UNDOXX: Contemporary Dance Workshop with Yaa Samar! Dance Theatre

Yaa Samar! Dance Theatre (YSDT) views technique as a means of furthering our bodies as instruments for creative expression. This contemporary dance workshop starts with an anatomically mindful warm-up, and evolves through guided improvisation scores. Blending contemporary dance and theater to explore themes from YSDT repertory works, this dance workshop draws on visualization, improvisation, and play to facilitate an experiential, process-driven environment that empowers participants and meets them where they are in their practice. YSDT’s goals as educators are to provide new tools for creative expression, validate individuals through empowered choice-making, honor diverse perspectives and abilities, and center the power of storytelling in pursuit of social justice.

Yaa Samar! Dance Theatre (YSDT) creates invigorating performance and education programs that expand access to - and promote understanding through - the arts. Founded in 2005 by Samar Haddad King in NYC, YSDT has a repertoire of 30+ original works performed across NYC, regionally, and abroad in 18 countries across four continents. Since 2011, the company has worked transnationally between NYC and Palestine, and is committed to uniting diverse artists and audiences in the creative process, rooted in the belief that art should be liberating, transformative, and accessible to all. For more information, visit: www.ysdt.org.

Zoe Rabinowitz is the Executive Director and a founding member of Yaa Samar! Dance Theatre. Originally from Vermont, Zoe graduated from the Walnut Hill School for the Arts before earning her BFA in Dance from the Ailey/Fordham BFA program, with additional studies at De Amsterdamse Hogeschool voor de Kunsten (Netherlands). Her own work for stage and film has been presented throughout the US, and abroad in Austria, Bulgaria, Germany, Mexico, and South Korea.In recognition of her work as a leader in the non-profit field, Zoe was awarded a 2020 New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) Emerging Leaders Fellowship and selected as a New York Community Trust Leadership Fellow in the same year.

Samar Haddad King is a writer, choreographer, and composer and Artistic/Founding Director of Yaa Samar! Dance Theatre (YSDT); King graduated from the Ailey/Fordham BFA program (NYC). King’s work has been performed in 19 countries on 4 continents, with commissions throughout the US and abroad including The Shed (NYC); Hubbard Street 2 (Chicago); Ramallah Contemporary Dance Festival (Ramallah); The Walk with Littla Amal: Good Chance Theatre (Marseille) and St. Ann’s Warehouse/The Walk Productions (NYC); /si:n/ Festival (Ramallah), among others. Awards/Fellowships include: 2023/24 Creative Capital Wild Futures Award, Prix des Jeunes Créateurs Palestiniens pour la Diversité des Expressions Artistiques (Palest’In & Out Festival, Paris); La Fabrique Chaillot Residency (Chaillot - théâtre national de la Danse, Paris); The Center for Ballet and the Arts at NYU and Toulmin Creator (CBA/ National Sawdust, NYC). Theater and musical theater credits include Dead Are My People (Noor Theatre, NYC), Hoota (Sard Theatre, Haifa) and We Live in Cairo (American Repertory Theater, Boston) among others.

Across three weeks, UNDOXX will present performances, films, and new media works, conversations, teach-ins, and resource-sharing events for artists seeking tools to navigate the shifting landscape of censorship in the arts. Censorship of artists in the U.S. is currently surging as a powerful force, yet it is not unprecedented. By bringing together global majority artists, queer artists, marginalized artists who have understood its inner workings for generations, UNDOXX will spark conversation and generate resources for artists and audiences in the U.S. to understand censorship in the arts, its history, and its current evolutions. UNDOXX will make space for people to learn in community and present work by censored artists as their primary intervention.

For more information check out: www.jackny.org/undoxx-2024

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

JACK, 20 Putnam Avenue, Brooklyn, United States