Dancing Stories From Home

Body Watani Dance Project will share a performance followed by a workshop that invites participants to both observe and actively engage in learning how stories of home are expressed through movement. 

Watani (وطني), meaning “my homeland” in Arabic, describes the creative process of sister collaborators Leila and Noelle Awadallah, who create dances emerging from ancestral and lived experiences as Palestinians born on Dakota land. 

Their work asks: If our body is our homeland, how do we dance the stories within? How do we connect to the stories of the land beneath our dancing feet and the community surrounding us?

Part 1 (30 minutes)

Body Watani Dance Project performs an excerpt from After the Last Red Sky, followed by a brief conversation with the audience. This excerpt includes a section titled Mapping the Sky, in which the performers imagine healing the Palestinian sky from bombs and calling the stars back after they have fled. The performance then transitions into Dabke, a traditional folk dance that evokes a celebratory return to life while defending sky and land from harm.

Part 2 (30 minutes)

Leila and Noelle invite audience members to participate in a movement workshop focused on two elements of the Body Watani creative practice:

1. Guiding participants to develop movements that express their own personal sense of “home.”
2. Learning steps from Dabke, a communal Palestinian folk dance.

This performance and workshop are designed for all ages and abilities! Ahlan wa sahlan أَهْلًا وَسَهْلًا all are welcome all to join in dancing stories of home!