Arab Dance Platform

23 Apr '09

19h00
Guy Nader/ Maria Campos Arroyo (Lebanon/Spain)
Title: Btwin Barcelona Beirut, 40 mins
Venue Theatre Monnot

About the Choreographer
Guy Nader studied in the Institute of Fine Arts in Beirut and in the International School of Mime in Barcelona. He has worked with Maqamat Theatre Dance Company, Arcinolether Company amongst others and currently a member of Iliacán Cia. in Spain. His first production was created in 2006 at Theatre Tournesol.
Maria Campos Arroyo studied in the School of the Arts in Amsterdam. She has worked with Meekers in co production with Hans Hof Ensemble, Protein Dance, Tom Dale, Sol Picó, John Jasperse and Susana Duarte amongst others. She has created her own work presented in London Resolution! 07 and in Barcelona.

About the performance
Two cities in the same body. Two bodies in the same city. An eternal back and forth. How the space conditions the architecture of the body and how the body adapts to changes. Immigration, a natural event, a characteristic of human tendency, a force that moves and impulses living beings.

Produced by Beirut International Platform of Dance

20h30
Mia Habis (Lebanon)
Title: Item, 10 mins
Venue: Theatre Al Madina

About the Choreographer
Mia Habis studied French literature, advertising and acting. She started her dance trainig in Classical Ballet at an early age. She enrolled different dance workshops in Lebanon and abroad: Classical, contemporary, African, oriental, and butoh. She’s been practicing the Kali Sikaran Filipino martial arts for several years.
Her main education and most of the performances she danced in took place in the midst of the Beirut Dance Company directed by Nada Kano.
Item is her first choreography.

About the performance
“Item” is about a young woman trying to find her place in a society that doesn’t suit her values, in a country in which she doesn’t much recognize herself .Her choices would be simply either playing the game, becoming formatted, standardized and accepted…or remaining free, happy and an authentic drop-out.

Produced by Beirut International Platform of Dance

Ahmad Khemise (Tunisia)
Title: Voyage of dust
Venue: Theatre Al Madina

22h00
Muhammad Rasheed/Iraqis Bodies (Iraq)
Title: Crying of my mother, 25 mins
Venue: Theatre Babel

About the Choreographer
"Iraqis Bodies’ use a mélange of experimental movements to depict the violence on the streets in Iraq. This year, Iraqi Bodies will embark on a tour throughout Europe and then back to the Middle East.

24-year old Muhammad Rasheed, who dances and choreographs for the company says, "When I left, I realized I don't feel a sense of 'place' anymore. Coming into contact with other societies and cultures there is a [fraction] with identity.”

About the performance
"Three men, living together in the same house start, with time, to disagree and resist each other. Greed and malignance, violence and killing become their only language. ‘Crying of my mother’, is a dance performance looking at the source of violence that is growing in these three characters, that are from different religious groups, in order to express it through dance, gestures, and stylized emotions.”

24 Apr '09

18h00
Adham Hafez/Adham Hafez company (Egypt)
Title: KoRpuS, 20 mins
Venue: Theatre Al Madina

About the Choreographer
Awarded Choreographer, performer and composer, also founder and current director of HaRaKa: Egypt’s first dance research organization, founder of the performance and movement studies publication “Cairography”, and director of “TransDance” Festival. Received First Prize for Choreography, Certificates of Excellence and Merit from Cairo Opera House, Egyptian Ministry of Culture, and others. Lately chosen as “Young Entrepreneur of the Year” for performing arts in Egypt.

About the performance
This is a study, a self-interview, a physical exhibition, an invisible dance, a fragmented body composing itself to dance. Elements of “the body” of this dancer are opened up, how this body is conceived and how it’s moved, expressed or represented. The dancer here offers his body, naked. Text, voice and image and mere physical presence guide the audience through this anatomical experience of a dancer’s body, revealing subtle and invisible layers of dance.

19h00
Radhouane El Meddeb (Tunisia)
Title: Quelqu’un va danser…, 50 mins
Venue: Theatre Al Madina

About the performance
Alone on a bare stage, Radhouane El Meddeb conjures the presence of loved-ones and summons a world woven from the materials, images, ghosts and texts that it is made of. Through a huge effort of concentration, the body becomes a core that distills memories and gives form to gestures and memories. At the end of this confrontation with oneself - with truth and illusion – there may be the momentum to come back to what remains: just somebody who is going to dance.

20h30
Leyya Tawil/Leyya Tawil’s Dance Elixir (Syria/USA)
Title: Grace on a Friday Night, 17 mins
Venue: Theatre Babel

About the Choreographer
Leyya Tawil is the Artistic Director of Dance Elixir (Oakland, USA). She teaches, performs and creates work throughout the states and has been produced in Montreal, New York City, Detroit, Beirut, and Tabor (Czech Republic). She has received numerous grants and awards including the 2008 Emerging Artist Award from the University of Michigan, School of Music, Theatre & Dance.

