Shared Program: Nora Alami, Jadd Tank, Leyya Mona Tawil/Lime Rickey International
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Nora Alami, Jadd Tank, Leyya Mona Tawil/Lime Rickey International
Presented in partnership with the New York Arab Festival (Adham Hafez, Artistic Director)
3rd Body, created and performed by Nora Alami and Jadd Tank, is designed with simulations, each told through dance. Inspired by virtual reality technology, 3rd Body’s simulations are distinct worlds that replicate reality without the parameters of reality itself (think: mirage). Each simulation is intentionally distinct and disjointed from the other. The content is as diverse, contradictory, substantive, and complex as all third culture realities. Some more conceptual, some more personal, others more abstract. Describing the work, the artists have said: “By sequencing these simulations, the audience will make meaning across the contradiction and nonlinearity. 3rd Body is a play about the Other. 3rd Body is told through dance. 3rd Body navigates experiences of being Arab, as told by Arabs, who were told about their Arab-ism by others. Located in the discomfort of discussing identity, 3rd Body manifests a type of longing understood to those who seek to belong.”
Lime Rickey International is the superconciousness of hybrid artist Leyya Mona Tawil. Here, Lime is shipwrecked in time, performing future folk songs and dances from a homeland yet to exist. Tawil uses voice, microphones, interactive surfaces and elements of dabke to build hybrid performances and sound compositions. Lime Rickey International's Malayeen Voices is a performance work in tandem with web-based artwork MALAYEEN.SPACE. The performance incorporates samples gathered through the MALAYEEN.SPACE community-generated song archive, and excerpts from her upcoming work City & World. It is a solo of multitudes that builds and gathers, shares and opens new worlds to and with the audiences.
Photo of Nora Alami and Jadd Tank by Angel Acuna
Photo of Leyya Mona Tawil by DJ Schaller
Nora Alami and Jadd Tank are co-directors and creators of 3rd Body. Carving their place in the creative economy as performers, directors, and creative producers they joined collaborative forces in 2018 while performing as featured choreographers in the Focus on Mediterranean Choreography series in Italy. Jadd Tank, a Lebanese American artist, has toured with Maqamat Dance Company, Michelle Ellsworth, and Cristina Goletti. Tank has choreographed music videos of Vladimir Kurumilian, Mashrou’ Leila and for feature films Marjoun & The Flying Headscarf (2019) and Amsterdam to Anatolia (2019). Other recent work includes Glimpses of a Future by Yaraqa (as a creative producer, choreographer, and performer), now available on Netflix, and the digital videos at the Dubai World EXPO 2021 Lebanese Pavilion (as a choreographer and product design lead). Tank is a Creative Producer and is currently the Product Design Lead at Lebanon-based Social Enterprise YARAQA. Nora Alami is a Moroccan-American dance artist who has been awarded 2022 Resident Artist at Triskelion Arts, Alliance for Artist Communities’ Diversity + Leadership Fellowship, and New York Live Arts Fresh Tracks Choreographic Residency. Her choreography has been presented at Danspace Project's DraftWork series, Triskelion Arts, Houston Metropolitan Dance Center, Center for Performance Research, New York Live Arts, International Center of Photography, and Movement Research at Judson Church. She was recently invited to attend the Arab Arts Focus and Downtown-Contemporary Arts Festival in Cairo as a delegate of Movement Research’s Global Practice Sharing Program. Collectively, 3rd Body has been supported by a 2021 JACK Residency, 2021 BRIClab: Performing Arts Residency, and the Rest and Restore Residency at The Petronio Center.
Leyya Mona Tawil [Lime Rickey International] is an artist working with sound, performance, and hybrid transmissions. Tawil is a Syrian, Palestinian, American engaged in the world as such. Her work as Lime Rickey International voice, transactive choreography, sonic surfaces and electronics to build performances and installations. Her work has been presented in cities throughout the US, Europe, Russia, and the Arab world. She was nominated for a 2019 Bessie Award in Music for Lime Rickey International’s Future Faith, commissioned by Abrons Arts Center (NYC) and KONE Foundation (Helsinki). Recent exhibitions/performances include Wysing Art Centre/British Council (UK), JAM3A Festival 2021, Arab American National Museum, FUSEBOX Festival 2022 (Austin), TBA:22 Festival (Portland) and the Tarek Atoui Residency at Sharjah Art Foundation (UAE). As a curator/producer, Tawil is on the team of Live In America Festival and Southern Exposure Gallery (SF), and was ISSUE Project Room’s 2020 Suzanne Fiol Curatorial Fellow (NYC). She is the founding director of Arab.AMP – a platform for futurist live art and ideas from the SWANA diaspora.
About New York Arab Festival
While the history of the earliest Arab immigration to the US predates the Declaration of Independence, the rich cultural heritage of Arabs and Arab Americans remains marginalized. New York Arab Festival (NYAF) was founded to fight the erasure of Arab and Arab American identity in the city of New York through the celebration of Arab art, culture, and heritage. NYAF was founded by Arab, American, and Arab American artists, creators, and policymakers in New York to address cultural erasure, urban inequality, and artistic injustice. It celebrates Arab arts, culture and design each year in the month of April, the National month of Arab and Arab American Heritage. Founded by HaRaKa Platform’s curator, Adham Hafez, with producers Cindy Sibilsky, Marwa Seoudi and Adam Kucharski. And powered by Wizara, a pioneering creative studio and digital art ecosystem.
La MaMa Moves! Dance Festival
La MaMa Moves! Dance Festival continues to support La MaMa’s commitment to presenting diverse performance styles that challenge audience’s perception of dance by featuring performance/installations, experimental film screenings & public symposiums which address dance artists’ engagement with the current political climate, as well as honoring diasporic histories and legacy, ancestral inspirations and inter-generational dialogue.