past...present...periodic...
Leilawa (Leila Awadallah) (she/her) is a Palestinian American dancer, choreographer, film maker and interdisciplinary performance artist based in Minneapolis, Mni Sota Makoce (Dakota and Anishinaabe land) and Beirut, Lebanon. She is the Artistic Director and creator of Body Watani dance project in collaboration with her sister and creative partner Noelle Awadallah. Leila holds a BFA in Dance and a minor in Arabic Language and Literature from the University of Minnesota
BodyCartography Project (Olive Bieringa & Otto Ramstad) The mission of BodyCartography Project is to engage with the vital materiality of our bodies and minds to create live performance that facilitates a re-enchantment of embodiment, relationship, and presence. We create dance in urban, domestic, wild, and social landscapes. Our work is rooted in experimental dance, somatic and socially engaged practice. BodyCartography Project were the primary videographers for the ...in the space between project.
Yara Boustany (she/her) is a Beirut-based dance /theater performer and choreographer. After graduating in Audiovisual, she continued her studies in Dance and Circus in Spain and is currently doing her Masters in Choreography at Codarts University in Rotterdam. She is the founder of Amalgam Studio, a dance and theater space in Beirut, Lebanon. Her interdisciplinary work is a poetic approach to the dilemmas of the human being in a rapidly changing society - technologically, scientifically and philosophically. She uses imagination and improvisation as tools to unravel the hidden layers of existence. She has toured with her shows notably in Lebanon and Beirut, and also in Stuttgart, Ankara, Warsaw, London, Manchester, Liverpool, Chalon sur Saône and Athens. Her new piece “Noctilūca” (2021), is supported by AFAC (Arab Fund for Culture).
Brian Harris (he/him) is a multi-disciplinary artist whose creative explorations have included mixed media visual art, music,, video, music composition and performance, modern dance and performance art. He has a BFA in Visual Communication from Maryland Institute College of Art, and currently designs web and mobile content with the Mag 7 Collective. He has collaborated with Sharon Mansur as director of photography for the dance films variation on residue, and INSERT [coda] HERE.
Mike Munson (he/him) Having established himself as an adept slide guitar player, Mike Munson is steeped in the country blues tradition. His original works weave together dark lyrics, impossibly fast-paced finger-picking and grinding rhythms. Munson has built a body of work that blends his Midwestern home with his Mississippi travels. After releasing the single “Wheels” in early 2021, Munson began recording his sixth full-length album. Mike has appeared in two SHIFT~ performance salons and created original music for the ...in the space between dance film that premiered in 2018.
Tara Rodgers (she/her) is a composer, historian and critic of electronic music. She holds an MFA in Electronic Music from Mills College and a PhD in Communication Studies from McGill University. She has presented work at the Tate Modern, the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, on the Le Tigre Remix album, and in many other forums. She is the author of Pink Noises: Women on Electronic Music and Sound (Duke UP, 2010), a collection of interviews that won the 2011 Pauline Alderman Book Award from the International Alliance for Women in Music, and numerous essays on music, technology, and culture. She has taught at Dartmouth College, the University of Maryland, and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. She currently serves on the editorial board of Leonardo Music Journal. Tara created original music for the INSERT [ ] HERE performance/installation project and the INSERT[coda]HERE dance film.
Joanna Rotkin (she/her) I make dances and I teach dance classes. Both are focused on noticing the breath -- the inhale, the exhale, and the gaps in between.I'm curious about what emerges from that noticing. I'm curious to about stripping away notions of what dance is and starting from a place of not knowing anything. My work, in teaching and in performance, focuses on listening to each moment that emerges within the body, and then meeting that moment as it is, through movement and stillness.
Jo and Sharon intersect improvisationally and through an ongoing creative dialogue, and recently reconnected during the 2022 Frozen River Festival in Keoxa/Winona, MN.
Andrea Shaker (she/her) grew up in a small town in Connecticut on Quiripi lands. After earning her BA from Georgetown University and MFA from the University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign, she moved to Dakota and Annishaabe lands, where she is a professor of art at the College of St. Benedict | St. John’s University. Andrea’s creative work is interdisciplinary, spanning photography, moving image, experimental film, and written and spoken word. As an Arab American, she explores the spaces between home & homeland and migration & diaspora. Through image and word, her work addresses how these spaces, and the movement of the body within these spaces, are imagined and experienced through the physiology of intergenerational memory.
Sydney Swanson (she/her) is a dancer, photographer, dance filmmaker, and healing arts practitioner recently relocated to Rochester, MN. Winona had been her home for nearly half her life and the river town and its inhabitants continue to shape her consciousness and inspire her. In the last year and a half she has been redefining her relationship to art and healing arts and is curious how the two intersect, inform, and support each other. She is grateful for the many connections she has made and looks forward to the unfolding of these connections in her life. Most recently Sydney was the director of photography for the 1001 Arab Futures dance film and was a guest artist in the 2021 SHIFT~ performance salon series.
