Dance Lab Lebanon

This was the initial question that kicked off this project. We, Bassam Abou Diab, Lebanese performer/choreographer and Simea Cavelti, dancer and choreographer based in Switzerland, met in February 2022 to organize a set of dance master classes in Lebanon. We were moved by the curiosity, sensitivity and eagerness of the participants. Therefore we feel the urgency to carry on by creating a one-month dance laboratory. Both Bassam's and my approach to dance is rooted within the body experience and its curiosity to move. Our practices focus on the vast range of movement, gestures and rhythms. We both look at the world's complexity as a drive to create, be it in the complexity of the personal, the political or conceptual realm. To be and remain deeply and intensely curious about our world, to have a hungry heart, mind and body determines what it is we create.

Lebanon has for many years been a place with strong contrasting realities, but now they are boiling contradictions that create enormous tensions. This also affects the body of people. In the frame of this dance laboratory we will create a save space to look at the body archive through artistic practices and explore ways to let it naturally inform the creation process of a sight specific performance. By creating a process oriented creative project we respond to the complex realities in Lebanon and initiate the first edition of a series that will be spanned over the next years.

Photo credt: Ibrahim Dirani