Participants

Shirin is a dance and performance artist. She has over a decade of acting and directing experience. Her performative works reflect on the conditions of society and transform the body through various possibilities of movement. She is interested in interdisciplinary art and the confluence of visual, physical and sonic experimentation in collaborative environments.

In her solo Occupied Air, which she will show at tanzpol, she artistically explores the indeterminacy of physical being. Shirin currently lives in Austria.

Ali Moini was born in Shiraz, Iran, in 1975. Trained in singing, composition and dramatic interpretation, he first performed with the Young Orchestra in Shiraz and later joined the Mehr Theater Group, with whom he toured over 80 performances of the play Dance On Glasses internationally. In 2009, he graduated from Dança Forum in Lisbon, where he was taught by André Lepecki, Deborah Hay, Emmanuelle Huynh, João Fiadeiro, Lisa Nelson, Mark Tompkins, Meg Stuart, Loïc Touzé and Vera Mantero. His pieces My Paradoxical Knives, Lives, Gaugemancy, It Shocks Me But Not You and Man Anam Ke Rostam Bovad Pahlavan toured internationally. Ali currently lives in France, where he premiered his latest solo ± in 2021.

Sorour Darabi is an Iranian artist living and working in Paris.
Working actively in Iran, they were a part of the underground organization ICCD, whose festival Untimely (Teheran) hosted their work before their departure for France.
During studies at the CCN de Montpellier they created the solo Subject to Change, a performance that questions transformation with regards to time and one’s cohabitation with an environment.
In 2016, they created Farci.e, a solo dealing in notions of language, gender identity and sexuality, at the Festival Montpellier Danse. In 2018, they created Savu un, an ode to affect, to vulnerability, and to beings who are affected, is inspired by the grieving ceremonies of the Muharram and deals in questions of emotions: grief, fear, and suffering. In May 2021, they create Mowgli inspired by the jungle as an infinite territory at the crossroads of contemporary myths. In December 2021, they create Natural Drama a solo questioning the concept of Nature.

Ulduz Ahmadzadeh was born in Tehran, where she also first became involved in dance. Despite censorship, she performed with the company Harekat from 1999 to 2004, for which she was arrested. She then founded her own group, with which she began her system-critical work. Ulduz studied directing at the Soureh University of Arts in Tehran, contemporary dance education at the MUK in Vienna and social design at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. Since 2012, she has directed the contemporary dance company ATASH (formerly tanz.labor.labyrinth), with which she addresses socio-political issues and questions about cultural hierarchies.

www.atashworks.com

Armin is involved within the performance realm between theatre and dance. He began his artistic work in 2009 as an actor with independently organized theatre communities in Iran and later continued to work and study abroad toward experiences with multitudes of performative practices, mediums and expressions. He holds a BA in acting from Norwegian Theatre Academy (2015-2018) and finished his MA SODA program at HZT Berlin (2019-2021). Interested in body politics and its resonances across practices of movement and within the performative domains, he works through text, dances and choreographies. Recent works include Everything Round is the Earth (2017), Passages (2018) and Public Dance, Permutable Stage (2021). As a performer he has worked and studied with artists and companies such as Anders Paulin, Mette Ingvartsen, Nature Theatre of Oklahoma, Kasper Ravnhøj, CocoRosie and Phillip Zarrilli among others. He currently lives and works in Berlin.

Hooman Sharifi is a Norwegian choreographer with Iranian roots. His dance career started with hip-hop in his teenage years and he went on to study classical and modern ballet in his twenties. He graduated in choreography at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts, and is particularly interested in the artistic expression found in the intersection between dance, theatre and graphic art. In 2000, he established his own company, Impure Company, which specializes in highlighting civic engagement and politics in its art. Sharifi became artistic director of Carte Blanche in 2014 and remained in that role until August 2018. His first work for Carte Blanche was Shadows Remain Silent, which premiered in Norway on the main stage of the Oslo Opera House in January 2014. The Arctic Arts Festival in 2017 saw the world premiere of Hooman Sharifi’s second production for Carte Blanche: While They are Floating. In 2018, Sharifi and Carte Blanche presented the productions Get Lost by the German choreographer Pieter Ampe and the visually arresting production Soufflette by the French choreographer François Chaignaud, which was performed at Dansens Hus to great success in October 2018, plus a number of other venues.

