Red Eye presents the 2026 edition of the Red Eye Festival, formerly known as the New Works 4 Weeks Festival: an annual gathering for live performance works that respond to the current moment and imagine collective transformation. Each year, artist cohorts engage in peer exchange, mutual support, and dialogue around creative process that culminates in this public sharing. Over nearly four decades, this incubator of new work has become a cornerstone of the Twin Cities performance landscape.
Leila Awadallah: INTIFADA INCANTATION — an experiment in wielding ripples of vibration
A group of performers are joined by a self-playing instrument that drones and shifts based on the vibrations in the floor and air. A work activated by specific bodies, tethered ancestrally to Palestine, and tethered viscerally to the ruptures ongoing. Asking; how do we enact a series of experiments and incantations; attuning to the ripples and attempting to wield them towards the shapes of intifada near and far (words inspired by June Jordan: Intifada Incantation: Poem #8 for b.b.L.). Each evening’s offering this weekend will be unrepeatable and accumulate in gesture, tremor: a compositional argument within the infrastructures of uprising. Created and performed by Leila Awadallah, Noelle Awadallah, Mette Loulou von Kohl, and Zaquia Mahler Salinas.
انتفاضة – to shake off, tremor, uprising
Leila Awadallah is a dancer, choreographer, and community collaborator based in Minneapolis and sometimes Beirut. She is the Artistic Director of Body Watani Dance with her sister Noelle Awadallah; a project that centers Palestine, a body-as-homeland practice, a site for improvisational inquiry and folk-rooted experimentations of SWANA dance forms. Leila is wielding her energy towards cultural intifada on multiple fronts, and asks you to join her in the long middle of the revolution to liberate Palestine and demand landback/the right to return.
Performance Schedule:
- Thursday, June 11 at 7:00pm — requires masks and offers a discount to our Elders 70+
Work-in-progress sharing 1: First Tremor – Opening Invitation/Open Questions
- Friday, June 12 at 7:00pm – ASL interpretation included, post-performance engagement
Work-in-progress sharing 2: Accumulation Tremor – Continuum and New Questions
- Saturday, June 13 from 5:00-9:00pm
Durational Tremor – a work-in-progress durational performance experiment (a durational study/continuums in the making an offering that builds as it unfolds). Audiences are invited to enter at 5:00pm and build the continuum, or arrive at 7:00pm into what has already begun.
Pay as you wish, suggested $18-80. If cost is a barrier, please email communications@redeyetheater.org for discount ticket options. No one will be turned away for lack of funds. A pass to every event this weekend is $30.
Additional Accessibility Information: Red Eye’s space is fully wheelchair-accessible. Masks are highly encouraged. Some events require masking and masks will be available at the venue if you don’t bring your own. Please only attend if you are feeling well, and if not, we are happy to change your tickets to a different day at no charge.
Photo credit: Houssam Mchaimech