Leyya Mona Tawil (she/her) is an artist working with sound, performance, and hybrid transmissions. Tawil is a Syrian, Palestinian, American engaged in the world as such. Her 25-year record of performances have been presented in the US, Europe, Russia, and the Arab world. She is the director of TAC Temescal Art Center in Oakland-CA, and founder of Arab.AMP - a platform supporting futurist art and ideas from the SWANA diaspora, our region, and our allied BIPOC communities.
@leyyamona @arab.amp
Mette Loulou von Kohl (she/her) was born from the orange at the center before the new world came. She is a wanderer, performer and cultural worker. Currently living on un-ceded Lenape territory, now colonized as New York City. Mette Loulou is a queer femme, of Lebanese/Palestinian and Danish ancestry. She has lived in New York, Romania, Morocco, Denmark and England. Mette Loulou is fascinated by the intersection between her personal identities as a jumping off point to reveal, dismantle and rebuild realities and dreams. She grapples with her past to complicate and better understand her present. Mette Loulou weaves movement and words into the exploration of her embodied histories. She exists in two places at once.
woolen lover (they/them) is a queer witch mxther sound & movement artist living on the mississippi river. in 2016 they began developing their live-looping performances & have since recorded three albums. they have danced in pieces by Fischer Dance Company, Lisa Kusanagi, Erin Drummond, and Erinn Liebhard, & in 2020 created "the rituals we are searching for," their first solo sound & movement film. creating sound for 1001 Arab Futures combines their loves of interdisciplinary collaborations, inclusive & diverse movements, & site specific pieces. woolen lover strives to host & hold space that is braver, queerer, more inclusive, antiracist, honest, playful, & connected to the Earth. Find albums & happenings at: www.patreon.com/woolenlover
Angie Vo (she/her) was excited to reconnect with Sharon Mansur and collaborate on the imagery for 1001 Arab Futures. Her last work Objet de Desir Inaccessible (2019) was performed by Threads Dance Project/Karen L. Charles in the galleries of Mia, her collaboration with the company continues last November at the Cowles Center for the Arts with Out of the Ashes/Tapestries 5.0 and designing with Macalester College for their dance department. She resides in Minneapolis where she has her design space, practices intuitive healing in bodywork and enjoys traveling through cooking until she is actually able to book a flight to wherever life opens. Angie Vo is a first generation Vietnamese-American, artist and fellow wanderer. Her family arrived in the United States after the fall of Saigon in 1975, her roots have taken hold in Minnesota because she loves watching the passing of time with the four seasons. Her meandering career path has lead her to discover, expand and remain curious along with keeping an open heart.
Leilawa (Leila Awadallah) (she/her) is a Palestinian American dancer, choreographer, film maker and interdisciplinary performance artist based in Minneapolis, Mni Sota Makoce (Dakota and Anishinaabe land) and Beirut, Lebanon. She is the Artistic Director and creator of Body Watani dance project in collaboration with her sister and creative partner Noelle Awadallah. Leila holds a BFA in Dance and a minor in Arabic Language and Literature from the University of Minnesota
BodyCartography Project (Olive Bieringa & Otto Ramstad) The mission of BodyCartography Project is to engage with the vital materiality of our bodies and minds to create live performance that facilitates a re-enchantment of embodiment, relationship, and presence. We create dance in urban, domestic, wild, and social landscapes. Our work is rooted in experimental dance, somatic and socially engaged practice. BodyCartography Project were the primary videographers for the ...in the space between project.
Yara Boustany (she/her) is a Beirut-based dance /theater performer and choreographer. After graduating in Audiovisual, she continued her studies in Dance and Circus in Spain and is currently doing her Masters in Choreography at Codarts University in Rotterdam. She is the founder of Amalgam Studio, a dance and theater space in Beirut, Lebanon. Her interdisciplinary work is a poetic approach to the dilemmas of the human being in a rapidly changing society - technologically, scientifically and philosophically. She uses imagination and improvisation as tools to unravel the hidden layers of existence. She has toured with her shows notably in Lebanon and Beirut, and also in Stuttgart, Ankara, Warsaw, London, Manchester, Liverpool, Chalon sur Saône and Athens. Her new piece “Noctilūca” (2021), is supported by AFAC (Arab Fund for Culture).
Brian Harris (he/him) is a multi-disciplinary artist whose creative explorations have included mixed media visual art, music,, video, music composition and performance, modern dance and performance art. He has a BFA in Visual Communication from Maryland Institute College of Art, and currently designs web and mobile content with the Mag 7 Collective. He has collaborated with Sharon Mansur as director of photography for the dance films variation on residue, and INSERT [coda] HERE.
Mike Munson (he/him) Having established himself as an adept slide guitar player, Mike Munson is steeped in the country blues tradition. His original works weave together dark lyrics, impossibly fast-paced finger-picking and grinding rhythms. Munson has built a body of work that blends his Midwestern home with his Mississippi travels. After releasing the single “Wheels” in early 2021, Munson began recording his sixth full-length album. Mike has appeared in two SHIFT~ performance salons and created original music for the ...in the space between dance film that premiered in 2018.
