Balfour Reparations (2024-2044)

This performance lecture will investigate ways of confronting the United Kingdom’s colonial legacy in Palestine. In particular, the role of Arthur James Balfour, the country’s Prime Minister (1902-1905) and Foreign Secretary (1916-1919), in the historical denial of Palestinian political rights in their homeland. Saleh will do that through elements of Critical Fabulation and Afrofuturism that combine history, fiction and fantasy, while engaging with and being inspired by archival material, such as videos, photos, and documents. The performance lecture will take place in 2044 to reflect on the fictive apology letter that the United Kingdom will have issued in 2024 to the Palestinian people promising them reparations. The audience will become members of the reparations’ evaluation committee created on the 20th anniversary of the apology and will be invited to participate in the performance.

Artist's Bio

Farah Saleh is a Palestinian dancer, choreographer and scholar based in Scotland. She has studied linguistic and cultural mediation in Italy and in parallel continued her studies in contemporary dance. Since 2010 she took part in local and international projects with Sareyyet Ramallah Dance Company (Palestine), the Royal Flemish Theatre and Les Ballets C de la B (Belgium), Mancopy Dance Company (Denmark/Lebanon), Siljehom/Christophersen (Norway) and Candoco Dance Company (UK). Saleh has also been teaching dance, coordinating and curating artistic projects, including the Sareyyet Ramallah Summer Dance School, which she co-founded in 2016. In 2014 she won the third prize of the Young Artist of the Year Award (YAYA) organized by A.M. Qattan Foundation in Palestine for her installation A Fidayee Son in Moscow and in 2016 she won the dance prize of Palest’In and Out Festival in Paris for the duet La Même. She was an Associate Artist at Dance Base in Edinburgh 2017-2021 and in 2023 she earned her practice-based PhD from Edinburgh College of Art. In 2024, Saleh started a lectureship in Global Majority Performance at Theatre Studies Department at Glasgow University.