When Hussein Smko was 9, the American military arrived in his hometown, Erbil, the capital of Iraq’s Kurdish region.
It was 2003, and Smko, already a survivor of the Kurdish civil war, would chase the American Humvees with other kids.
One day a soldier beckoned him over and demonstrated a simple, beguiling gesture: He held out a straight arm then made it ripple like water, a classic hip-hop move.
“I thought it was like a big sparkle,” Smko, 30, said in an interview.
The dance they were preparing, “On the Nature of Rabbits,” opens Wednesday at the Joyce Theater in Manhattan.
Persons:
Hussein Smko, Smko, Pontus Lidberg, ”
Organizations:
American, Joyce Theater
Locations:
Erbil, Iraq’s Kurdish, Tarrytown, N.Y, Swedish, Manhattan