WIP60 | Leila Awadallah

Leila Awadallah

an experiment in wielding ripples of vibration | INTIFADA INCANTATION

A group of performers are joined by a self-playing instrument that drones and shifts based on the vibrations in the floor and air. A work activated by specific bodies, tethered ancestrally to Palestine, and tethered viscerally to the ruptures ongoing. Asking; how do we enact a series of experiments and incantations*; attuning to the ripples and attempting to wield them towards the shapes of intifada* near and far.

* انتفاضة - to shake off, tremor, uprising

Each evening’s offering this weekend will be unrepeatable and accumulate in gesture, tremor: a compositional argument within the infrastructures of uprising:

Pass to every event this weekend is $30

THURSDAY 7PM

work-in-progress sharing #1 First Tremor - Opening Invitation / Open Questions

FRIDAY 7PM

work-in-progress sharing #2 Accumulation Tremor - Continuum and New Questions

*with post-performance engagement to follow

SATURDAY 5PM-9PM

Durational Tremor - a work-in-progress durational performance experiment

audiences are invited to enter at 5pm and build the continuum, or arrive at 7pm into what has already begun

a durational study / continuums in the making an offering that builds as it unfolds

Leila Awadallah is a dancer, choreographer, and community collaborator based in Minneapolis and sometimes Beirut. She is the Artistic Director of Body Watani Dance with her sister Noelle Awadallah; a project that centers Palestine, a body-as-homeland practice, a site for improvisational inquiry and folk-rooted experimentations of SWANA dance forms. Leila is wielding her energy towards cultural INTIFADA on multiple fronts, and asks you to join her in the long middle of the revolution to liberate Palestine and demand LANDBACK / THE RIGHT TO RETURN.
Created & performed by: Leila Awadallah, Noelle Awadallah, Mette Loulou von Kohl, and Zaquia Mahler Salinas

Instrument “the dog” by: Alex Leeds

* words inspired by June Jordan: Intifada Incantation: Poem #8 for b.b.L.

Photo credit: Houssam Mchaimech

Red Eye presents the 2026 edition of the Red Eye Festival, formerly known as the New Works 4 Weeks Festival: an annual gathering for live performance works that respond to the current moment and imagine collective transformation. Each year, artist cohorts engage in peer exchange, mutual support, and dialogue around creative process that culminates in this public sharing. Over nearly four decades, this incubator of new work has become a cornerstone of the Twin Cities performance landscape.

The 2026 artists bring varied approaches to performance processes—calling on dance, installation, sound, storytelling, textile, devising, satire, meditation, personal narratives and more—with a shared commitment to questioning artistic form and challenging dominant culture. Their works traverse themes including community distress and bodily peace, global conflict, grounding, absurdity, grief, desire, threads and uprising. They explore these themes through dance, sound, assemblage, multimedia installation, celebration and satire.