نواة Nawa

Sahar Damoni’s multidisciplinary performance/stage installation, Nawa, continues her research into reproductive and sexual freedom, bodily autonomy, and the impact of abortion for Arab women. Wandering through fog-like sounds and sensations in the depths of subconsciousness, the work asks: Does the body remember? Is the body ever really free?

Nawa explores the auto-biographical intangible dimensions and psychological after-effects of the surgical abortion procedure, looking at the methods used to anesthetize patients and the physical and mental states these can induce, specifically the phenomenon of being “awake” or aware while under anesthesia.

In Nawa, Sahar creates a rich performance environment with her body at the center, conjuring the dualities of pleasure and pain, conscious and subconscious, as she envisions a new kind of healing. The dance combines movement, photography and video, sound, and textile to create multiple landscapes of experience spanning the personal, communal, and political. As all bodies are subject to the control of the mind, the government, and societal expectations, as access to abortion and female autonomy are at risk all over the world, and as speaking the truth of women’s bodies becomes more taboo and dangerous, the topic is all too relevant for each of us.

Sahar Damoni is a Christian Palestinian Arab Choreographer and  Dancer from Shafa-Amer near the sea in Galilee, within the Green Line (Arab 1948). She has relocated to Leipzig, Germany. Her body of work deals with the challenges she faces as a woman in Arab and Palestinian society as well as the unique complexities of her identity as a Palestinian with an Israeli ID, she confronts the status quo on a contested piece of land in a severely complicated reality.

Sahar’s work has been presented in internationally including Holland Dance Festival; Fabrik Potsdam Potsdamer Tanztage; Frauenkirche Church, Dresden, Germany; HANGART Festival, Italy; Movement Research at the Judson Church and MR Festival at Danspace Project; and La MaMa, New York City; Café Belcampo and Dancing on The Edge, Amsterdam; Ramallah Contemporary Dance Festival; Internationale Solo-Tanz-Theater Festival Stuttgart, Echo Dance Festival of Northern Ireland; Curtain Up, International Exposure and InitimaDance (Tel Aviv), as well as various platforms and festival in The Netherlands, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Mexico, and Morocco.

She has participated in collaborations and received residences supported by New York University and Jacob’s Pillow; the Goethe Institute; PACT Zollverein; SouthEast Dance, England; Independent Dance, Siobhan Davies Studios, and Sadlers Wells, London; and the International Interdisciplinary Artists Consortium (IIAC) with support from the GPS/Global Practice Sharing program of Movement Research, Henny Jurrriëns Studio, Amsterdam and O Espaço do Tempo, Montemor, Portugal.

Sahar was invited to Un/Controlled Gestures, a seminar on dance and body politic, organized by the Goethe Institute, Morocco (2019), and the Dramaturgy Online Open Forum at Onassis Stegi Cultural Center (2020). In (2021) Sahar was commissioned to create a new work for the Staatstheater Kassel.

Sahar has lectured about her work at Gibney, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, and tanzhaus NRW, among others. She has also served as an actor and dramaturg in theater projects with Théâtre des Quartiers d'Ivry and Segun Ojewuyi, before creating her own work.

Sahar Damoni danced with the Kibbutz Contemporary Dance Company and received a BA in Dance and Movement for Practicing Teachers from the Kibbutzim College of Education, Technology and Arts, and a BA in Business Management from The British University of Derby.