Performer, choreographer, author, theatre director and scholar/researcher/lecturer. Fellow of the Centre for Theatre of the Oppressed (Rio de Janeiro, 2003), Alumni of the arts management program at John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts (Washington DC, USA, 2004), S. Fischer guest professor for comparative literature (FU/Berlin 2004-2005), guest lecturer/Ford associate at Mount Holyoke College, theatre department (USA, 2005), founder of The Nation-wide Egyptian Project for Theatre of the Oppressed and its Arab network (Lebanon, Sudan & Morocco), fellow of the Academy of the Arts of the World (Cologne, 2015), fellow of the International Research Centre for Interweaving Performance Cultures (FU/Berlin, 2015-2016), Valeska-Gert guest professor for dance sciences (FU/Berlin, 2018), visiting lecturer at the department of cultural policy (Hildesheim university, 2018), visiting lecturer at the ZZT (Zentrum für Zeitgenössischen Tanz, Hochschule für Musik und Tanz, Köln, 2020), workshop instructor at Tanzfabrik “UnlOcking” and “Re-Rooting” (2019-2020-2021), at Berlin Mondiale (Wasserwerk program, 2020-2021), Sasha Waltz & Guest (2022) and Mentor/expert at PAP (Performing Arts Program/Berlin-LAFT) and Flausen+bundesnetzwerk program. Member of the scientific committee of the Barba Varley Foundation, Performing Tangiers conference and festival, main curator of the symposium on Access#Diversity by Dachverband Tanz Deutschland 2021, co-curator of Burning Issues symposium “Performing Arts & Equity” by Save the World, in cooperation with Theater Treffen, Akademie der Künste & ITI Deutschland (2022). Former member of the steering group for a Berlin Dance Mediation Centre. Currently board member of the German Centre of the International Theatre Institute, and co-manager of Offensive Tanz für Junges Publikum.

Founder and artistic director of Lamusica Independent Theatre Group (2000, Egypt) where she directed, choreographed and produced forty productions of dance, theatre and music. Resident of Berlin since 2015, where she presented several dance and theatre pieces of her creation, i.e. Migrating the Feminine (Pauline Kirche, Göttingen, 2020), Tracings (Vierte Welt, 2019), Infiltration (Haus der Statistik, 2019), Rite of Revival (Maxim Gorki Theater, Studio Я, 2018), Earthport (Vierte Welt, 2017-2016). Author of the acclaimed “Migrating the Feminine” in Arabic, English and German (MSB, Matthes & Seitz, Berlin 2018) on the transgressions of female physicality in the public sphere. Her latest publication is “Dance of the Persecuted” (MSB, Matthes & Seitz, 2021), a feminist perspective into decolonizing the history of the so-called belly dance while connecting it to colonially, patriarchy and capitalism. 

Adham Hafez is a choreographer, curator, theorist, and historian. His work encompasses postcolonial studies, the Anthropocene and performance, politics of choreography, Arab art history, knowledge production, and climate change. As an artist and a theorist his work has been presented internationally at world renowned venues including Hebbel Am Ufer, Cairo Opera House, MoMA PS1, Sharjah Architecture Triennial, Damascus Opera House, La Mama Theatre, among others. He publishes essays and texts in Arabic, English and French, and he is the founder of HaRaKa Platform, the first Arab platform dedicated to performance studies and choreography, that was established over 15 years ago. He is also the founder of the publication Cairography that translates and publishes essays on dance, performance, politics, and choreography from and about the Arabic speaking region. Adham Hafez has received multiple awards for his work, including First Prize for Choreography, and Cultural Entrepreneur of the Year. He is a graduate of New York University, SciencePo Paris, Amsterdam University of the Arts, and Cairo Opera House. Based in Berlin and New York, Adham Hafez is launching this year the first festival dedicated to Arab arts in New York, the New York Arab Festival, as well as co-producing CANONS in Berlin, a unique project dedicated to question canons and aesthetic justice from the perspective of migration.

www.adhamhafez.co
www.harakaplatform.com
www.wizara.io

Upholding the emergence of thoughts from the lived-body experience motivates the creative research of Kâmnoush Khosrovani. Dance and somatics practitioner and educator, she is writing her doctorate thesis (École Pratique des Hautes Études) on dance anthropology, on the dynamics of (in)visibility present in soufi dancing practice in Iran and explores this distant ritualised field as a way to reflect on her dance making practice. In a more general framework, she explores the danse as a multi-sensory learning situation, embedded in practitioners’ cultural perception and expressed through diverse embodied modalities.

Raha Nejad started dancing at the age of five.  Soon she discovered her passion for Urban Dance, Latin & JazzFunk. After playing violin and saxophone for many years, she decided to become a professional dancer and choreographer at the age of 16. Since then she has performed on stage with artists such as Katy Perry, Pink, Keri Hilson and toured Europe supporting Beyoncé. She also collaborated with Sean Cheesman, Michael Jackson’s choreographer and dancer, for a Canadian TV show. Raha’s talent is most evident in her variety of dance styles. She refines and expands these at Battles and in theater productions. In her own piece PERSIAN HAIR she performs as a soloist. In collaboration with Christoph Hagel she choreographed Carmina Burana and Die Zauberflöte. For several years she has been working as a teacher for the dance school Flying Steps Academy in Berlin.