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Event details

Claiming the Narrative–Adventures in Arab Experimentalism
A performance based on a day-long workshop
By dance artist Leyya Mona Tawil
with R Abusahan, Salah Fattah, Taous Khazem, Khaldoun Samman, and Jordan Thompson

Saturday April 23 2016

5 pm: Performance
6 pm: Mizna Artists Talk with Leyya Tawil, Taous Khazem, Moheb Soliman

Interested in participating in a workshop led by Leyya? It starts at 10:30 am!

At Bedlam Lowertown, 213 4th Street East, Saint Paul, Minnesota 55101

> $10 Attend performance & Mizna Artists Talk (food/drink available at Bedlam’s full service bar)
> $15 Participate in workshop & performance (lunch included with registration)

PUBLIC PERFORMANCE + MIZNA ARTISTS TALK with Leyya Tawil, Taous Khazem & Moheb Soliman
Come see the results of a day-long experimental workshop led by Leyya Tawil and involving local artists. Stay after to hear more from Leyya about her process and body of experimental dance and identity work, joined also by two other artists which Mizna has kicked off 2016 presenting: Taous Khazem with her one-woman show In Algeria They Know My Name, and Moheb Soliman with his interdisciplinary poetry project HOMES about the Great Lakes. All three will be in attendance, so it’s a perfect opportunity to have them talk about their diverse practices and invite a larger discussion from you about contemporary Arab American performance.

WORKSHOP DESCRIPTION
A multi-disciplinary workshop addressing identity and expression, designed for musicians, dancers, writers and artists of all media, led by concept artist Leyya Mona Tawil. Through writing, talking, guided movement and musical experiments, we will generate and accumulate records of our individualism within context of “culture.” Our frames will include Local/Diaspora, Renegade/Quiet, and Historic/Futuristic.

The work of each participant is self-determined based on their artistic form and level of experience. This day-long experiment only requires curiosity and community sharing. During the workshop, we will construct/compose a performance score that will be presented after the workshop at Bedlam Theatre.

Participants are invited but not required to participate in the public performance. The ritual of creation is the priority, and all our voices will be represented in some manner.

No experience necessary. Lunch provided!

ABOUT LEYYA MONA TAWIL
Leyya Mona Tawil (b. 1975, Detroit) is a conceptual artist working with dance and music practices. She is a Syrian-Palestinian-American engaged in the world as such. Her work has been presented in Russia, Canada and 13 countries throughout Europe and the Arab world, including the TransDance Festival (Cairo), BIPOD (Beirut), DOCK11 (Berlin), Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (San Francisco), Museum of Nonconformist Art (St. Petersburg), and the National Opera House of Syria (Damascus).

Tawil has articulated and honed an approach to experimental performance based on conceptual scoring and location-based variables. She has discussed this process with author Linda Weintraub for Movement Research’s Critical Correspondence; as well as interviews with NEA Art Talks and Art Territories (Ramallah). Tawil holds degrees from the University of Michigan (BDA) and Mills College (MFA). She has served as dance faculty at Middlebury College (VT), UM-Ann Arbor and the University of San Francisco. Tawil recently authored an essay for Detroit Research, a new journal of artistic research, titled “We place ourselves: the social choreography of Arab Experimentalism.” She has presented her research on the topic at Middlebury College (VT), DIWAN: Forum for the Arts (MI) and NYU Tisch School of the Arts–Performance Studies Lecture Series. www.danceelixirlive.org