Sat. October 28 & Sun. October 29, 2023
MENA Theatre Makers Alliance Annual National Convening, sponsored by Golden Thread Productions and Art2Action, Inc., hosted at Golden Thread’s ReOrient Festival of Short Plays in San Francisco.
More information about the MENATMA convening and the full 2-day schedule available here.
MENA Theater in Schools and Universities
Sat. October 28, 2023, 4:45pm - 6pm PST (In-person and live-streamed on HowlRound)
Panelists: Heather Rastovac Akbarzadeh, PhD (Scholar-artist-educator, Golden Thread Fairytale Players Program Manager); Michael Malek Najjar, PhD (scholar and theater-maker, University of Oregon); Hala Baki, PhD (Director/Dramaturg/Scholar/Educator, California Polytechnic State University); and Peyman Shams (PhD candidate, University of Oregon)
Moderator: Amal Bisharat, Golden Thread Artist-in-Residence Artist
Fri. September 8, 2023, 8:00am - 9:15am PST
Dance Studies Association - New Mobilities “on the Turn”? London, UK (Virtual Symposium)
Co-organizer of pre-formed panel: The Cultural and Geo-Politics of Dancing Bodies Across Transnational SWANA (South West Asia and North Africa) Geographies
“Choreographing Liberation: Dance and Futurity in Iran’s Woman Life Freedom Uprising” Heather Rastovac Akbarzadeh, Ph.D. (UC Riverside)
“Performing the Folk: Bridge Building and Breaking” Leila Mire (UC Berkeley)
“A Girl Like Shakira: Attuning to a Sense of Brown” Juliana Fadil-Luchkiw (UC Berkeley)
“The Evolution of Arab Dance in Cuba: “Habana Habibi” and Cold War Politics” Meiver De la Cruz, Ph.D. (Whitman College)
Thurs. February 16, 2023, 3:10pm - 4:40pm PST
The Iranian Diaspora in Global Perspective: UCLA Center Near Eastern Studies & SFSU Center for Iranian Diaspora Studies Joint Conference, Los Angeles, CA (UCLA Room: Royce 306)
“The Pleasant Pain: Performing ‘New Generation’ Iranian Immigrant Bittersweetness in Aisan Hoss’s Dance-Theatre.”
Fri. October 14, 2022, 6:00pm - 7:30pm PST, via Zoom
Dance Studies Association, Vancouver, B.C.
“Un/Yielding Transience: Performing Transcultural Explorations of Immigration and Homelessness.” Lecture-demo/Workshop with choreographer Aisan Hoss.
Mon. October 11, 2021, 5:30pm - 7:00pm PST, via Zoom
Dance Studies Association, Rutgers University
“Queering the Gaze, Activating the Audience: Gender and Sexuality in Diasporic Iranian and ‘Oriental’ Dances.” Lecture-Demo/Workshop co-developed with artist-scholar Cynthia Ling Lee (UC Santa Cruz).
Sun. June 27, 2021, 11:15am - 12:45pm PST, via Zoom
Pomegranate Garden Dance (online platform for Persian and Central Asian dance)
Lecture: “Do Iranian Dancers Need Saving?: The Euro-American Production of Savior Spectatorship”
More information here
Sun. May 9, 2021, 10am PST, via Zoom
Raqsvareh Festival/Dance Center of Iran
Lecture: “Do (Female) Iranian Dancers Need Saving?: The Euro-American Production of Savior Spectatorship”
Wed. Dec. 2, 2020, 4pm - 5:30pm EST, via Zoom
Kenyon College, “Race in Motion” speaker series in Dance and Performance Studies
Lecture-discussion about book project-in-process: “Choreographing the Iranian Diaspora: Dance, Spectatorship, and the War on Terror”
Thurs. Feb. 13, 2020, 4pm - 5:30pm PST
UC Berkeley’s Center for Race & Gender, Thursday Forums
691 Barrows Hall (Location is ADA accessible)
Choreographing Transnational Modernities: Imbrications of Race and Gender in Dance Performance and Spectatorship
Conversation with Usha Iyer, Assistant Professor of Film and Media Studies at Stanford University.
CRG Thursday Forums are open to the public and the location is wheelchair accessible. Light refreshments are served.
More information here
Wed. Dec. 4, 2019, 4:30pm - 6:20pm PST
UC Riverside, Dept. of Dance, Dance Studio Theatre, ATHD 102 (Athletics and Dance Building) - Free and open to the campus
New Research in Dance Studies Colloquium Series: Ritual / Power / Corpo-Realities
Paper: “Threat, Defense, and Absence: Ali Moini’s My Paradoxical Knives and the U.S. ‘Muslim Travel Ban’”
Also presenting will be Meiver De la Cruz (Scripps College), whose paper is entitled “Fluid Meaning, Oscillating Diaspora: Embodied Accounts of the Oriental Dancer”
More information here
Sat. Nov. 16, 2019, 1:45pm - 3pm PST
National Women’s Studies Association, San Francisco, CA - Hilton Union Square, Floor: Tower 3, 4th Floor, Union Square 22 (LCD)
Panel: Queering Il/legibility: Performing Otherwise Worlds
Paper: “Queering the Neoliberal Gaze: Sensorial, Sonicity, and Islamic Repertoire in Aisan Hoss’s The Pleasant Pain”
More information here
Sat. Nov. 9, 2019, 10am - 11:45am
American Studies Association, Honolulu, HI - Hawai'i Convention Center, Mtg Rm 302 B
Panel: Arab American Studies Association: Visioning Radical Queer Futures: Transformative Practices of the Transnational Middle East
Paper: “Transaction, Temporality, and Queer Relationality: Amir Baradaran’s Marry Me to the End of Love”
More information here