Al Sarab

Al-Sarab is a dance institution that houses two entities: The School and The Company

Ministry of Education License Number: 213/2009

Al-Sarab Alternative Dance School is a 30-year-old institution (and has been registered in the. Ministry of Education since 2009) that has produced hundreds of graduates. Most of its faculty and administration are graduates of the institution.

In her own words:

My name is Nadra Assaf and once upon a time (January 13, 1991 to be exact), I came to Lebanon to struggle and fight for a belief I held. The belief that everyone could and should dance. The belief that each body should be allowed and afforded the opportunity to tune its muscles and sculpt its lines in as poetic an existence as possible. This allowance would lead to even better communication and delivery in everyday life, not to mention the health benefits one gets from moving (no matter what the form). This belief did not just happen upon me. This belief was one that was nurtured in me since birth. And it was this belief that motivated me to initiate the Al-Sarab Alternative Dance School: a true movement of love, life, comradery and passion.

With this firm belief and years of training and even more years of study, struggle and strife, I arrived (in 1991) to the city of Byblos (also known as Jbeil) to begin a dance academy like no other. And this ‘dream’ materialized through years of hard work, love, passion and most of all dedication to the field. This ‘dream’ was established through the blood, sweat and tears of every ‘body’ that inhabited the space in Byblos (with later added co-directed space in Koura and Rabieh).

Al-Sarab is a school that dedicates time and effort into building dancers and people who appreciate dance. Al-Sarab is currently run by its graduates. The CEO of the school was the first student to register in the school in 1991. He was 3 years old at the time. If you take a look at the Organigram, there are only two people who are not graduates of the school. That speaks volumes about the institution’s commitment to developing dance in the country. Al-Sarab also has a professional dance company that performs all over the region and internationally as well. It is very difficult to explain a 30-year history in a few pages. It is also very difficult to not feel emotional about the loss of such a legacy. You might find it awkward that the person writing this is actually the founder of this institution, but I would like to mention that for the last 10 years I have not been running the school, Al-Sarab is run by the descendants of the school.

Thus, the dream did come true (so to speak), but it did not come true like magic. The dream became a living embodiment of truth. Al-Sarab might have started as a young woman’s fantasy dogma of what dance should and could be, but Al-Sarab took on a reality of its own that surpassed all parameters of the imagination.