Sea nonna, see teta (2022)
“When asked to share something for a hybrid performance, I decided to share a window into the process of improvising, writing, and reflecting on what personal findings are revealed to me inside Body Watani's practice. I have been engaging with this work for the past few years, often filming only to record a record (so this presentation is simply, that). Ongoing ruminations of what I learn from embodied research beside the Mediterranean Sea, where my body born from lineages of Palestinian and Sicilian tetas and nonnas feels the strongest sense of home. And beyond my own body, into the collective memory, and ongoing forces present within that space, in terms of movement, migration, and home searching.”
Sea Nonna See Teta premiered at the Brava Theater in San Francisco, AND virtually (2022). Curated and presented by Golden Thread Productions. Sea Nonna See Teta was screened at the Walker Art Center (MN) and Swiss Institute (NY) in Shen Xin’s curation: The Constant Unknown (2022)
Leila Awadallah is a fiscal year 2021 recipient of a Creative Support for Individuals grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board. This activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund.
my fourteenth grandmother (2022)
Trailer. Full film available upon request.
There was a study done on roundworms, that proved they remembered a learned, environmental trait for 14 generations.
This film calls on intuitions and memories of human and water bodies that engage their grandmothers 14 generations back through imagined embodied evidences found in movement. Searching across fragments that emerge while submerged in underwater portraits. Ghosts that speak through reflections on the water’s surface.
Performers: Noelle Awadallah, Alexandra Eady, Nakita Kirchner, Sharitah Nalule
Music: Renée Copeland
Filming & Editing: Leila Awadallah
My Fourteenth Grandmother was created through the Creative Individual’s grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board (2021). It was premiered at the Trylon Theater in Minneapolis, MN (2022), and then presented at the Outlet Dance Project Festival (New Jersey 2022) and in the Pinky Finger Press online journal (2023).
CLOSE (2021)
A film collaboration between Hiponymous and Leila Awadallah with original score by Renée Copeland. For more information, visit Hiponymous - CLOSE.
More info
What does body k/now (2020)
A film study created and performed by Leila Awadallah with an original score by Yummm. Curated and presented by Skewed Visions / cubicle 3 series.
"What Does Body K/Now" is a gathering of footages taken from February 2020 to February 2021. Each video was originally intended to only serve as archival research during different artistic residencies (institutional and self-created) over the past year. This film attempts to make a broken choreography out of the improvisations, the contexts defining the moment, the soul of places; choosing the clips based on the intensity of memories formed from either the surroundings of that time / place or what emotional horcruxes are hidden in the scene. I am asking, searching inside the footage for the answer to the question: what does my body know now -- after all of this? What do OUR bodies know now, after this? A 'this' that is unstable, unbound, and unique to each of us.
go get your thoughts (2020)
3WADALLAHS is a sub-project of Body Watani which features original music of Jamal Awadallah, culminating in a three sibling collaboration. The work conceptually explores questions around glacial melt, running water, and water poisoned by pipelines. Juxtaposed by it’s framing within a contemporary, experimental context where two Palestinian bodies flow across the unique architectural terrain of the famous venue, empty during the global pandemic.
This work was presented through the Great Northern Festival (2021) and commissioned through the Arab Arts platform: MIZNA. This dance was created specifically for live-streaming performance from First Ave.
Filmed and edited by Ryan Melling.
Green: an uprising, an intifada (2020)
A film by LeilAwa in collaboration with performers Noelle Awadallah, Alex Eady, Sharitah Nalule. Created and supported by Disco Riot's dance film series: Move American . Composer Jamal Awadallah. Design and translation by Zaynab Mourad. Filming by: Leila Awadallah, Jamal Awadallah and Mat Lochner.
SCREENINGS:
Move American - online series (2020)
Move American: Disco Riot + Arab American National Museum presents (2020)
A dream-like meditation on CLEARING SPACE, CLEARING THE BODY from invasive toxic greens, and breathing into the greens of healing. Emerging from the historic and present vines weaving Palestinian and Black solidarity, we channel rage, ancestors, and peace; through dance we deepen our witnessing and listening to one another. The military and state violences we / our relatives face on Occupied Turtle Island and Occupied Palestine are persistent in our daily lives. This dance is born out of listening and learning from histories and our surroundings. We learn again and again… We learn from MPD150, a grassroots evaluation of policing in Minneapolis that documents 150 years of police brutality, what a police-free Minneapolis could look like. We learn that Minneapolis police participate in training on stolen Palestinian land that equates innocent civilians to terrorist. We learn that the state has an agenda against our bodies. We learn that this administration / American empire will continue funding and supporting the illegal apartheid on indigenous Palestinian land and produce propoganda about the ‘ only democracy in the Middle East’ where Palestinians are murdered and imprisoned daily. We learn that this administration / American empire will continue failing to enact justice against the police who murder without consequence and that Black bodies face 500 years of discrimination, mass incarceration, and racially motivated violence. We learn that with no justice there is no peace. We learn, we learn, we learn... To clear space. Witness. Listen. We learn that our collective resistance is facing a harsher backlash, and this teaches us that it is working. A threat, growing like a vine, crawling out and up and all over, all at once. So let us go into green, healing, dreaming, screaming, breathing. Release, re-root, reconnect, and continue to dismantle the beast from underneath. All of us, ancestors of past and future. We.
