2024 Movement Research Festival presents nasa4nasa
Company:
Movement Research
The Movement Research Festival returns with events happening over two weeks, February 28-March 9, 2024. The 2024 Festival is curated by Marýa Wethers, Director of the GPS/Global Practice Sharing Program at Movement Research, with a focus on the artists and partnerships developed through MR’s GPS MENA (Middle East and North Africa) Exchange Program. The Festival features performances at Movement Research at the Judson Church and Danspace Project, artist talks (GPS Chats and Studies Project), and movement workshops led by festival artists.
The program on Thursday, March 7, features nasa4nasa / Salma AbdelSalam & Noura Seif Hassanein (Egypt).
NO MERCY by nasa4nasa navigates their daily virtual and non-virtual modes of feelings. During this 45-minute DJ set, nasa4nasa explores the limits of sensuality and desire and its interplay with violence. The two female bodies navigate the gaze, referencing their repertoires of body image, pop, rage and intimacy. nasa4nasa will lure you in, disarm you and in the process unravel in their own drama.
nasa4nasa is a dance collective based in Cairo co-founded by dancers Noura Seif Hassanein and Salma AbdelSalam in 2016. Housed primarily on Instagram, the collective’s work explores image-making and online presence as their ongoing dance practice. nasa4nasa's debut performance SUASH premiered at Next Festival and MDT (2018), and was later performed in Maadi Sporting Club (2019), Impulstanz [8:tension] Young Choreographer Series (2019), and Festival de Marseille (2021). In February 2019, the duo performed their End of Times at Gypsum Gallery, later adapted for Movement Research at the Judson Church (2022). In addition, they exhibited a series of images, untitled, as part of the group exhibition “Codes of Coupling,” curated by Mahmoud Khaled (2019) at Gypsum Gallery. nasa4nasa participated in Gwangju Biennale’s Live Organs online commission with their work Promises b2b(2020). In 2021 they choreographed the playlist Jete out of the Window with the graduating students of the Place (London). In June 2022, nasa4nasa debuted NO MERCY in Rawabet Cairo, later performed as part of the DCaf festival (2022), Zuricher Theater Spektakel (2023), and Fondazione Fertinelli (2023). nasa4nasa is the recipient of the Arab Fund for Arts and Culture (2020), Mophradat’s Consortium Fund (2018), and the GPS Global Practice Sharing Residency at Movement Research (2022). They were most recently awarded the Arab Fund for Arts and Culture grant for their latest work Sham3edan (2023).
The GPS/Global Practice Sharing program provides a platform for the international exchange of ideas, processes, and reflective practices surrounding dance and movement-based forms between the U.S. and independent performing arts communities internationally. GPS posits that dialogue across differences necessarily catalyzes the generation of new knowledge and creative innovation. By investing in the mobility of artists, curators, and cultural workers, GPS advances cross-cultural understanding and the development of the contemporary arts field at large. Officially established in 2016, GPS consists of an informal network of partners currently supporting exchange projects in Eastern and Central Europe (ECE) and the Middle East and North Africa (MENA).
All Festival events are FREE and open to the public. Advance reservations required at: https://movementresearch.org/events/series/festival/
