TERRANEA: hakawatia of the sea

Arab American National Museum, April 28, 2023 at 8:00PM
Dearborn, Michigan

TERRANEA: hakawati of the sea is a dance performance searching for memories inside diasporic bodies to reflect on notions of home while simultaneously asking -- what does the water of the Mediterranean Sea remember? In blurring researched realities and mythology-making, TERRANEA examines Palestinian experiences of occupation, refugee crisis (of land AND sea), and politics around movement and nation within this body of water; only to depart into dream. A sea spirit, Terranea, emerges as mother for those lost in waves,  — welcoming souls of migrants into a fluid and mythical shared space, world-making endeavors towards imagining a collective home.

Photos by Houssam Mchaimech courtesy of the Arab American National Museum

Choreographed by Leila & Noelle Awadallah
Our choreographic process is collaborative, with found movements and happenings that arise as we improvise together. Although Leila and Noelle Awadallah shape, guide and craft a majority of the movement sections of TERRANEA, we also celebrate the offerings of Nakita Kirchner, Emma Marlar, Sharitah Nalule and Erica Jo Vibar Sherwood as co-creators of sections of the work. 

BODY WATANI ARTISTS & INVOCATIONS:
Leila Awadallah ;
Tumbling across rolling waadis bursting with citrus, sunkissed & whispering to buried, bubbling wells
Noelle Awadallah ;
Child of the thick wooded river, surrounded by sabr on all sides
Nakita Kirchner ;
Tall Mountain Grandmothers who kiss sea and sky
Sharitah Nalule ;
Softens as the ripples of Victoria Nyanza fills the vessels of this longing
Emma Marlar ;
Steady curiosity of a land locked lake, big as an ocean, and the rocks that track time
Erica Jo Vibar Sherwood ;
nopal skeleton trunks eagle’s sky pattern banks of Wakpá Tháŋka

SECOND WAVE | GUEST PERFORMERS:
Biba Bell, Celia Benvenutti, Renée Copeland, bree gant, Elisandra Rosario, Marly Spieser-Schneider

ORIGINAL MUSIC
Lead Composer: Renée Copeland
From prairie-sweetened valley to salt-shimmered shorelines, resting lava, and always caves. 
Percussion + : Peter James Roduta
Raw-climed New England marsh, boat-laps on familial Skibbereen cow pebble beaches.
Vocalist & Musical Researcher: Amal Kaawash
Oud Instrumentalist: Clarissa Bitar
Sampled voices: songs by Simona Di Gregorio, Theatre of the Women of the Camp, Sanaa Moussa, Mariem Hassan
Recorded & Mixed by Renée Copeland
Vocals (of Amal) Recorded by Fadi Tabbal / Tunefork Studio

MYTHOLOGY OF TERRANEA
Co-Authored by Romy Lynn Attieh and Leila Awadallah
Editing and Final Written form: Romy Lynn Attieh
Translated by Rana Issa with input from Zaynab Mourad
Read in English: Leila Awadallah
Read in Arabic: Wafika Loubani & Farah Basyouni

PROJECTION / VIDEO / LIGHTING
Cinematography & Editing by Leila Awadallah
Underwater dance shoot accompanied by 2nd camera Xiaolu Wang
Lighting by: Chantel Gaidica

TERRANEA: hakawatia of the sea is a National Performance Network (NPN) Creation & Development Fund Project co-commissioned by Arab American National Museum and NPN. The Creation & Development Fund is supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts (a federal agency). To learn more, visit the NPN website.

artist bios below

PERFORMERS

Leila Awadallah ليلى عوض الله (she/her) Breathes in a body that moves, shakes, and teaches in Mni Sota Makoce and Lebanon. Dancing with roots that hold firmly to Palestine and softly to Sicily, born on Turtle Island, and living as an Arab American with mixed Mediterranean ways and waves. Raised near the Thick Wooded River (South Dakota) she moved to Minneapolis to pursue a BFA in Dance + Minor in Arabic Language and Literature at the University of Minnesota (2012). She was mentored by Dr. Ananya Chatterjea and performed with Ananya Dance Theatre for 5 seasons. Leila is a collaborator of Palestinian Women’s Theatre in Borj El-Barajneh refugee camp (Beirut). She is immersed in developing the Body Watani Dance practice as a means of exploring and questioning notions of ‘homeland’ in collective spaces with collaborators whose bodily experiences engage histories of migration, displacement, refugee realities, mixed identities and diasporic stories. Leila is a McKnight Dancer Fellow (2022), Jerome Hill Fellow (2021), Daring Dances Fellow (2019) and Springboard 20/20 Fellow (2018).

