REf18 Minaret by Omar Rajeh

Can a city die? And with it, its values, its history and its culture? For almost 1,000 years, the minaret of the Great Mosque of Aleppo (a UNESCO World Heritage Site) has been one of the major symbols of the city of Syria. Today, it no longer exists.
The choreographer and dancer Omar Rajeh, founder of the company Maqamat Dance (Beirut, 2002) joins video artist Benjamin Krieg and the musician Zad Moultaka to create #Minaret, an act of resistance against the demolition of one of the largest and oldest cities in the world.
On stage is a group of dancers hailing from Lebanon, Syria, Iran, Germany, Brussels, Korea and Argentina, juxtaposed with the images taken by drones to assess the response of our consciences and our bodies to the inurement to the violence generated by social media, film and television. This is because, far from seeking to document a catastrophe or take a position with respect to the facts recounted, Omar Rajeh intends to drag us into a poetic territory in which to test the very role of culture.
Can art initiate change, effectively resist, play a role in the defence of human values?