Grantee Spotlight: Leila Awadallah

MRAC’s Grantee Spotlight is a new series to showcase the impact of MRAC’s funding across communities.

LEILA AWADALLAH

Disciplines: Dance / Choreography / Film MRAC Grant Program: Next Step Fund, 2023

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 (BWD) in collaboration with her sister Noelle Awadallah. The work of BWD reflects on the relationship between the sisters’ dancing bodies with their occupied Palestinian homeland in both name and practice. Where dancing, movement studies and choreographing interweave Arabic traditions, rhythms, politics, and poetics within this particular context.

Leila is a McKnight Dancer (2022), Jerome Hill (2021), Daring Dances (2019) and Springboard for the Arts Fellow (2018) and a Next Step recipient (2023). Her solo YISSH, originally commissioned for the Cedar Tree Project (Winona 2019) has also been performed at festivals in Lebanon, Egypt and Palestine. Leila performed with Ananya Dance Theater for 5 seasons and was mentored deeply by Ananya Chatterjea, She is a cofounder of Kelvin Wailey Dance trio (MN) and a collaborator of the Theater of the Women of the Camp (Lebanon). Over the years she has worked with Diyar Dance Theater in Bethlehem, Palestine and recently began working with Amwaj choir in Palestine. Leila has a BFA in Dance and a minor in Arabic Language & Literature from the University of Minnesota.

Impact Statement

LEARN MORE ABOUT THE IMPACT OF MRAC’S FUNDING FROM THIS GRANTEE

“When I wrote the application for MRAC’s Next Step funding to ask for support to go teach and collaborate in Palestine fall of 2023, I had no idea that while I was there researching and creating work, a genocide and new wave of attacks against Palestinian bodies and lands would begin. I returned to my ancestral homeland in early August to begin working with artists from Diyar Dance Theater as well as create and present my own work in BIPAF (Bethlehem International Performing Arts Festival).

The Next Step fund came through as the necessary support that could allow me to accept this invitation without financial worries. It gave me the opportunity to return to Diyar after 3 years, to re-engage with this community, this part of my body, and artistic work which is so vivid and visceral when I am actually in Palestine. It also inherently gifted me the precious time to just be in Palestine with my relatives.”

“The activities culminated on October 5th and I made so many deep connections with artists all over Palestine. We were making plans for me to perform in other cities, or in future festivals which felt like such a success to continue connecting! I planned to stay a few more weeks to participate in the olive harvest in mid October (a dream of mine) and to work with a local musician on a collaboration also through the Next Step Fund.

Instead, I ended up spending 10 days living the (one-sided) war with my family members. We felt everything from visions of liberation from this ongoing Nakba and occupation, to the visceral horror of watching a massacre happening live on TV against the people of Gaza. We heard the planes screaming loud in the sky above us constantly, going to drop bombs. I felt our house shake, and therefore my body shake, when a missile landed not far from our village. For a brief moment I was scared we would all end up under the rubble. My aunt, the children, my body. The roads around Bethlehem were blocked by the Israeli army. We were trapped by our occupier. The world stopped.

There is more to say, but what I do know is that the “Next Step” program brought me to spend these months in Palestine, and the impact on my artistry and career is incomprehensible. But even more powerful than that, is that MRAC gave a Palestinian daughter of a refugee the chance to return, and to spend time in our indigenous homeland. Which is the wish of so many Palestinian refugees around the world who are denied this right. To return is an honor, a privilege, a seed of liberation. As it is our right to return. Even if it means we will be killed on our land. Fighting, resisting, dancing, singing, until Palestine is free.”

-Leila Awadallah, 2023 Next Step Fund grantee

Stay Connected

Stay connected with this month’s grantee: Leila Awadallah

Social Media
Follow @leilawa.aa and @bodywatani on instagram for updates.
Check bodywatani.com or email bodywatani@gmail.com

Upcoming events
Leila and Body Watani will begin offering open workshops and public classes beginning in 2024