1001 Arab Futures: an embodied imaginarium 

​1001 Arab Futures

1001 Arab Futures is an intimate outdoor site-specific dance performance and visual installation contemplating imaginative visions, past reckonings, embodied truths and other future potentials from the Arab diaspora.

Created/Directed by: Yara Boustany, Mette Loulou von Kohl, Andrea Shaker 
Concept/Collaborative contributions/Performance: Sharon Mansur
Sound: woolen lover
Costume: Angie Vo

June 3-5, 2021 @ 7pm (rain date June 6)
The outdoor campus at the Minnesota Conservatory for the Arts' home
at the Valencia Arts Center, 1164 W. 10th (Vila) Street
Keoxa/Winona, Mni Sota Makoce/Minnesota, Dakota land

Tickets: $10
Space is limited to 20 audience members per event, advance ticket purchase is required
Ticket information coming soon
An online viewing option will be available as well, more information coming soon

June 7-30, 2021 
Arab Futures Visual Installation: by Andrea Shaker
On view in MCA’s Galleria Valencia
Free, no tickets required, see MCA website for viewing hours and guidelines
 posted next month
https://mca.smumn.edu

A multi-media performance/art event created in collaboration with by four SWANA artists who share Lebanese heritage as an intersection point:
Yara Boustany, Lebanese dance artist (Lebanon)
Mette Loulou von Kohl, Lebanese/Palestinian/Danish American dance artist (New York City)
Andrea Shaker, Lebanese American visual artist (Minneapolis)
with Sharon Mansur, Lebanese American dance/interdisciplinary artist (Keoxa/Winona, MN)

1001 Arab Futures  is inspired by Arab Futurism: a cultural movement imagining the future of the SWANA/Arab world infused with present day sociopolitical events. "Arab Futurism,  writes the scholar Lama Suleiman, is the 'idea of actually revising the past in a way that is more imaginative.'  
https://www.palestinechronicle.com/where-do-we-go-from-here-on-the-future-of-arab-futurism/
The project’s title is also a nod to the 1001 Arabian Nights classic fantastical folk tales, often referenced as a precursor to Arab science fiction.

1001 Arab Futures will also be shared during Fall 2021 as part of:
​SOLO: shared evening of McKnight Foundation Dance Commissioning Projects
Dance film screening
The Cowles Center for Dance and the Performing Arts
Minneapolis, Minnesota
September 17 & 18, 2021
http://www.mcknightdancechoreo.org/solo


1001 Arab Futures is being made possible, in part, by the generous support of:
1001 Arab Futures was commissioned by The Cowles Center as part of their SOLO commissioning program, funded by the McKnight Foundation. It  was commissioned on behalf of Sharon Mansur, 2018-19 McKnight Dancer Fellowship recipient. 

Sharon Mansur, in partnership with the Minnesota Conservatory for the Arts, is a fiscal year 2020 recipient of a Cultural Community Partnership grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board. This activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board, thanks to a legislative appropriation by the Minnesota State Legislature; and by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.   

Project collaborator Bios:

Photo by Liliane Rahal

​Yara Boustany
Having obtained her audio-visuals degree from ALBA, Yara continued her studies at CAU Theatre, Dance and Circus School, Spain. In 2015, she founded Amalgam Studio in Beirut, a space for performers to develop their practice. She took part in national and international performances, including her solos ‘Astroturf’ and ‘One day – One Night – Beirut’. The latter premiered at the International Solotanz Festival, Germany and was presented in the Solo Dance Festival, Turkey. In 2017, she received a grant from AFAC to produce ‘ēvolvō’ which was shown in BIPOD,  Al Madina Theatre in Beirut and in Body/Mind Festival in Poland. In July 2019 it toured in London, Liverpool and Manchester at the Shubbak Festival. It will be premiered in France in Chalon sur Soene, Festival Instances. She is currently developing a new piece “Boundless Thought” that started within a residency in Athens, “Breaking Art”, and she received a grant from AFAC for this project. This year she started her Master in Choreography in Codarts University, Rotterdam.
www.uirii.com

Mette Loulou von Kohl
Mette Loulou von Kohl was born from the orange at the center before the new world came. She is a performer and a wanderer. Mette Loulou received her B.A in Theatre from Bard College and completed her M.A in Applied Theatre at Goldsmiths College, University of London. She is a graduate of EmergeNYC of the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics at NYU. Mette Loulou is fascinated by the intersection between her personal identities as a jumping-off point to reveal, dismantle and rebuild realities and dreams. She grapples with her past to complicate her present and conjure unimagined futures. She exists in two places at once.
http://www.metteloulouvonkohl.com

Photo by Laura Bluer

Photo by Tommy O’Laughlin

Andrea Shaker
Andrea Shaker is a professor of art at the College of St. Benedict/St. John’s University.  She earned her BA from Georgetown University and her MFA from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her photographic and moving image work has been exhibited regionally and nationally including exhibitions in Chicago, New York and Glasgow.  Her films have been screened at the Walker Art Center, Mizna’s Arab Film Festival, and Altered Aesthetics  Film Festival.  Her written work home. not home. (bayt. lays bayt.) is included in the publication Women, Citizenship, and Photographies (Liverpool University Press, 2016) and on silence is included in the publication Mizna: Prose, Poetry and Art Exploring Arab America (vol 18.2). Shaker is a 2019 recipient of a Minnesota State Arts Board Artist Initiative grant for photography. She currently serves on the Executive Board of New Arab American Theater Works.
​https://www.csbsju.edu/art/faculty/shaker

---