Movement Research Festival 2024: Sahar Damoni
Friday, March 8 | 7:30pm
Sahar Damoni (Palestine)
Eat Banana and Drink Pills
*RSVP is currently at capacity. We’ll take a waitlist at the door starting at 6:45pm!*
The Movement Research Festival returns for the first time since 2019 with events happening over two weeks in late February/early March 2024, including three evenings of performances at Danspace Project.
The 2024 festival is curated by Marýa Wethers, Director of the GPS/Global Practice Sharing program at Movement Research, with a focus on the artists and partnerships developed through the GPS MENA Exchange program since 2019. The Festival events will include GPS Chats, workshops, Movement Research at the Judson Church, Studies Project, and performances at Danspace Project.
The program on Friday, March 8, features Sahar Damoni (Palestine). Eat Banana and Drink Pills is a contemporary dance performance about abortion among single Arab Palestinian women. The work focuses on the physical and emotional experience, and the social dimensions for this experience. The work analyzes ramifications of this choice and the stigma, trauma, and social violence it carries.
“The traumatic moment engraved in the psyche is translated into an uninhibited immersion of the choreographer in the body, in a way that merges the past with the present into an unfiltered “now,” and only at the end does the understanding sharpen that this shared and exposed time with the audience holds the possibility of healing.” (Idit Suslik, Writer, The Contemporary Eye)
To read the Festival Curator’s Statement and for the full schedule of events please visit movementresearch.org
VIEW THE PERFORMANCE PROGRAM HERE
The GPS/Global Practice Sharing program provides a platform for the international exchange of ideas, processes and reflective practices surrounding dance and movement based forms between the U.S. and independent performing arts communities internationally. GPS posits that dialogue across differences necessarily catalyzes the generation of new knowledge and creative innovation. By investing in the mobility of artists, curators and cultural workers, GPS advances cross-cultural understanding and the development of the contemporary arts field at large. Officially established in 2016, GPS consists of an informal network of partners currently supporting exchange projects in Eastern and Central Europe (ECE) and the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) regions.
The GPS/Global Practice Sharing program is directed by Marýa Wethers and has received support from the Trust for Mutual Understanding and the Blanchette Hooker Rockefeller Fund.
Accessibility: Danspace Project is committed to increasing the accessibility of our space and programs. If our space or a particular event is not accessible to you for any reason, if you have accessibility questions or accessibility needs that haven’t been addressed, please email seta@danspaceproject.org.
Before you visit:
Accessibility at Danspace Project
Covid Safety at Danspace Project
Other performances
Movement Research, founded in 1978, is one of the world’s leading laboratories for the investigation of dance and movement-based forms. Valuing the individual artist, their creative process and their vital role within society, Movement Research is dedicated to the creation and implementation of free and low-cost programs that nurture and instigate discourse and experimentation. Movement Research strives to reflect the cultural, political and economic diversity of its moving community, including artists and audiences alike. movementresearch.org
Sahar Damoni is a Palestinian, Arab, Christian dancer, choreographer, and dance teacher from Shafa-amer in Galilee in the Middle East, whose body of work deals with the challenges she faces as a woman in an Arab and Palestinian society. Sahar holds a Bachelor of Dance and Movement for Practicing Teachers from Kibbutzim College of Education, Technology and Arts. She danced with the Kibbutz Contemporary Dance Company, and participated in many more projects concerning dance, choreography, Dramaturgy and acting in theatres with Directors abroad before she began making her own work. Her work has been presented around the globe: Movement Research at the Judson Church (NYC), Ramallah Contemporary Dance Festival, Internationale Solo-Tanz-Theater Festival Stuttgart, Echo Dance Festival of Northern Ireland, HANGARTFEST (Italy), Postsdame Tanztage (Germany), and Curtain Up, International Exposure and InitimaDance (Tel Aviv), among others. She has been invited to lecture about her work at Tel Aviv University, Sapir College, Kibbutzim College, Ben Gurion University, and University of the Arts, Philadelphia. In 2018 Sahar attended Ponderosa in Germany and participated in “Translucent Borders,” a project exploring ways that dancers and musicians act as catalysts for creative engagement across geographic, cultural, and economic borders, sponsored by New York University and Jacob’s Pillow. In 2019 Sahar was invited to participate in Un/Controlled Gestures, a seminar on dance and body politic, organized by the Goethe Institute, Morocco. She was invited by Movement Research, NYC, for a month-long residency and performance at Movement Research at the Judson Church as part of GPS/Global Practice Sharing. In 2020 Sahar performed in Virtual Performances including La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club, SATURDAY MORNING LIVE – Dead End | Tehran/Ankara/Palestine; and Festival de Danza Contemporánea, Mexico City and was chosen to take part i in the Dramaturgy Online Open Forumtook , Onassis Stegi Cultural Center. In 2021 , Sahar was commissioned to create a Sadim for Staatstheater Kassel in Germany. She participated in the IIAC Residency and Moving Arts Lab, NYC, 2022. In 2023 Sahar was part of the Deeper Lectures series by Gibney Dance Center in NYC, and at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf,and at Tanzhaus nrw Düsseldorf, Germany to lectured about her work. Lately Sahar had a residency for her new creation work at PACT Zollverein in Essen, Germany , South East Dance, Uk and at Fabrik Potsdam, Germany. In February 2024 Sahar will premiere her new creation ‘’Nawa’’ at the Holland Dance Festival in Den Hague, in Dresden, Germany, and in Sao Paulo, Brazil.