Tara Rodgers (she/her) is a composer, historian and critic of electronic music. She holds an MFA in Electronic Music from Mills College and a PhD in Communication Studies from McGill University. She has presented work at the Tate Modern, the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, on the Le Tigre Remix album, and in many other forums. She is the author of Pink Noises: Women on Electronic Music and Sound (Duke UP, 2010), a collection of interviews that won the 2011 Pauline Alderman Book Award from the International Alliance for Women in Music, and numerous essays on music, technology, and culture. She has taught at Dartmouth College, the University of Maryland, and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. She currently serves on the editorial board of Leonardo Music Journal. Tara created original music for the INSERT [ ] HERE performance/installation project and the INSERT[coda]HERE dance film.
Joanna Rotkin (she/her) I make dances and I teach dance classes. Both are focused on noticing the breath -- the inhale, the exhale, and the gaps in between.I'm curious about what emerges from that noticing. I'm curious to about stripping away notions of what dance is and starting from a place of not knowing anything. My work, in teaching and in performance, focuses on listening to each moment that emerges within the body, and then meeting that moment as it is, through movement and stillness.
Jo and Sharon intersect improvisationally and through an ongoing creative dialogue, and recently reconnected during the 2022 Frozen River Festival in Keoxa/Winona, MN.
Andrea Shaker (she/her) grew up in a small town in Connecticut on Quiripi lands. After earning her BA from Georgetown University and MFA from the University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign, she moved to Dakota and Annishaabe lands, where she is a professor of art at the College of St. Benedict | St. John’s University. Andrea’s creative work is interdisciplinary, spanning photography, moving image, experimental film, and written and spoken word. As an Arab American, she explores the spaces between home & homeland and migration & diaspora. Through image and word, her work addresses how these spaces, and the movement of the body within these spaces, are imagined and experienced through the physiology of intergenerational memory.
Sydney Swanson (she/her) is a dancer, photographer, dance filmmaker, and healing arts practitioner recently relocated to Rochester, MN. Winona had been her home for nearly half her life and the river town and its inhabitants continue to shape her consciousness and inspire her. In the last year and a half she has been redefining her relationship to art and healing arts and is curious how the two intersect, inform, and support each other. She is grateful for the many connections she has made and looks forward to the unfolding of these connections in her life. Most recently Sydney was the director of photography for the 1001 Arab Futures dance film and was a guest artist in the 2021 SHIFT~ performance salon series.
Leyya Mona Tawil (she/her) is an artist working with sound, performance, and hybrid transmissions. Tawil is a Syrian, Palestinian, American engaged in the world as such. Her 25-year record of performances have been presented in the US, Europe, Russia, and the Arab world. She is the director of TAC Temescal Art Center in Oakland-CA, and founder of Arab.AMP - a platform supporting futurist art and ideas from the SWANA diaspora, our region, and our allied BIPOC communities.
@leyyamona @arab.amp
Mette Loulou von Kohl (she/her) was born from the orange at the center before the new world came. She is a wanderer, performer and cultural worker. Currently living on un-ceded Lenape territory, now colonized as New York City. Mette Loulou is a queer femme, of Lebanese/Palestinian and Danish ancestry. She has lived in New York, Romania, Morocco, Denmark and England. Mette Loulou is fascinated by the intersection between her personal identities as a jumping off point to reveal, dismantle and rebuild realities and dreams. She grapples with her past to complicate and better understand her present. Mette Loulou weaves movement and words into the exploration of her embodied histories. She exists in two places at once.
woolen lover (they/them) is a queer witch mxther sound & movement artist living on the mississippi river. in 2016 they began developing their live-looping performances & have since recorded three albums. they have danced in pieces by Fischer Dance Company, Lisa Kusanagi, Erin Drummond, and Erinn Liebhard, & in 2020 created "the rituals we are searching for," their first solo sound & movement film. creating sound for 1001 Arab Futures combines their loves of interdisciplinary collaborations, inclusive & diverse movements, & site specific pieces. woolen lover strives to host & hold space that is braver, queerer, more inclusive, antiracist, honest, playful, & connected to the Earth. Find albums & happenings at: www.patreon.com/woolenlover
Angie Vo (she/her) was excited to reconnect with Sharon Mansur and collaborate on the imagery for 1001 Arab Futures. Her last work Objet de Desir Inaccessible (2019) was performed by Threads Dance Project/Karen L. Charles in the galleries of Mia, her collaboration with the company continues last November at the Cowles Center for the Arts with Out of the Ashes/Tapestries 5.0 and designing with Macalester College for their dance department. She resides in Minneapolis where she has her design space, practices intuitive healing in bodywork and enjoys traveling through cooking until she is actually able to book a flight to wherever life opens. Angie Vo is a first generation Vietnamese-American, artist and fellow wanderer. Her family arrived in the United States after the fall of Saigon in 1975, her roots have taken hold in Minnesota because she loves watching the passing of time with the four seasons. Her meandering career path has lead her to discover, expand and remain curious along with keeping an open heart.
