Rabi'a": by Orly Portal"

Rabi’a”: by Orly Portal”
Performed by dancers from the Jerusalem  Academy of Music and Dance

“Lovers do not finally meet somewhere. They are in each other all along.” (Rumi)
The work “Rabi’a” was inspired by Rabi’a al-Adawiyya, an 8th-century Sufi mystic whose love, compassion, and simplicity in her actions were the seeds of the Sufi perspective.

The piece is based on Persian Sufi music and the poems of Jalal al-Din al-Rumi, the greatest mystical poet of the 13th century, who dedicated them to his beloved mentor Shams al-Din Tabrizi.

In his poems, Rumi speaks of ecstatic love and divine unity in the face of duality and conflict resulting from separation from the beloved, expressing the intense desire and longing for reunification.

The Sufi worldview serves as inspiration for the exploration of the relationship between external and internal movement, between exposure and retreat, and between the visible and the hidden, in the search for unity behind opposites and for inner peace that depends on nothing.

The movement language is influenced by Sufi symbols and rituals, where the whirling dervishes revolve around the sun of divine love, join hands to express unity, bow to each other, and bless soul to soul.