Dienstag, 19 Mai, 2026 - 10:00

All the rivers residency III: where writing begins, a dance begins too

Hazem Saleh
Kenda Hmeidan
Nowar Yusuf
Mohamad Al Rashi
Amal Omran

please note: a public sharing will follow August 2026

This residency engages with a corpus of articles written by women and LGBTQ+ individuals from the Arab world, with a particular focus on Syria between 2012 and 2024. Within these texts, the body is approached not simply as a theme, but as a central site of lived experience, political inscription, and knowledge production.

Rather than treating these writings as purely literary material, the project works with them as dramaturgical structures. Through collective reading, discussion, and embodied practice, the group traces the physical, affective, and rhythmic dimensions embedded within the texts, exploring how meaning can emerge through the body itself.

At the core of the process is the development of a “moving language”: a shared physical and vocal vocabulary that generates meaning beyond representation. This language is explored through dance and physical theatre practices, focusing on movement, rhythm, presence, and voice as primary carriers of meaning.

The residency is conceived as a horizontal and collective research environment, prioritizing exchange, shared authorship, and mutual learning. The group works through iterative processes of reading, improvisation, and composition, allowing the material to continuously shift between text and body.

The process culminates in the creation of a performative score in which the selected texts function as choreographic structures, guiding both movement and voice. The outcome is not a fixed performance but an evolving articulation of research—one that invites audiences to encounter these writings through presence, rhythm, and embodiment, opening a space for dialogue with the social and cultural context in which the work is situated.