Noelle Awadallah  نوال  (she/her) is a Palestinian American dancer, choreographer, improviser, and teacher who resides in Mni Sota Makoce (Minneapolis, MN). Since 2019 she has performed and trained with Ananya Dance Theatre, she dances with Laura Osterhaus Rosenstone’s, Slo Dance Company, and she is the Co-Artistic Director of Body Watani Dance (body-as-homeland) project/practice in collaboration with Leila Awadallah. Her personal research is rooted in an improvisational movement practice exploring radical imagination of the senses, sacred play, ancestors as imagination, and memory puzzles. Constantly curious, and currently investigating future building framed by her blurry identity in all of its honesty and dislocation. 

Nakita Kirchner (she/her) is a movement artist blessed to have worked with Body Watani since 2021. Her perspective on sharing movement has radically shifted since working with the artists of Body Watani. She thanks those who support and witness this project. 

Emma Marlar is relearning her relationship to movement and dance. Though the connection never left, it has manifested in many different forms in recent years, often putting her more in the realms of witnessing and supporting. She is thrilled beyond belief to be back in her body, meeting herself anew and building back love and trust with her muscle memory. Body Watani has reminded her of the beauty and heartbreak of longing, the home in her body, and what it means to build deep love and intimacy within a group through shared research. With deep gratitude, she asks for more time for this.

Beyond the space created by Body Watani and the Awadallah sisters, Emma is currently excited about her work at RESOURCE, dancing in slo dance projects, and taking time to listen in, be true, and the magic that comes next.

Sharitah Nalule (she/her) is originally from Kamapla, Uganda and has been residing in Minneapolis, Mini sota for the last thirteen years. She received her BA in general psychology, and dance from the University of Minnesota in 2021. She had the opportunity to work and collaborate with incredible artists/thinkers, such as Diyah R. Larasati, Ananya Chatterjea, Uti Setyastuti, Eyin Pantja, Leah Nelson, Eko Supriyanto and many more. She began the collaboration process with Leila Awadallah, Noelle Awadallah and the Body Watani collective through ​​videography in 2020. She is extremely humbled to be part of this practice and work, as it has not only sparked her artistic embodiment, but at the same time aligned with her interests within a psychological and liberation framework which she hopes to further explore during her time in graduate school.

Erica Jo Vibar Sherwood (they/them) is a queer, mixed Midwest Mexiciliane (Chicane and Sicilian American) with several generations of family connection to Mnisota Mackoce.  A community trained dance artist, Erica Jo’s movement is deeply shaped by the teachings of Mexica-Nahuatl Danza (Kalpulli Yaocenoxtli and Kalpulli Huitzillin), the House and Street Dance scene of the Twin Cities and Ananya Dance Theatre. Their artistry is a practice of deep listening and telling stories about connection, queerness, ancestral wisdom and a deeper return to self.

second wave: Guest artists performing with Body watani
at the Arab american national Musem april 28th
biba bell
Celia Benvenutti
Renée Copeland
bree gant
Elisandra Rosario
Marly Spieser-Schneider

collaborators

Renée Copeland is a self-taught multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, and sound-score composer from Mni Sota. With her decade-long career as a dancer and choreographer, she loves supporting dance and storytelling through her sound designs. She premiered her first 90-minute composition for Ananya Dance Theatre in 2019. In 2020, she produced a 16-minute experimental dance film titled CLOSE with her performance duo, Hiponymous and Leila Awadallah. Their second film, BACK UP, premiered 2022 at Trylon Cinema in Minneapolis. She is a founding member and sound collaborator for BRKFST Dance Company since 2014, with whom she is nationally touring in collaboration with symphony orchestras. Copeland is the recipient of the 2018 McKnight fellowship for Dance, 2020 Artist Initiative Grant for Music, and 2021 American Composer’s Forum Create awardee. Copeland is a resident artist at the Space Upstairs in Pittsburgh and will premiere a live water-percussion performance with PJ Roduta titled Terra Bubo September, 2023. 

PJ Roduta - Percussionist/Dance Accompanist PJ is a Pittsburgh-based percussionist who trained with Professor Milford Graves in Tono-Rhythmology and Cardiac Rhythmology at Bennington College, and traditional Ghanaian music at U. of Ghana. He is a member of International Guild of Musicians in Dance, has accompanied dance classes for Point Park University's Conservatory of Performing Arts since 2007, and has been resident artist at The Space Upstairs since 2007. PJ completed the Mark Morris accompanist training program in Brooklyn and was awarded a grant-funded mentorship in minimalist composition, Aikido and Zen Meditation with ritual groove pianist Nik Baertsch in Zurich, Switzerland. PJ has musically-scored 17 professional dance/film work for U.S. dance companies from Pittsburgh, Dayton, Cleveland, NYC, Minneapolis, Houston, and Denver. PJ is drummer of the band Mai Khôi and The Dissidents, and founded his own polyrhythmic game-based trio Else Collective.

Romy Lynn Attieh is a text worker currently living between Beirut and a hard place. Her background in anthropology along with a developed practice in dance (and budding interest in drawing), are inseparable from her writing.