view gallery
Dancer and visual artist Mona El Husseini is interested in how stories are transmitted, shared, and told through the body across generations. Where do we meet and where do we part? How do we collaboratively give voice to our shared past? Creatrix, a dance duet between El Husseini and her mother, Hala Farahat, interweaves improvisation, gestural interpretation, abstracting the Egyptian Baladi dance, and storytelling. While Mona is an artist, her mother Hala is a medical doctor, science teacher, and a mother of three who is not trained in dance. Where their opposing worlds meet, they search together for the common denominator across art and science, motherhood and girlhood, past and present.
A series of visual art titled Family Portraits by Mona El Husseini will be displayed for viewing in the MAI café-bar before and after each performance. The exhibition will be accompanied by a zine, which will be available for purchase.
To celebrate the culmination of over three years of artistic elaboration and most importantly, a world premiere at the MAI, Mona and Hala extend a warm invitation to spectators, friends, and family to join them in a celebration in the MAI café-bar following the last performance on December 2nd. Featuring all of the songs that Hala wanted to include in the show but were ultimately reserved for rehearsal warm-ups. Come dance to Hala’s favourite songs, mixed by the talented Lara Barazi.
press review →
credits
Performers: Mona El Husseini, Hala Farahat
Choreography: Mona El Husseini
Light Design: Nien-Tzu Weng
Technical Director : Darah Miah
Music: Wael Kodeih + Love & Revenge
Dramaturgical Consultant: Fatma Sarah El Kashef
Costume Consultant: Sophie El-Assaad
Outside Eye: Corinne Skaff
artist biographies
Mona El Husseini is a dancer and visual artist, based between Montreal and Cairo. She completed her dance education at the Cairo Contemporary Dance Center (CCDC) in Egypt and studied International Business and Contemporary Dance at Concordia University.
Mona choreographs and performs her own artistic projects, she collaborates with other artists as a choreographer and performer, and she also teaches contemporary dance, barre, and pilates. Her pieces have been performed in Egypt, Germany, Italy, and Canada.
At the time of writing, Mona is working on Creatrix, a dance duet with her mother, and on Family Portraits, a visual art series and a graphic memoir set to premiere at the MAI (Montréal, Arts Interculturels) in 2023. She is also developing Monday or Tuesday, a dance solo, and Rabbet Manzel // House Goddess, a visual art series – both of which were presented at upRising Up festival in Puglia, Italy, in 2022. In 2018, Mona had a performing role in When Arabs Danced, a TIFF- and FIFA-featured documentary film by Jawad Rhalib, and in 2022, she was the lead actress in Gigi and in Mango, two short films by director Randa Ali. That same year she choreographed Mama, a theatre piece by Nathalie Doummar, which was presented at Théâtre Duceppe and at Festival Juste Pour Rire in Montreal.
In her artistic process, Mona goes beyond dance and traces the thread that connects the different art forms she practices including martial arts, visual arts, and writing. She is interested in how stories are transmitted, shared, and told through the body across generations. She finds the dance in the encounter between the intimate and the collective, the traditional and the contemporary, and in the space where the inner and outer meet.
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Hala Farahat is a Biology teacher based in Montreal, Canada. After giving up her medical career to raise her children, she has held diversified teaching and administrative positions in International schools in the U.A.E, Egypt, Ontario, Quebec, and most recently in New York. She completed her Bachelor’s degree in Education at the University of Ottawa and her Master’s degree in Educational Technology at Concordia University. Among many things, she is a passionate advocate for the implementation of technology to promote pedagogical strategies and enhance students’ engagement through creating flipped classrooms and project-based learning. Besides that, she is an avid practitioner of conjoining the worlds of Art and Science, both in her classrooms and out.