khalas fest // performances

khalas fest is a terrain where:

subversive and defiant embodied performance confronts ripples of violence spilling from rupturing systems

artists wielding performance as weapon towards creating cracks in illusions of empire, settler colonialism, and whatever else is in the way

generating echoes rebounding into dreams of future world

( ( ( ( ( ( ( ( PALESTINE IS FREE ) ) ) ) ) ) ) )

a curation born out of a group of artists who decide to put their work in conversation — rather than waiting for someone to do it for us.

Hosted by Body Watani Dance Project in Minneapolis, Mni Sota Makoce, khalas fest will consist of 7 works, featuring both local and visiting artists. The performances range from defiant stances, to subversive dark comedy, to deeply sacred spells / prayers / visions of healing.

LEILA AWADALLAH

NOELLE AWADALLAH

METTE LOULOU VON KOHL

NICOLE BINDLER

ZAQUIA LUISA SALINAS

FARGO NISSIM TBAKHI

TAREK ABDELQADER

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khalas fest also hosts a series workshops!

Sept 28 - Oct 4 between performances. More info at this link!

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PERFORMANCE: A Call to Prayer · Zaquia Luisa Salinas

Thursday, October 1 · 7PM

A Call to Prayer is a moving meditation, inviting us to honor our ancestral inheritances, and call into existence destruction, restoration and hope. Performed by Zaquia Luisa Salinas alongside Sergio Barrientos and Guillermo Castro, this dance connects us to the collective experience of diving into and journeying out of darkness. “…what they build between them compresses global histories and prayers into one liquid container – rituals coalescing into a physically demanding finale of electronic resistance, a universal meditation on the desire to hold faith against political constriction. Important hope.” - ankita (thINKingDANCE)

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PERFORMANCE: An Evening With Complicity Huffman · Fargo Nissim Tbakhi

Thursday, October 1 · 8:15PM

An Evening With Complicity Huffman by Fargo Nissim Tbakhi is a satirical solo performance, a haunted poetry reading which excavates and foregrounds the violence of settler-colonial literary spaces. As Complicity Huffman, an Israeli-American poet, presents work from her forthcoming book, Untitled Nobel Prize Submission, strange things keep happening. The poems are different than she’d drafted them, the sound system is acting up, and occasionally blood pools on the stage from an unknown source. Eventually, the voices of the Palestinian subjects violently erased by Complicity’s settler poetics come bursting into the space in an act of shocking, violent, and gory possession. An Evening With Complicity Huffman satirizes and eviscerates the casual links between the American literary landscape, rampant imperialist capitalism, and the constant lies settler-colonial subjects tell themselves in order to live lives of comfort.

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PERFORMANCE: There are no words, so may it be the end · Mette Loulou Von Kohl Friday

Friday, October 2 · 7PM

There are no words, so may it be the end by Mette Loulou is a satirical commentary on the “counter-terror” industry of Zionist state. There are no words, so may it be the end is a multivocal, multimedia solo performance proposing Palestinian refusal to be seen and unseen as strategies in challenging and destabilizing settler colonial projects and identities.

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PERFORMANCE: shuhada: alive-streamed un-ceased FIRE · Leila Awadallah

Friday, October 2 · 7PM

shuhada: alive-streamed un-ceased FIRE by Leila Awadallah is a work that examines the fragments of evidence produced during the genocide in Gaza. Illuminated, colonial hypocrisies collide with testimonial archives of those who witnessed and those who resisted genocide.

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PERFORMANCE: C.A.U.T.I.O.N. · Noelle Awadallah and Anniessa Antar

Friday, October 2 · 8:15PM

CAUTION you are now entering a construction zone for more tender worlds. Here we work in ruins to leave the vestiges of the old behind but we don't forget what came before us. History doesn't rhyme but it does repeat itself. Be alert, curious, wondering, failing, resensitizing, envisioning, heart breaking, making meaning, making sense, making mistakes. We choose to root inside reality to reach beyond these concrete walls.

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Dog hours

Saturday, Oct. 3 4-5:30PM

The self playing instrument, the dog, will be playing in the space. Come to move, sit, lay, be with vibrational sound. FREE

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PERFORMANCE: Intifada Incantations (Leila Awadallah + ensemble)

Saturday, October 3 · 5:30PM

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PERFORMANCE: Sand in My Soda Pop - Nicole Bindler

Saturday, October 3 · 7PM

A critical dark comedy and a reverse strip tease about the U.S. exports of pop-culture and bombs. The work draws from dance-theater, Butoh, contact improvisation, and clown. Images of beach-going, leisure, pop music, and beauty conventions collide with the grotesque: sounds of bombs infiltrating the music, and the dark undercurrent of horror that haunts our society. Created by Nicole Bindler in collaboration with Chelsea Thaler

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PERFORMANCE: Tarek Abdelqader

Saturday, October 3 · 8:15PM

Tarek will play a solo set with drums and electronics.