Project Name:
AB (آب) - A Miseducated Body/Mind
Category
On-going ProjectsAbout This Project
Created during my art residency in Berlin, AB, AB (phonetic: ʌb) is a solo dance piece rooted in the word for “water” in Farsi.
But why did water suddenly become so important?
(I mean, apart from the obvious ecological reasons.)
One: because in many languages, “A” and “B” are the first letters we learn, basic, yes, but essential to build the rest… just like water.
Two: in my language, Farsi, there’s a saying: “As simple as drinking water.” It’s a metaphor for doing something that’s super easy. Easy peasy.
But in this piece, that phrase turned into a paradox.
Doing something simple, yet finding it impossible, for reasons I couldn’t quite name.
AB became my personal exploration of those hidden reasons. A response to displacement, to the unknown.
It emerged from my lived experience of leaving home and arriving in Berlin for a dance residency.
After facing many obstacles in my country, especially restrictions around dance, I was finally free. Free to move. To create.
And yet… I didn’t want to dance. I couldn’t.
My body was in a space of freedom.
But my mind was still stuck in the long-lasting limitations it had known for years.
A state of learned helplessness.
So the question became:
Can my body wake my mind up to this new reality?
Can it welcome this given freedom, and begin again, dancing, again and again?
AB is the story of a thirsty body searching for freedom. The irony is, when it finally finds it, it no longer knows how to drink.
It’s about that ongoing tension, the frustration of standing in possibility while feeling trapped inside the impossible!
It’s the story of a miseducated body-mind, and our trying to unlearn, to release, to relive! To activate the sensation of joy to enjoy what should be simple to enjoy.
AB, is a reflection on inner conflict, the fight between control and surrender, between fear and freedom, between the wall and the will (check the research tab for more).
It asks: what does it really take to let go? And if ever it can be possible for a body which hasn’t ever trained to let it go?
And why, for some of us, is joy, the pure effortless joy, is the hardest thing to reach?
