EMBODY PALESTINE is a workshop that explores how moving our bodies together can become a ritual of communal reflection around our relationships to Palestine. How do we move through 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 held by Leila and Noelle Awadallah (of Body Watani Dance) and 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 want to continue to activate their solidarity with Palestine at the level of the body while in collective, artistic space. In the spirit of the protest, and the poem.

If you have any hesitations around attending because of visible and invisible disabilities, or feel worried about moving / dancing in a room with others, don't hesitate to send an email to bodywatani@gmail.com. We love to adapt and imagine how to support our people in this space.

Body Watani Dance (BWD) is a project that first and foremost engages bodies in movement pathways and practices that build relationships to ancestral rooting across land and sea, decolonial unravelings and rebellions, and cultivating resistance through physical embodiments that range from poetic~metaphoric~dreamscapes to protest~resistance~liberation. Our work is Palestinian, engaging the traditional, experimental, magical and urgency of Palestinian realities. The space we cultivate is a container with soft edges with intent towards mixed bodies, refugee, immigrant, and diasporic stories, and anti-zionist allies to the Palestinian cause. 

Leila Awadallah is a dancer, choreographer and film wanderer based between Minneapolis, Mni Sota and Beirut, Lebanon. She is the Co-Artistic Director of Body Watani Dance, reflecting the relationship between her dancing body with her occupied Palestinian homeland in both name and practice. Leila is a McKnight Dancer (2022), Jerome Hill (2021), Daring Dances (2019) and Springboard for the Arts (2018) Fellow. Her solo YISSH, originally commissioned for the Cedar Tree Project (Winona 2019) has also been performed at festivals in Lebanon, Egypt and Palestine. Leila has a BFA in Dance and a minor in Arabic Language & Literature from the U of M.

Noelle Awadallah نوال (she/her) is a Palestinian American improviser, choreographer, and farmer residing in Mni Sota Makoce (Minneapolis). She is the Co-Artistic director of Body Watani Dance and is in her 5th year of dancing with Social Justice based dance company Ananya Dance Theatre. Her practice explores her mixed Palestinian body and relationship to the land of Palestine through multidirectional attention/intention, radical imagination of the senses, land based practices, and embodied storytelling through an improvisational framework.