About the performance
“Grace on a Friday Night” chronicles the story of a “fallen angel”, choreographed and performed by Leyya Tawil. The angel here is a raucous and defiant character that reverberates with movement symbolism and emotional force. Tawil’s performance is precise and fiercely irreverent, while also tapping into the statuesque gracefulness of the Fallen Angel archetype.

Zei Khauli/Maqamat Theatre Dance (Lebanon)
Title: No Honest Men, 35 mins
Venue: Theatre Babel

About the Choreographer
Zei Khauli is a Lebanese/Canadian choreographer and performer living and working in Beirut. She received her B.A. degree in Communication
Arts from the Lebanese American University in 1997 and went on to
complete her Masters in Dance Studies from the University of Surrey, England in 2002. She Co-founded MAQAMAT with Omar Rajeh in 2002 and had created works such as "THE BRIDES" for the First edition of BIPOD in 2004, and "BIG MY SECRET" in 2007.

About the performance
“No Honest Men” is an exploration of people and their very individual "identities". It deals with the differences of "straight" people as opposed to that of "gay" people, and if there are any at all. After all, who is who? Who is what? And WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE???

Produced by Beirut International Platform of Dance

22h00
Karima Mansour/MAAT for Contemporary Dance (Egypt)
Title: Nomadness, 55 mins
Venue: Theatre Monnot

About the Choreographer
Karima Mansour graduated with both a B.A and a Masters degree in Contemporary Dance from the London Contemporary Dance School, London, England after having completed her B.A in Film from the High Institute of Cinema, Academy of Arts in Cairo, Egypt. In 1999 she founded her company MAAT for Contemporary Dance, which is the first Independent dance company to be established in Egypt . Since then she has created 10 full choreographic works. Karima Mansour has been a teacher for the Cairo Opera Dance Theatre Company In 98, an Assistant Professor at the Ballet Institute, Academy of Arts 1999 to 2000 and continues to work as a free-lance teacher while creating and developing her own choreographic work and language.

About the performance
“Her name was Lola and she had strange habit of planting trees in the desert…”

25 Apr '09

16h00
Omar Rajeh/Maqamat Dance Theatre (Lebanon)
Title: The Assassination of Omar Rajeh (Work in Progress), 20 min + a brief talk about the work
Venue: Theatre Al Madina

About the Choreographer
Omar Rajeh, choreographer, dancer, and artistic director of Maqamat Dance Theatre. He is also the founder of BIPOD (Beirut international Platform of Dance). The work that Omar Rajeh has been developing in Beirut is essential for the cultural and artistic scene in the city, in particular the contemporary dance scene. His work, intense and powerful, pushes the boundaries of dance in a country that has passed through difficult times and suffered so much.

About the performance
This new international co-production of Maqamat, centers on the idea of ‘Refusal and Elimination’; «assassinations against journalists» in Lebanon as a starting point for the work. The creation focuses on the importance of the written word in Arab society, and the dangers of expressing dissenting opinions. It is a very personal journey questioning the use of dance and its worth in face of such incidents.
Produced by Bonlieu Scene Nationale, Annecy-France, and co-produced by Theatre Agora, Evry-France and Dancing on the Edge Festival, Amsterdam-Netherlands.

19h00
Mey Sefan/Tanween Dance (Syria)
Title: Contract, 45 mins
Venue: Theatre Babel

About the Choreographer
After studying classical ballet in Damascus (1988-1998), Mey continued her education in contemporary and classical dance at Frankfurt’s high school for dramatic arts/Germany. She subsequently earned a diploma in the contemporary pedagogical methods. Beside her work as a choreographer, dancer and dance teacher in many institutions, she formed the German/Syrian dance company "Myosotis", and the "Tanween dance" in Damascus. She is currently living and working in Syria.

About the performance
“Contract” is a duet performance with poems written and recited by Adonis (one of the founders of modern Arab poetry)
The performance discusses the conflicts that come out of the cultural and social environments shaping a woman's world (both the traditional and the contemporary lifestyles). It is also dealing conflicts and problems questioning if these problems are within me or within the outside society?

Is that all I can be? Is it really what I want? Am I the same person?

Caroline Hatemd (Lebanon)
Title: The Joy series, 20 mins
Venue: Theatre Babel

About the Choreographer
Caroline Hatem earned a Masters in Philosophy, and specialized in dance and theatre in Lebanon, France and the USA. In her work she mixes text, choreography and video. This is her second work.

About the performance
“The Joy Series” is a solo performance (dance, video, text and original music) about the feelings a woman has for her beloved one, weaved into her love for their country. The lover’s body makes one with the urban and natural landscapes. And the city, like the lover, can invade, aggress, reject, hurt, yet call for the greatest intimate tenderness.

Supported by Beirut International Platform of Dance

20h30
Methkal Zaghir/The Place (Syria)
Title: Critical Relationships, 35 mins
Venue: Theatre Al Madina

About the Company
“The place” is not a title or a name of a company that can give an added value to it. It is a research for pure and original ways of self-expression. It is the ability to communicate when we are unable to speak.

