Have you ever felt like a stranger in your own hometown? Like the spaces &/or people you were so used to - be it a house, a neighbor, a street - no longer feel the same? Did you ever have a relationship with them in the first place?

Before You Go, a walking trail of performances we have been producing in and outside of Beirut for a year now, hit the North side of the country on June 9th and June 10th 2023 as part of the second Network for Cultural Outreach tour! 

An audience composed of individuals of all ages was engaging with two other interactive performances, including performances created by Yazan with “Transit”, their recent play, and Clown Me In.

NCO is a cultural alliance between Yaraqa, Clown Me In and Yazan that first launched in August 2022 in the Bekaa region. The Network for Cultural Outreach’s main aim is to decentralize performing arts and provide sustainable touring opportunities for both artists and audiences all around Lebanon.

This was an opportunity for our audiences to re-experience dance & movement outside of a stage plus the capital, and reimagine spaces they may or may not be familiar with by reviving, reinvestigating and imagining stories of communities, memories and encounters, through movement and dance.

What is Before You Go?

Before You Go is a guided trail of site-specific dance performances. Audiences are invited to walk and interact with different environments and locations (gardens, rooftops, alleys, homes…). These performances encompass different genres, yet all fall under one common theme: Feeling estranged in the familiar; familiar in the estranged.

Why was Before You Go created?

We live in a country where physical boundaries inherited by our past and perpetuated by our present have played a huge role in influencing how we all connect with space and each other both collectively and individually. Even today, we can notice that people across regions or neighboring communities in Lebanon can feel like strangers to each other's environments and communities. This led us to the creation of Before You Go, to help push us to reimagine and re-experience these spaces by reviving, reinvestigating and imagining stories of communities, memories and encounters, through movement and dance.

What is it to feel Estranged?

Estrangement is an experience we are all familiar with. One might feel it after having lost a certain connection/bond or closeness with a person or even recognize it when surrounded by a group of friends only to feel so “on the outside”... But what if that same feeling could be felt towards an environment rather than just a physical being? Does that feeling exist? Is that what we feel once we change cities, countries, houses? Is it what we feel when we visit areas we otherwise thought we knew intimately, only to be surprised by seeing or feeling something that wasn’t noticed before?  Is that what we feel after being misplaced in our own city after an explosion or political division? Is it that feeling you get when you wake up from a deep sleep to a room you don’t recognize at all: your own?

What is it to feel Familiar?

Familiarity is knowing a person, a space, a feeling or an object like the palm of our hands. It is an intimate connection that is progressively enriched as we seek to discover and rediscover. Familiarity is not just knowing where a store is located, but knowing that the owner always puts food out for the neighborhood cats every night before closing. But sometimes that Familiarity gets challenged. Sometimes we wake up to the same routine, same environment, only to be struck by the novelty of it all. 

We thank Mrs Joelle Hage Obeid for her hospitality, dedication, involvement and care that allowed us to implement all our ideas and aspirations in her beautiful hometown. 

We also thank the municipality of Amioun and its members for all their support.

We thank Warshe 13, Nadine Ali Deeb, Rim Dadoun for hosting us and allowing us to use their space, Beit El Fan,  Mr Yassine Abd El Nasser and Dany for hosting us and facilitating our technical needs, as well as the Tripoli Municipality and all residents of the neighborhoods our trail passed through.

We also thank Mina Guest House for hosting us and supporting our work.

Before You Go is part of the second pilot tour launched through Network of Cultural Outreach (NCO), in the framework of the All-Around Culture programme, an alliance formed by Clown Me In, Yaraqa, and Yazan.

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