body watani practice

Body Watani is a body-as-homeland research practice that began and continues to evolve from a Palestinian diasporic lens. Our offerings invite participants to investigate with us: how we research Arab and SWANA rooted movement in experimental, somatic, and contemporary contexts. Beyond “sharing culture” our work engages directly in the politics of the region and the implications on our bodies and lands. Practicioners are invited into improvisational prompts that support reflections on ones’ own relation to place, homeland, ancestral wanderings, migration, displacement, exile and reclamations of what homeland means.

embody palestine

EMBODY PALESTINE is a workshop that explores questions around how moving our bodies together can become a ritual of communal reflection around our relationships to Palestine. How do we move through and with the range of emotions stirred by the genocide in Gaza and collectively hold the weight of grief and rage? How do we dance in ways that spark energy towards resistance, solidarity and liberation? What stories do our bodies’ hold in ancestral criss-crossings and lived experiences that would bring us deeper into solidarity with one another? How can our imagined visions of other possibilities become rehearsals that prepare our bodies for the world we dream of? From improvised movement, to folk dance, to gestural choreography, we explore strategies embodiment that bring us closer to Palestine, both the distant land and the one within (all of) us.

The space is one that has been, and will continue to occur in dance studios, parks, and protests. The workshop is created for folks who have a range of movement experience (no dance training necessary). The invitation is specific to people who have been, and continue activating their solidarity with Palestine at the level of the body while in collective, artistic space. In the spirit of the protest, and the poem.

grief & rage circle for Palestine

On October 14, 2023 we gathered in community to feel the grief, rage and shock of what was happening in Palestine. It was imminently clear we needed a place to collectively feel and bear witness to the unimaginable genocide that was, and still is unfolding. From that day, the circles began meeting every 2 weeks in a ritual to hold space for ourselves and each other to move inside of the grief and rage that was filling and flowing through our bodies.

The organizers of the Grief & Rage Circles: Aziz Bisanz, Anniessa Antar, Noelle Awadallah, Erica Jo Vibar Sherwood and Leila Awadallah took on the collective commitment to hold the space for 6 months which was open to BIPOC communities in the Twin Cities. As the circles grew deeper, our strategies, questions and communities did too. They expanded into offerings for folks in rural Minnesota, and also then became a more intimate cohort in the Fall of 2024 which gathers weekly.

Body Watani is a collaborator of this space.

dabke disruption

Traditional folk dances are tools of resistance and connection. With each stomp of Dabke footwork, we send rhythmic vibrations towards Gaza, affirming the right to the land and the right to live and resist. We ask, how do we disrupt everyday life to direct attention? How can this dance’s joyful essence disrupt despair? Disrupt neutrality? We practice in public spaces in the contexts of protests, solidarity gatherings and direct actions.