Moving Practice is a weekly class series for professional dancers. Classes prioritize rigor, diversity of contemporary aesthetics, variety of class content, and commitment.
Noelle Awadallah teaches during October
Tuesdays, 10:00-11:30am
Professional level dancers of all styles are welcome.
Pre-register at https://www.arena-dances.org/the-arena/
Suggested $17 per class, but ARENA DANCES offers a pay-as-able option on all classes. We would rather you join us than not be able to attend due to financial limitations.
Body Watani (watani means homeland in Arabic) is both an improvisational movement practice and an emerging contemporary dance form developed by Leila Awadallah, a Palestinian American dancer. The practice is a container with soft edges where improvisational research guides practitioners into their personal ‘body watani’ through spending time with ancestries, contemplating our complex relations to land / water / home, and activating embodied memories into one’s own dancing. Body Watani also manifests as a contemporary form with roots in dances of Arabic / SWANA / Mediterranean lands through specific movement techniques, music of the region, and cultural / political content to engage with that deepens our relation to Body Watani’s context.
Noelle Awadallah نوال (she/hers) is a Palestinian American dancer, maker, and teacher who resides in Mni Sota Makoce. She currently dances with Ananya Dance Theatre, is a member of Slo Dance Company, and is a co-creator for Body Watani. Her work is framed by her blurry identity in all of its honesty and dislocation. Circling themes include transcendence of time, ancestor imaginings, listening, falling into stereotypes, and storytelling. Improvisational practices guide her movement generation as an honest way to dig and share stories recollected and reimagined from her body rooted in radical imagination of the senses. She holds a BFA from Columbia College Chicago (2018).