About the performance
It is a work on the text “ critical relationships “ by the French writer Christophe Pellet. The work developed and progressed into focusing on the inner self of a human soul. “Critical relationships” is a way to get closer and deeper into the human being in order to be able to reconstruct his/her connections with him/herself, the others and the environment.

Salah El Progy (Egypt)
Title: Adrenaline, 15 mins
Venue: Theatre Al Madina

About the Choreographer
Salah El Progy graduated from Modern Dance School in Cairo Opera House and was a Soloist for the Cairo Opera Modern Dance Company under the Direction of Walid Aouni. This is his second production as a choreographer. His first debut was in 2007 in the Mediterranean Festival of the Bibliotheque in Alexandria.

About the performance
When incidents crowd my mind with thoughts… I question them… unheard. The blood rushes to my head and sweat runs down my face…I get thirsty …so I drink. However, the desire to express my thoughts and demand my rights remains…unheard. So I fall silent. And my rage mounts and the words surge to my mouth ... speech fails me, and I stutter. I deviate, and the night turns to day, marked by the crow of the rooster, arousing my spirit, whose presence bursts unto my limbs , which on my behalf.. Speaks.

22h00
Khaled Bin Ghreib/Loren Palmer/CIE 2K_FAR (Morocco)
Title: Trip-Tik, 90 min including a 10 min intermission
Venue: Theatre Monnot

About the Choreographer
Khalid Benghrib was born in Casablanca, flourished through the practice of dance in Rochelle and then as a performer with Carolyn Carlson --Heddy Maalem - Régine Chopinot - Jean Francois Duroure- Fabienne Abramovich and others.

Loren Palmer is French by adoption, New Zealander from birth, after studying in La Rochelle and CNDC Angers permitting a close friction with Karlotta Ikkeda - Dominique Dupuis - Angels Marguerite. The obligatory encounter with L’esquisse and Joëlle Bouvier while in parallel creations in conjunction with Charles Angel - Christie Heude - - Hela Fatoumi - Eric Lamoureux… the passage remains with out fault to find herself as a founding member in Casablanca of the Company 2k_far.

About the performance
“Trip-Tik” is a generic title for three distinct short pieces:
Obscure Windows/So-Lo/Visit
Loren Palmer & Khalid Bin Ghreib enter cyclically in the production around the body’s organs and its semantics. The Union of both is fact in TRIP-TIK. CIE 2K_FAR proposes to assist to a sequence of indistinct causes, unforeseeable, in an organic space, plastic, or absent by moment.
TRIP -TIK explores the specific relationship to scenery, the investment of space and its geometry, the relation to projected image with dialectical cinematography.

26 Apr '09

19h00
Toufic Izzediou (Morocco)
Title: Aataba
Venue: Theatre Babel

About the performance The story of these bodies, hidden by day and searching for freedom by night, will be told by women: dancers who can carry those beings through all their transformations, their joys and sufferings, their violence, their fear and their desires, and expose them to the spectator -- at the threshold of a new vision.

About the Choreographer
In 2000, Taoufiq Izeddiou created his first solo, 170 eight steps with the artists, presented at the French Institute of Marrakech. His work has been shown at many places such as Montpellier Danse, CCN of Tours, the international choreographic Meetings of Seine-Saint-Denis, at the Moussem Festival in Antwerp, Belgium, at the National Choreographic Center of Caen, and at the National Scene of Cherbourg.
The festival « On Marche »… 2005 to 2009, Taoufiq co-organized and directed (with the ANANIA company) the annual Choreographic Meetings of Marrakech. The next festival will be held in January 2010.

20h30
Nacera Belaza/Compagnie Nacera Belaza (Algeria)
Title: Le Cri, 50 mins
Venue: Al Madina Theatre

About the Choreographer
She is a choreographer and a dancer. After having studied French literature, she decided to devote herself to dance and created her own company in 1989. She has created eleven shows so far. She has also worked for the theatre and for the movies. Nacera Belaza regularly teaches in France and abroad.

About the performance
It’s curious that this piece should have been the first one…A kind of movement that goes from the intimate to the surface, until it disappears. A path that constantly uses each one of my pieces, but maybe this one will not go further, it stands there, it contains the scream and ends with it… It is a simple idea, and endless and vital one…

22h00
Rachid Ouramdane/L’A./ Rachid Ouramdane (Algeria/France)
Title: Loin…(Far…)

About the performance
“A journey is often the opportunity to revisit, the moment to take stock of one’s identity or rather one’s identities. Those we have inherited, those we embody in the eyes of others and those we project to ourselves, that we try to emancipate. Whether national, economic, ethnic, minority, cultural, sexual, psychological or affective, a journey brings into question all of these layers of identity, which form new configurations throughout our movements. The different faces we have often result from a negotiation between the legacy of the past and the identity that is being constructed in the present. It is during these movements that the feeling of being a foreigner appears. This crossroads of thought is the axis around which I have constructed this choreographic project.

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Lebanon

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