The Tel Aviv-based Batsheva Dance Company announced late last year that it would tour the U.S. and Canada from January to March of 2009. Soon after the announcement, Palestine solidarity activists issued a call for protest in accordance with the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, which, in turn is modeled on the long campaign against South African Apartheid.
The Chicago chapter of the International Solidarity Movement began to organize resistance to a local Batsheva performance just as Israel called off its recent air and ground assault on the Gaza Strip; to promo the protest, grassroots communications outfit HammerHard MediaWorks came up with a clever slogan and graphic that tied the Batsheva to the suffering of Gazans.
Oblivious to the politics behind it, some people were excited about the Batsheva performance for its artistic merits - but when they arrived at the Auditorium Theater on Sunday, they had to walk past a crowd that was there for a different kind of song and dance. ISM's Kevin Clark estimates that 75 people took part in the nearly two-hour long protest, and many of them were wearing bandages smeared with fake blood to represent Palestinian casualties.
One of the goals of the action was to convince Batsheva patrons that patronizing an Israeli entity made them complicit with the actions of the Israeli government, and Clark thinks this was accomplished. "We were chanting things like 'this is no time for dancing,' 'you're dancing on Gazans' graves,'" he said, "and I could see people listening to us as they were standing in line in the theater lobby, and I saw a few - I'd say four or five - walk away without buying tickets." Others who didn't leave were nevertheless affected. "I saw some people in tears. Obviously this was a really powerful militant action."
Clark thinks the second major goal of the action was accomplished. "We wanted to send the message to the Zionist community that there's no safe haven. It doesn't matter if it's an artistic event, or athletic, or academic - you will have to deal with us and our call for justice."
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