Politics as an injunction: political commitments in Palestinian contemporary dance

In a context of invisibilization of Palestinian history and the denial of the existence of the Palestinian people by the Israeli occupier, the fact of making oneself visible to the eyes of the “world” is in itself a political act, and every Palestinian artist seems to have to be, in this sense, “involved” or “committed”, sometimes in spite of himself. My contribution examines this injunction to politics in the practice of Palestinian dance actors. It is based on a multi-sited and digital ethnographic research conducted during four years in studios, theaters and dance festivals in Palestine, Israel and Europe. I argue that the political, in the practice of the actors of my research, is not always a question of “commitment”, but also stems from a social pressure linked to the Palestinian context, as well as from European cultural policies and development aid programs carrying a vision of art as necessarily “useful”.