A Syrian dancer`s journey from hell to the Paris stage
(Artdaily.org)

Yara al-Hasbani was putting the finishing touches to her make-up for a performance of `Romeo and Juliet` in Damascus when she found out her father had been tortured to death. It was the moment the dancer`s world turned upside down. `The little girl in me died at that moment,` says the 24-year-old, who had protested alongside her family against Syria`s regime in 2011 at the start of the brutal civil war. Six years on, Hasbani may be living a new life in Paris, but her feelings on the war at home spill onto the stage through her poignant contemporary choreography. Her first Parisian performances, in the public squares at Republique and Trocadero, right by the Eiffel Tower, were tributes to the hundreds of Syrian children killed in a chemical weapons attack in 2013. `I took inspiration from the photos,` Hasbani says. `I imitated the positions of the