Ahmad Joudeh

In 2016 Roozbeh Kaboly, from the Dutch news program Nieuwsuur, made a 15-minute documentary about Ahmad called Dance or Die. It depicts him dancing in the ruins of the camp where he had grown up, visiting his family's former home in Palmyra, which has been destroyed, with his mother, and the ancient Roman theater of Palmyra, where he dances. Joudeh also takes the filmmakers to his dance studio in Damascus, where some of his young students talk about their lives, and what dance means to them. The ancient Roman theater in Palmrya was subsequently destroyed by ISIS.

In 2014 he was a contestant in the Arab version of So You Think You Can Dance. He made it to the semi-finals. But because he was a Palestinian without national identity, he was told he could not win. Nevertheless, his appearances brought him to the attention of Dutch filmmaker Roozbeh Kaboly, who produced a documentary that aired on Dutch television.

From 2007 Until 2016, he lived in Damascus, studying dance, and teaching ballet to support himself, and to orphaned and disabled children free of charge. His mother still lives in Syria. His father is an asylum seeker center in Germany, where father and son recently reconciled after an estrangement of eleven years.

Ahmad Joudeh (born April 4, 1990 in Yarmouk) is a ballet dancer and a choreographer from Syria. He moved to the Netherlands with help of the Dutch National Ballet Company. He is currently internationally active as an artist.

Born in 1990, Joudeh grew up in Yarmouk, a Palestinian refugee camp in Damascus, His mother is Syrian, his father Palestinian. Although his father did not approve of his interest in dance, Joudeh persisted, studying dance in Damascus.