AMSTERDAM — Last summer in Syria, Ahmad Joudeh visited the demolished ruins of his family home in the Yarmouk refugee camp near Damascus to dance in the place where his relatives had been killed.

Behind him, separated only by a black curtain, was a group of rebel snipers who occasionally fired off a shot; in front, Syrian military personnel patrolled the terrain. A Dutch documentary filmmaker, Roozbeh Kaboly, was there too, capturing the moment.

“You hear their guns?” Mr. Joudeh says in Mr. Kaboly’s film. “They told me they will shoot me in my leg just so that I will lose my life as a dancer.”

Mr. Joudeh, though, remains calm and shows the cameras a tattoo on the back of his neck, the spot where ISIS terrorists have chopped the heads off their victims: “Dance or Die,” it reads. “This is my message,” he says. “Many people are dead here. My uncles are dead here; I will dance” for their souls.