In a video of his first stage performance in Amman which he posted to YouTube, Adel Euro talks about how he hopes to make his father proud.
BY ALEX ELLEFSON
Iraqi dancer Adil Faraj, who went by the stage name Adel Euro, was one of 292 people killed by a suicide truck bomb in Baghdad on July 3. The explosion tore apart a busy marketplace during the Eid-al-Fitr holiday, and took Euro’s life just as the Battery Dance Company was preparing to bring him to the United States for training.
Battery Dance protege Adil Qais Adil Faraj Al-Jaf, a.k.a. Adel Euro, was killed by a truck bomb in Baghdad on July 3.
Battery Dance discovered Euro in 2014 through a series of YouTube videos he posted of himself dancing at home. The company reached out to him and began providing modern dance lessons over Skype. Despite a stigma against male dancers in the Middle East, Euro persisted in his art — and Battery Dance began working to bring him to the United States.
Euro took the stage for the first time in April 2015, when Battery Dance brought him to Jordan to perform a solo act and an ensemble piece at the Amman Contemporary Dance Festival.
Battery Dance was waiting for Euro to finish law school before bringing him to the United States.
He finished school in June, and was killed in the bombing less than a month later.
The opening ceremony of this year’s Battery Dance Festival at Wagner Park on Aug. 14 will include a tribute to the 23-year-old dancer, performed by a trio of Iraqi dancers flown in from Michigan by Battery Dance Company for the occasion.
