Detailed Schedule

Through choreographies, this piece asks our bodies: How to unravel the ‘stuckedness’ that builds up and sinks deep under our skin? What grief exists at the moment of departure and which bone does it shake? Where are the songs of our ancestors stored, and how might we listen to their rhythm? What life giving connections can we find, of this earth and of the mythical realm? What is the memory of the sea?

This work began in a solo residency at the Arab American National Museum in September of 2020. After 2.5 years of process and collaborations that took place on Turtle Island, Lebanon, and Sicily, with artists across disciplines and places, we will return for a residency that will culminate in sharing the performance TERRANEA hakawatia of the sea on April 28th, 2023 at the Arab American National Museum.

Performance by Body Watani Dance Project; choreographed by Leila and Noelle Awadallah in collaboration with the dancers / performers Nakita Kirchner, Sharitah Nalule, Erica Jo Vibar Sherwood, and Emma Marlar. Thanks to our guest performers who joined us for this tour:

Collaborators: Original music by Renee Copeland and collaborator Peter James Roduta featuring vocalist Amal Kaawash and Clarissa Bitar. Mythology of Terranea written by Romy Lynn Attieh, translated by Rana Issa, and read by Wafika Loubani. Farrah Basyouni, and Leila Awadallah. Film by Leila Awadallah with assistance from Xiaolu Wang. Images by Zaynab Mourad. ARTIST BIOS Leila Awadallah is a dancer, choreographer, and film wanderer based between Minneapolis, Mni Sota and Beirut, Lebanon. She is Palestinian and Sicilian mixed Mediterranean diasporic body born on indigenous lands of the Lakota and Dakota peoples (SD). She is the founder of the Body Watani dance project in collaboration with Noelle Awadallah. Leila is a McKnight Dancer Fellow (2022), a Jerome Hill Fellow (2021-2023), and received Springboard 20/20 (2018-2019) and Daring Dances (2019) fellowships. Mentored by Ananya Chatterjea, she trained, taught and performed with Ananya Dance Theatre (2013-2019). She has a BFA in Dance and minor in Arabic Literature from the University of Minnesota (2016). Noelle Awadallah نوال is a Palestinian American improviser, performer, maker, and teacher who resides in Mni Sota Makoce. She joined Ananya Dance Theatre as a company member in 2019 and is a partner in leilawa’s Body Watani. Her work circles themes of transcendence of time, ancestor imaginings, listening, falling into stereotypes, and storytelling. Improvisational practices guide her movement generating as an honest way to dig and share stories recollected and reimagined from her body rooted in radical imagination of the senses. She dabbles in experimental short films as another form of storytelling. She holds a BFA from Columbia College Chicago (2018).