Words Words Words a MARSM organised event featuring Palestinian artists billed as a celebration of "the power of words and meaning," took place this Friday at Richmix. The performers were two spoken word artists, Farah Chamma and Dana Dajani, and musician Jowan Safadi, making his UK debut. Rafeef Ziadah, herself a spoken-word artist, was going to host … Continue reading Words, Words, Words
Category: Performance Art
Yesterday I went to see Sarab by Palestinian Circus School, part of the CircusFest at Jackson Lane. The show is a piece of circus theatre that ”shares with us the plight of refugees worldwide. The seven Palestinian performers use Chinese pole, juggling and acrobatics to reflect on their own history and the repetition of it … Continue reading Sarab by the Palestinian Circus School
Omar Hamdi's comedy special "Sticks and Stones" was filmed tonight at the Rich Mix. This meant, among other things, that Hamdi's grand entrance was recorded again at the end, along with several jokes the comedian had skipped over during the actual show, but the audience was still whooping and clapping and full of good will … Continue reading Omar Hamdi, “Sticks and Stones”
Listening to Cairokee's Keif (Fix) recently, I was reminded to look up another crowdfunded project from a couple of years ago -- this one on Mahragan music and dance. The project was first put up on the site back in 2014, the idea being to make a documentary on the Mahragan movement, focusing on the … Continue reading Mahragan Music
A series of events under the title "New Frontiers: Innovations in the Middle East" investigate what is "new" in the cultural scene in the Middle East, in the context of recent political changes in the region: The dissolution of Arab States. The rise of a murderous ISIS state. The collapse of Israeli/Palestinian Negotiations. The third … Continue reading New Frontiers: Innovations in the Middle East
The Delfina Foundation in London has launched an initiative to document the history of performance art from the Arab world.The foundation has launched a Kickstarter campaign in order to raise funds for the project (Staging History: performance art in the Arab world). The project will only be funded if at least £15,000 is pledged by … Continue reading Documenting Arab Performance Art
Lebanese American theater artist Andrea Assaf, founder of Art2Action, is spearheading a two year event series at The University of South Florida under the title THIS Bridge: Arab, Middle Eastern & Muslim Artists, a series "that speaks to what it means to be Arabic or Islamic in today’s society — with an emphasis on women who are either … Continue reading THIS Bridge: Arab, Middle Eastern & Muslim Artists
David Schembri interviews Moroccan "cultural activist and consultant" Khadija El Bennaoui on art, politics, and activism in a region defined by unrest. El Bennaoui will be a speaker at the first annual Euro-Med International Conference on Cultural Relations, being held at the University of Malta Valletta campus on 4-5 September. An indication of her busy … Continue reading Khadija El Bennaoui on Art and Activism
Arab Hyphen 