Star Wars ballet show
Only in Jordan would you get the
opportunity to see a Star Wars ballet show. In the West, it would be
considered very uncultured to contemplate such a concept. In the UK,
a slang term for someone who is uncultured is 'Philistine', which is
the same as the Arabic word for 'Palestinian'. Perhaps this explains
why Kira's dance school in Amman, where the population is almost 80%
Palestinian, decided to pick this subject for their ballet
performance.
Short-term thinking
Kira had been practising hard and
attending many rehearsals over the previous weeks and was very
excited about performing her dance. Jordanians typically demonstrate
shorter-term thinking than other cultures, so the whole show had been
put together in the space of five weeks. I would not blame the dance
school for this, since they know that it is very difficult to get
parents to bring their children to rehearsals any more in advance
than this. Some of the performers probably joined in at the last
minute and learned the dance during the course of the intensive
rehearsals over the last 2 days.
Find it yourself and don't expect
the show to start on time
About 700 people came to watch the
show, most of whom were members of the performers' extended families.
Jordan is a 'high context' culture, which means that less information
is communicated and you are expected to find out more for yourself.
It is also a 'time loose' culture, so things rarely start on time.
This meant that we struggled to find the right entrance at the
cultural centre in the absence of any 'This Way' signs and the show
ended up starting half an hour late, which did not surprise anyone.
MIB vs The Mask vs Darth Vader
I will now attempt to summarise the
storyline that was danced and acted out in the show. It started with
the Men In Black fighting 'The Mask', trying to confiscate his green
mask, but Darth Vader came and stole it first. So the Men In Black
set off in their space ship to find Yoda, in order to get a light
saber for fighting Darth Vader but in the process ended up crash
landing on the Avatar planet. There, they were attacked by aliens but
got rescued by white fairies. Eventually they found Yoda, got a light
saber, were rescued by Princess Leia and then caught up with Darth Vader and defeated him, enabling
them to recover the green mask from him. This is a truly unique
storyline, which could not be seen anywhere else in the world,
because Jordan is a truly unique country. The Western view of
'culture' is so boring compared to this.
