Moving Practice is a weekly class series for professional dancers. Classes prioritize rigor, diversity of contemporary aesthetics, variety of class content, and commitment.
Leila Awadallah teaches Moving Practice in February:
Tuesdays, 10:00-11:30am
Professional-level dancers of all styles are welcome.
Pre-register here.
Suggested $17 per class; however, there is a pay-as-able option on all classes – we would rather you join us than not be able to attend due to financial limitations.
Class description: Body Watani (“watani,” homeland in Arabic) is 1) an improvisational movement practice and 2) a space for experimental Arabic-rooted dance research developed by Leila Awadallah in collaboration with Noelle Awadallah.
The improvisation time is a container with soft edges, where participants are called into movement research through reflective prompts and somatic/collective tasks that guide practitioners into exploring the terrain of their personal ‘body watani’. The work is currently guided with particular intentions around relationships to land and water, ancestral contemplations, bodily archives, and communal weavings.
Movement materials inspired by Arabic dance forms such as Dabke, Baladi, and Raqs Sharqi invite participants to engage in the rhythmicalities of traditional/experimental/current Arabic music. This part of the Body Watani practice conjures physicality rooted in an offering of contemporary dance that locates within contexts of cultural, social, and political content of Palestine, Lebanon, and the greater SWANA region.
Leila Awadallah ليلى عوض الله (she/her) is a dancer, choreographer, and filmmaker based in Minneapolis and sometimes Beirut, Lebanon. Dancing with a body of Palestinian, Arab-American, Sicilian, and diasporic Mediterranean ways and waves. Born near the Thick Wooded River (Sioux Falls, SD) she moved to Minneapolis, Mni Sota (2012) to pursue a BFA in Dance at the University of Minnesota, and found home in the Twin Cities.
Leila is the Artistic Director of Body Watani Dance (body-as-homeland) project/practice in collaboration with Noelle Awadallah. She has received fellowships celebrating her performance, research in Arab-rooted contemporary dance, and choreographies: McKnight Dancer (2022), Jerome Hill (2021-2023), Daring Dances (2019) and Springboard 20/20 (2018). Her newest work, TERRANEA received support from National Performance Network, MSAB, Arab American National Museum, Links Hall, and Goethe Institute. Leila was a member of Ananya Dance Theatre (2014-2019) and the Kelvin Wailey trio (2015-2019). She lives and works part-time in Beirut where she’s a collaborator with Theater of Women of the Camp.