If My body had a Name
Choreographer Hoor Malas shares her story in a powerful immersive solo.
Description
Syrian-born choreographer and performer Hoor Malas narrates and shares her own story in this immersive solo performance.
What if my history and the environment in which I live, influence the way I move? Who is pulling the strings? Memory, mind, or body? A female figure sails between the reefs and swims between the waves of her own vulnerability. Constantly seeking harmony between thought and movement, Hoor Malas tries to find her place within the delicate limits where these boundaries merge and confront each other. Her movements, tinged with Middle Eastern imagery, evoke the social control of her origins, its echo, and its persistent vibration here and today. A state of being in her body revisited through an awareness of the weight of the societal expectations she has inherited, as well as the freedom that dance affords her.
Meet the artists, May 15 and 16 after the performances. Hosted by Nayla Naoufal.
Hoor Malas thanks the Canada Council for the Arts for its support.
Credits
Choreography Hoor Malas
Performance Hoor Malas
Music Shadi Ali
Rehearsal director Neil Sochasky
Lighting Marko Croteau
Costumes Sonya Bayer
Technical direction Marko Croteau
Photography Thibault Carron
Videography and montage Youssef Shoufan
Mentor Margie Gillis
Coproducers Danses de résistance, CAM+MAI Dance Mentorship Accompaniment Program
Co-presenter Agora de la danse
Creation residencies Danse à la carte with mentor Margie Gillis, Circuit Est, Place des Arts, MAI (Montréal, arts interculturels)
Hoor Malas
Born in Syria, Hoor Malas is a choreographer and performer. Initially, Hoor simply wanted to dance. She didn’t start choreographing her own pieces until 2014, because of the exodus of the very few choreographers working in the Syrian capital due to the war. Together with other artists, she set up her own contemporary dance company, Sima Dance Company. In 2020, Hoor moved to Tiohtiá: ke/Montréal to continue to develop as a choreographer and performer.
Drawing on physical theater, which she interweaves with contemporary dance, Hoor unfolds a singular, often dreamlike choreographic universe that embodies her personal history and her way of seeing the world. Autoethnographic in nature, her work always emerges from a reflection on the intimate, gradually bringing socio-cultural and political issues to the surface. It is rooted in the following principles: groundedness, fluidity, intimacy, physicality and musicality. Her works include Regression (2016), Three Seconds (2018), Hanging (2019), Dust (2022), and If My body had a Name (2022).
Agora de la danse
For more than 30 years Agora de la danse invites the public to experience diverse and stimulating contemporary dance in the very heart of Montreal. This unique venue for presentation and creative support presents a season of mostly new dance works, provides residencies to artists, creates bridges between artists and citizens, co-produces new dance pieces and offers all sorts of public activities centred around the art of choreography. A unique, exceptional arts centre for contemporary dance.
With
Hoor Malas
