“Niswa”, meaning women in Arabic, is a new full-length choreographic creation by Meryem Alaoui with five (5) to seven (7) female performers from the Middle East and North Africa. It’s a multigenerational research into the anti-orientalist portrayal of the female Arab and North African body that challenges the Western gaze and its colonial expectations from such bodies in performance.
This group work stemmed from the orientialist response many audience members had to a solo created and performed by Meryem Alaoui, using sand among other objects and performed in the semi-nude, in underwear.
That solo work focused on questions regarding the body in relation to objecthood, and used slowness to highlight the ancestral wisdom or futuristic optimism of the somatic and sensory experience in the present body. However, audiences often questioned whether the solo work was connected to Meryem’s cultural heritage as a North African and Arab woman.
NISWA breaks the stereotype of Arab female dancers needing to entertain a Western audience, such as with belly dance. It toys with the expectation of portraying Arab women as needing rescuing, hiding behind their kitchen walls or their veils, feeding the white saviour fantasy. It defies the expectation of displaying female Arab and North African bodies as eroticized and commodified, ready for consumption by the colonial orientalist gaze, as desert princesses of the Arabian nights. The world of NISWA doesn’t look like what we see in postcards.
Creator
MERYEM ALAOUI
Originally from Rabat, Morocco, Meryem Alaoui is a dancer-choreographer based in Toronto, Canada. She is the founder and co-artistic director of Jasad Dance Projects.
Her work is 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.
Her choreographic works have been presented in Montreal, Toronto, Hamilton and Morocco, and she has received residency support nationally and internationally, and project funding from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council and the Toronto Arts Council.
She has taught somatic exploration and Body- Mind Centering® workshops in Toronto, Calgary, Edmonton and Morocco. Meryem is also involved in community and arts- education projects such as with Arts Etobicoke, Singing Our Stories Festival, Dreamwalker Dance and The Arab Community Centre of Toronto.
Meryem holds a B.A. from McGill University (Montreal) and is a graduate of the Toronto School of Dance Theatre.