn embrace Portal’s unique dance language. The culture of the pelvic movement is open to the tradition and folklore that each and every one brings with them, the ingathering of the exiles both authentic and up-to-date. Gender boundaries blur as ancient power games are explored in depth forming a new definition of authoritarian masculinity and breakthrough femininity.

Choreographer, dancer, singer, and musician, founder and director of the Orly Portal Dane company, creator of a unique dance language that combines ancient dances with contemporary dance. She is movement and music researcher in body and soul. She developed the “Portal to the Pelvis” method, a unique learning method that has evolved over three decades and is taught worldwide. She specializes in improvisation, contact improvisation, and flamenco. She participates, lectures, and moderates conferences and panels in the field of dance and music, is a member of the Choreographers Association, and part of the dance academy faculty. She leads artistic collaborations, and her works appear in Israel and around the world. She is a graduate of “The Program for Leadership in Jewish Culture” at the Mandel Institute. She is the recipient of the Yitzhak Navon Prize for the preservation and cultivation of Israeli cultures.

Choreography: Orly Portal
Dancers: Anderson Braz, Artour Astman, Erez Zohar
Music: “Fakarouni”
Lyrics: Abd El-Wahab Mohamed
Composed by: Mohamed Abd El-Wahab
Performed by: Oum Kulthum
Lighting Design: Nadav Barnea
Costume Design: Rossello Shmaria
Production Coordinator: Karin Lederman
Fakarouni Hebrew Translation: Marzuq Al-Halabi
Fakarouni English Version: Daphna Ben Yosef
Contents and Editing: Daphna Ben Yosef and Orly Portal

Fakarouni was created with the support of the
Suzanne Dellal Centre Artist in Residence Program (2020)