About Behind the Wall Collective

Who We Are

Behind the Wall Collective is a movement-based cultural organisation dedicated to empowering children and women through creative movement education while documenting and transmitting living dance practices rooted in Palestinian cultural life.

Working online and on the ground, the collective creates accessible, inclusive spaces where movement becomes a tool for expression, well-being, and cultural continuity. Our approach values everyday movement practices as much as formal dance, recognizing the body as a living archive of memory, identity, and resilience.

Our Mission

Behind the Wall Collective exists to:

• Provide accessible movement education for children and women

• Create women-led spaces of expression, care, and transmission

• Document and preserve dance as it is practiced in daily life and community contexts

• Support cultural continuity through embodied knowledge across generations

• Bridge local practices in Palestine with international dialogue and exchange

• Behind the Wall Collective also functions as a shared resource, gathering and circulating knowledge, documentation, and references related to dance and movement practices connected to Palestine.

Our Vision

We envision Behind the Wall Collective growing into a reference cultural organisation for movement education and the documentation of embodied cultural heritage in Palestine.

We believe dance exists beyond stages — in homes, weddings, classrooms, streets, and rituals. Our long-term vision is to build a living movement archive that reflects how dance is practiced, transmitted, and transformed today, with a particular focus on women and children as carriers of cultural memory.

In the long term, Behind the Wall Collective envisions becoming a reference organisation for embodied cultural practices connected to Palestine — a space where practice, memory, and access meet.

Our Values

• Accessibility
  Movement should be available to all, regardless of space, resources, or background.

• Women-Led Transmission
  We center women as leaders, educators, and holders of embodied cultural knowledge.

• Care & Safety
  We create respectful environments that support emotional and physical well-being.

• Community & Continuity
  Movement connects generations, places, and lived experiences.

• Cultural Integrity
  We work with living practices, honoring context, agency, and transformation.

Our Story

Behind the Wall Collective builds upon more than twelve years of movement education and community-based dance work in Ramallah, Palestine.

Founded by movement educator and cultural practitioner Shyrine Ziadeh, the collective continues the legacy of the Ramallah Ballet Center while expanding its scope beyond a single physical space. When access to space became limited, the work did not stop — it transformed.

Behind the Wall Collective emerged from the need to continue moving, teaching, sharing, and documenting dance beyond physical boundaries, while remaining deeply connected to place, people, and lived cultural experience.

Why “Behind the Wall”

The name Behind the Wall reflects both reality and intention.

It speaks to movement that exists despite limitation — behind walls, beyond borders, and outside institutional stages. It honors the invisible, everyday spaces where dance lives and evolves, often led by women and shared with children.

Behind the Wall Collective chooses to work where movement is most alive: in community, in memory, and in transformation.

Looking Forward

Behind the Wall Collective is an evolving organisation. Alongside movement education and workshops, we are developing long-term initiatives focused on documentation, archiving, and knowledge-sharing.

Through partnerships, research, and digital platforms, we aim to create sustainable structures that support movement education, cultural preservation, and international exchange for years to come.

Founder Bio

Shyrine Ziadeh is a Palestinian dance educator and cultural practitioner with over twelve years of experience working with children and women in Ramallah and France. She is the founder and artistic director of Behind the Wall Collective, a movement-based initiative rooted between Palestine and France and the Ramallah ballet center - Dance school.

Her work focuses on movement education, embodied knowledge, and the transmission of dance as living cultural heritage, with particular attention to women’s practices and children’s learning.