THE DISTANCE DANCE FILM (2020)
Created by Leila Awadallah as artist-in-residence at the Arab American National Museum.
Dancing across Covid. From homes to forests. A virtual gathering artificially choreographed across time, space, video, and bodies. A celebration of together apartness.
Distance Dance film by leilawa
Music: Hello Psychaleppo
Dancers: D. Allen, Mary Barghout, Fei Bi Chan, Renee Copeland, Matthew Daher, Ayana Dubose, Brian J Evans, Julia Gay, donia salem harhoor, Lulu, Tammy Kosco, Karen Krolak, Liam McLaughlin, nathaniel moore...with guest surprise from Julia Rubies Subiros, Amelia Morris, Zaynab Mourad, Ranym Nenneh, Alys Ayumi Ogura, Laura Osterhaus Rosenstone, Andrea (Chakar) Shaker, Erin D Thompson, Chitra Vairavan, Laura Selle Virtucio, Xiaolu Wang, Laichee Yang, Nicole Zizzi
SCREENINGS: Arab American National Museum + Disco Riot (online 2020)
an uncapitolized watan (2018)
Created and performed by Leila and Noelle Awadallah
Where do ancestral roots live; do they criss cross like a braid through your spine? Flickering visions you think you’ve seen before... Awaken. The retraumatizing forces pull again on guts as violence returns on screens. Ancestral cells shaking, from generations of lives under occupation - lives that that led to you. Where is home in the body and where is home in the land? Searching for an uncapitolized watan.
Filming, editing, and performance by: Leila and Noelle Awadallah // Sound: Jerusalem in My Heart // audio recordings by Leila Awadallah
Screenings: Video Variant 2019 - MIZNA: Arab Film Festival 2018 - Inbox at the Artbox 2018 - Media Days 2018
reflections on ice: climate change in peru (2016)
reflections on ice: climate change in peru is a piece created in response to what I learned while living in the Peruvian Andes and rainforests. This piece emerged from three interconnected ideas. First: the reality Peru is facing as glaciers have begun melting faster. Glacier run off from the mountains is the main source of fresh water in Peru and once the glaciers are gone, access to water will be / already is being threatened. Second, an Inkan story about the origin of corn shared by Valentin Quispe Huaman which reminds us of indigenous connection with land and agriculture; corn water, and sun. Third, it is a movement investigation of putting the act of melting into the body while reflecting on our dependence on water to sustain life, and our inevitable depletion without it.
SAGE AWARD: OUTSTANDING DESIGN 2016
Conceptualized, performed, edited and directed by: Leila Awadallah // Filmed by: Bridget Bennett // Oral story shared by: Valentine Quispe Huaman // Music: Straya
Screenings:
Dance Flicks 2016 - ACDA 2017 - Video Variant 2018
Vanishing Point
A collaboration with Leila Awadallah, Judith Howard, and Morgan Veldhuizen. Based on the poem Mona Lisa by Su Love.
Director: Judith Howard // Performer: Morgan Veldhuizen // Filming and Editing: Leila Awadallah // Sound by: Matmos, Jerusalem in My Heart, Bailey 26 Cogan // Commissioned: Su Love
Screenings:
Bryant Lake Bowl 2019 - University of MN Morris 2019 - Open Book 2019
Life Drawings
A dance film inspired by the poem Life Drawings by Su Love.
Choreographed & Directed: Becky Heist // Filmed & Edited: Leila Awadallah // Performed: Catlin Murphy and Jennifer Mack // Original Musical Composition: Mark Engelmann // Audio Recording: Alex Simpson // Sound Editing: Leila Awadallah // Costume Design: Greta Wenzel // Commissioned: Su Love
Screenings:
Bryant Lake Bowl 2019 - University of MN Morris 2019 - Open Book 2019
between us a fault line
Director: Christopher Watson // Animation and Editing: Leila Awadallah // Performers: Megan Bridges, Ryan Parent, John Surber, Anne-Marie Wittenberg // Music: Hilary James // Poems & Reading: Su Love // Commissioned: Su Love
Screenings:
Bryant Lake Bowl 2019 - University of MN Morris 2019 - Open Book 2019
Enough / خلص
ENOUGH / خلص is the darker, isolated moments of solitude where we are alone and have to try to comprehend… all of this. It is where one works slowly through pain, not just the pain of the most recent events, but once again takes in the weight of histories of pain. Once again, asking WHY? What to do with this sadness? With this rage? Because honestly, I (we) are just tired. I (we) are exhausted by this labor and want to shout ENOUGH. This phase of frustration is a regular visitor, but what comes of it? How can we continue healing to reenergize and stand up strong once again? And that is the impetus felt in the moment when I begin creating work.
film, movement, editing: Leila Awadallah // Sound by Shams Asma
Presented by: Weisman Art Museum https://wam.umn.edu/2016/11/07/enough/