NISWA

Sharing: Friday May 9, 2025
from 2:00-4:00 PM in Studio C
at the Winchester Street Theatre Winchester Street Theatre , 80 Winchester Street, Toronto (VIEW MAP)

Accessibility Info: Unfortunately the Winchester Street Theatre is not currently wheelchair accessible. There are three steps outside of the front entrance, a small platform, and then three more steps to the lobby (a straight hallway that then leads you to the theatre). To access the private gender-neutral restrooms, there are five additional steps at the end of the lobby. The seats in the theatre are on risers with stairs; please contact info@tdt.org if you have any questions regarding accessing our space.

Currently in its early research phase, Niswa is a new dance performance work that examines how bodies of Arab and North African women are viewed by the Western gaze, and that challenges the Western colonial expectations from these bodies in performance.

In Niswa, we, a group of Arab and North African women, explore how we can reclaim the presence of our bodies in performance away from orientalism and Western fetishization.

Niswa defies the expectation of displaying female Arab and North African bodies as eroticized and commodified, ready for consumption by the colonial orientalist gaze. Niswa breaks the stereotype of Arab/North African female dancers needing to entertain a Western audience or needing to be rescued, feeding the white saviour fantasy.

Choreographer and founder of Jasad Dance Projects, Meryem Alaoui, is delighted to be joined by dance artists Mona El Husseini (MTL), Roula Said (TO), Corinne Skaff (MTL) and Esraa Warda (NYC) to continue their research together during a studio residency, generously offered by Toronto Dance Theatre, from April 28th to May 9th, 2025.

The residency will culminate in an open rehearsal/public showing on Friday May 9th, 2025.

About the Choreographer

Photo by McKenzie James Photography.

Meryem Alaoui

Meryem Alaoui is a Toronto-based dancer and choreographer from Morocco. Her current interests lie at the intersection of somatic research using movement and voice, and the exploration of contemporaneity through the reclamation of embodied performance practices, dances and knowledge from her culture as a Moroccan diasporic dance artist.

“Jasad” is Arabic for body. Under the artistic direction of Meryem Alaoui, Jasad Dance Projects aims to highlight the experience of SWANA (Southwest Asian and North African) communities, especially women, through contemporary dance.
The mission of Jasad is to bring humans together through dance, by promoting the research, creation and presentation of dance works and facilitating community engagement programs, with a focus on artists and audiences from North Africa, the Arab world and the Middle East, and their diaspora in Canada.

Dancers

Photo by Hana Gamal

Mona El Husseini

Mona El Husseini is a dancer and visual artist, based between Montreal and Cairo, Egypt. She is fascinated by the tangible and intangible layers that move a body and is interested in how stories are transmitted, shared, and told through the body across generations.

Photo by Dahlia Katz

Roula Said

Roula Said is a Juno-nominated vocalist, poet, dancer and actor of Palestinian heritage based in Toronto, Canada. Roula has been studying, teaching and performing Arab music and dance for over 25 years.

Corinne Skaff

Corinne Skaff is a Lebanese dance artist and educator. She is the founder of ContactCampBeirut and the School of Movement Arts (S.o.M.A) in Beirut, as well as the artistic director of the Éphémère company. She approaches dance as a vital practice of self-embodiment and exploration, focusing on the process rather than the outcome.

Esraa Warda

Esraa Warda is a prominent Algerian-American dance performer and educator based in New York, specializing in traditional and popular Algerian dance forms like Raï, Chaoui, and Assimi. Her work operates from a decolonial indigenous body knowledge, sexuality, and North African feminism(s) framework.