It’s a rare thing that audience participation enhances the experience of a show, even rarer that it forms a foundational part of  a show’s meaning. At the beginning of Dance People, the latest work from Lebanese-French dance company Maqamat, a few audience members try to avoid being ushered onto the stage that fills the University of Edinburgh’s Old College Quad, but as the dancers draw them into the space, they quickly engage.

Dance People is a show about displacement that continually forms, breaks up, and reforms the stage. Three platforms are pushed towards, away and around the audience as we must hastily move, forming new groups as we flee from the metal structures that could be tanks or gun towers. A DJ blasts loud music based on ‘L’Ombre de la bête,’ adding its own kind of gunfire or chaos. There is singing, and a live oud. Names, places and dates flash on a screen in front of the DJ’s platform: Gaza, Northern Ireland, Beirut.

The overwhelming noise, the restless movement, the partial information, all mimic the experiences of refugees and we were given red envelopes that contain the experiences of migrants who struggled with their new identities. Mine is from a fur trader in Canada who was told that he was neither French nor Native enough to claim the land. He became involved in a rebellion and wrote a letter to his wife asking to be buried by the Red River. Later on, more envelopes are thrown from a platform as a dancer addresses us as “citizens” and lists professions and social roles. It’s a reminder that people aren’t just statistics, they’re mothers, fathers, siblings, lawyers, hairdressers, with lives as real as ours.

Omar Rajeh and Mia Habis’ choreography consists of intense, mostly small, gestures. The performers dance alone, and then form hybrids in duos and as a group, copying movements and adding their own spin. In a quiet moment the audience are told to find partners, either the people we had arrived with, or someone new, and “find some movement.” There’s a large, cathartic, dance involving nearly everyone, with a camera capturing the revelers and showing it on the DJ platform. By the gorgeous, furious, emotional end, it feels as if we ourselves are somehow starting over, somewhere new.