Rolly Dib

Rolly Dib is a Lebanese choreographer, performer, and filmmaker whose work investigates identity, femininity, and power relations through Baladi (Raqs Sharqi).

Originally trained in classical ballet, she returned to Baladi (Raqs Sharqi) as a cultural inheritance and a space of investigation. Her filmmaker’s eye drives how she shapes the work and the world it inhabits, bringing a cinematic sensibility to performance. She approaches the research as a woman who knows, lives, and embodies this culture. Her work treats Baladi as a living form, refusing to fix it in time or tradition, embracing the complexity of a contemporary Lebanese woman.

Her research investigates the “belly dancer” figure, the myths and stereotypes surrounding her, and how she mirrors the society around her, tracing how colonial histories and patriarchal structures continue to live in the body. Her process works with memory, treating the body as an archive, studying how movements traveled and changed through time and bodies, using the style and vocabulary of legendary dancers as a choreographic language. At the heart of this work is a question that remains open: why does the dancing female body continue to provoke such fascination and discomfort, and why is it still so difficult for a woman to dance freely, without being controlled, judged, or reduced?

Her solo performance Cabaret Loulou: A Dancer on the Edge Of, supported by AFAC, premiered at Zoukaq Theatre, Beirut, in February 2026. Her other projects include Archivos de Danza Baladi, a lecture-performance tracing a century of Baladi (Raqs Sharqi) through its main figures, and the award-winning film Al Deek (The Rooster), produced through Olive Tree Productions. She teaches Baladi workshops in Lebanon and Barcelona.

She is completing a Master’s in Dance Movement Therapy at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, and lives and works between Beirut and Barcelona.