Performance
Body Watani
Body Watani Dance Project
Dates
Tue, Feb 24, 1:15 am
Thu, Feb 26, 12:00 am
Photo by Pat Berrett
Monday February 23rd, 7:15 -8:45pm
OPEN CLASS / WORKSHOP:
Body Watani is a body-as-homeland research practice that began and continues to evolve from a Palestinian diasporic lens. This offering invites participants to investigate with us: how we research Arab and SWANA rooted movement in experimental, somatic, and contemporary contexts. Practicioners are invited into improvisational prompts that support reflections on ones’ own relation to place, ancestral wanderings, migration, displacement, exile and reclamations of what homeland means. We also study, share, and experiment with culturally specific movement techniques such as Dabke, Baladi and Raqs Sharqi.
Wednesday February 26th, 6:00pm
WINDOW INTO PROCESS:
After the Last Red Sky (2024) is a dance performance and ritual gathering to hold the weight of—and imagine healing for—the Palestinian sky. A sky where violence hovers and falls on Palestinian bodies. A sky carrying a folk belief of a whale eating the lunar-eclipsing moon. A blood-red sky. In this work we ask what it means to dig down into the rubble of decades of attacks on Palestinian Aliveness to re-member our sky. To move through grief and rage together in community, so we don’t collapse under its weight.
We want to invite our community to engage with the work in an intimate, interactive window into the creative process.
Leila Awadallah and Noelle Awadallah are co-Artistic Directors of Body Watani Dance project.
Photo by Sabrina Jasmin
Funding
This activity is made possible by the Bridge Fund for Dance program through the City of Minneapolis Arts & Cultural Affairs Department.
Accessibility
OPEN CLASS: What to expect? This class mixes improvisation with culturally specific movement studies of the Arab region. The time will include a range of adaptable directions, guiding participants to explore ideas with agency to interpret how they feel comfortable. There will be certain folk / contemporary choreographies that will require stomping feet and faster, more complex movement language, but we also invite participants to experience through adapting the movement and / or various forms of other participation such as, but not limited to: witnessing, drawing, vocal / sonic engagement, etc.
WINDOW INTO PROCESS: What to expect? This gathering will waver between small sections of performance and conversation between artists and audience. The conversation will likely hold complex, and difficult subject matter, especially in relation to the genocide against the Palestinian people and the emotional terrains that we travel through as artists and people who are deeply connected to this ongoing wound of our humanity. At this time we have not planned for ASL.
We invite anyone who is curious to know more and to request / suggest / share about needs and desires to reach out at bodywatani@gmail.com