EVENTS
Anna Martine Whitehead’s S P R E A D
Upcoming Events
Recent Events
The Invitation Situation - On Tour!
A choreo-performance experiment based on Jeanine Durning's signature movement practice, nonstopping. For more information, click here.
AUGUST 28-30, 2026 - Los Angeles, CA
JUNE 6-7, 2025 - Detroit, MI
MAY 30-31, 2025 - Houston, TX
SEPTEMBER 20-21 - Denton, TX
FEBRUARY 23-24, 2024 - Chicago, IL
DECEMBER 16, 2023 - Sarasota, FL
The Essential Jill Johnston Symposium @ NYU
This 3-day series of events on campus and in the Village honors Jill Johnston's commitment to experimentation in all things writing, lesbianism, and life - through performance, conversations, film, and more. Curated by Clare Croft, author of Jill Johnston in Motion: Dance, Writing, and Lesbian Life and editor of The Essential Jill Johnston Reader and J de Leon, director of engagement at NYU Skirball.
FEBRUARY 6-8, 2025
Screening of "JJ" by Pauline L. Boulba and Aminata Labor
Free film screening of JJ at the UMMA - Helmut Stern Auditorium in Ann Arbor, Michigan followed by a Q&A with the filmmakers and UM faculty and dance scholar, Clare Croft.
FEBRUARY 5, 2025
THE SOUNDS WE KEEP / THE STEPS WE TAKE
A full week of programming in Ann Arbor and Dearborn ft. Bay Area based Palestinian dabke troupe Al Juthoor of the Arab Diaspora, led by Director Wael Buhaissy.
DECEMBER 4-7, 2024
Leyya Tawil and collaborators in Happy Days Finale
Wednesday, Sept. 30
4:00-5:20 PM
Multipurpose Room | Trotter Multicultural Center, Central Campus, 428 S State St
FREE + open to the public
Join us for an informal showing of Happy Days Finale, a new performance work by Leyya Mona Tawil in collaboration with Zari Lionudakis (dance), John MacDougall Parker (music), and Scott Tallenger (costume).
This event is supported by Daring Dances, Center for World Performance Studies, and The Arab and Muslim American Studies (AMAS) Program.
What does happiness mean in a time of revolution? With each day anew, what is our capacity for communion, grief, resistance, chance? In a world of relentless injustice and collapse, we question what is ending and what is beginning. DANCE ELIXIR's Happy Days Finale is an invitation to test these questions, in body and time.
At the heart of Happy Days Finale is Tawil’s “choice-based choreography,” where each performance unfolds uniquely. The dance composition is driven by decisions that transform the work into an ever-evolving conversation between movement, space, and sound. Tawil calls it “an act of agility and adaptability,” - a dance that contains multiple truths with every iteration.
Happy Days Finale is an invitation to think critically and collaboratively, to explore how we, as a community, can face the challenges of today’s world. Tawil has created a space for modeling new ways of being in an unpredictable world. Happy Days Finale proposes dancemaking as a potent tool for liberation, urging us to question, to mourn, and to labor, together.
BIOGRAPHIES
Photos by Isaac Kopecky
Leyya Mona Tawil
Conceptual Score, Choreography, and Performance
Director of DANCE ELIXIR, Leyya Mona Tawil is an artist, performer, and cultural activist working in hybrid performance practices. Tawil is Palestinian and Syrian; engaged in the world as such. Her choreographies and sound projects have been presented throughout the states, Europe, and the Arab world. Highlight engagements: “My Name is Palestine” exhibit at Southern Exposure (SF), performance commissions from Abrons Arts Center (NYC) and Sibelius Museum (Turku), and residencies with Sharjah Art Foundation (UAE), Wysing Arts/British Council (UK) and PlayHouse Labs (Detroit). Tawil was nominated for a 2019 “Bessies” Award in Music (NYC) and received the Ruth Arts Artist Choice Award 2026. She has stewarded TAC Temescal Art Center in Oakland since 1997, and is the founding director of Arab.AMP - a platform for worldbuilding artists from the Arab/SWANA diaspora and our allied communities.
Photo by Isaac Kopecky
Zari Lionudakis
Dance Collaborator and Performer
Zari Lionudakis is an artist and educator who challenges perceptions of either/or. A lone wolf in lineage, heritage and praxis, Zari's work in liminal space bleeds into her performance, technique classes, scholarship and healing modalities. The late historian Hayden White called Zari a "radical visionary," as every mode of Zari's work challenges existing notions of what "is." Whether ballet or vernacular, slang or scholarship, Zari uses languages that work towards liberation. She has performed extensively with DANCE ELIXIR since its founding in 2003.
Photo by Isaac Kopecky
John MacDougall Parker
Music Collaborator and Performer
John MacDougall Parker creates improvisational future-folk compositions where sound is amalgamated and congealed into a resolution of crossed signals. He has devised instruments focused on the interface between humans and machines, which are arranged to make music in the moment. Parker, of American and Korean origin, floats between NYC and São Paulo.
Photo by Isaac Kopecky
Scott Tallenger
Costumes
Scott Tallenger is a Left-Handed/Right Brained, photographer, skateboarder and fashion designer. Based in Detroit and working nationally, Scott specializes in one-of-a-kind event garments and accessories. His first costume collaboration with performer Leyya Mona Tawil was in 2006, and he has since created over 11 unique costumes for DANCE ELIXIR.
Nora Sharp in Performance
Monday, Nov. 16
7:30 PM
Studio A | Dance Building, N. Campus, 1000 Baits Dr.
FREE + open to the public
Join us for a Work-In-Progress Sharing with Nora Sharp.
This event is supported by Daring Dances and the Center for World Performance Studies.
Photo by Anjali Pinto
Nora Sharp
Working across performance and film, Nora Sharp hosts audiences in worlds where language and embodiment merge in unexpected and illuminating ways. A past Queer|Art Fellow, Chicago Dancemakers Forum Lab Artist Awardee, and Oberlin Screenwriters Intensive Fellow, Nora has had work presented or published by The Momentary, On the Boards, Links Hall Co-MISSIONS, Movement Research at the Judson Church, Steppenwolf LookOut, New Dance Alliance, Midwest RAD Fest, Dixon Place, Open TV, the Fly Honey Show, Pivot Arts Festival, Shawl-Anderson Dance Center, Cannonball Festival, Notes on Masculinity, Salonathon, WUSSY Mag, Performance Response Journal, upcoming in the anthology Dancing on the Third Coast (University of Illinois Press, 2026) and on many other stages, pages, and screenings both DIY and institutional across the country. Nora works full-time in social change organizing in addition to their creative practice.