UNDOXX: Screenings of Films by Yaa Samar! Dance Theatre

Join Yaa Samar! Dance Theatre for screenings of their films 3 x 13 and Losing It. The screenings will be followed by a discussion on traditions of Revolutionary Dance moderated by zavé martohardjono. Learn more about each film below!

3 x 13
3 x 13 explores the singularity of the individual and the universality of the human experience. Comprised of 12 short films with original music by Lou Tides, 12 artists from around the globe share a journey of transformation that deeply marked their lives. These personal accounts of parenthood, loss, race, exile, dreams both realized and abandoned, all find expression through a common choreography for body and camera, offering an intimate glimpse into the performers’ inner and outer worlds. The work culminates in an interactive 13th film that unites all 12 journeys in a virtual ensemble that invites audiences to chart their own course across 5 languages and 8 countries: Cuba, Egypt, France, Mali, Mexico, Palestine, South Korea, and the US. 3 x 13 was produced by Yaa Samar! Dance Theatre and created by award-winning Director Eimi Imanishi and Choreographer Samar Haddad King.

In Losing It, Palestinian choreographer Samaa Wakim asks herself how experiencing war impacts her identity and how intergenerational trauma manifests in her own body. Losing It dives into the artist’s memories of growing up under occupation, exploring various realities she lives in, fear, and the fantasies she created out of fear and hope in order to survive. Losing It is about unstable worlds that disintegrate and warp, and Wakim’s perspective from within a world where reality and fantasy blur. Palestinian-American artist Samar Haddad King performs a live score featuring field recordings taken throughout Palestine since 2010. King’s soundscape—layered with traffic sirens, dabke music, prayer recitations, and bombs—weave together with Wakim’s vocals blending resonances that cause fear with ones that provide solace. Emblematic of the power of dance and sound to activate political awakening, Losing It is a precise, stark, and textural portrait of how past and present cloud the future.

Samaa Wakim is a performer, choreographer and cultural manager based in Palestine. She graduated from the acting department of Haifa University. Performance credits include: I am Yusuf and This is My Brother (Shibir Hur and Young Vic Theater, London 2009); The Beloved, (Shibir Hur and Bush Theater, London, 2012); Exit & Ble Ble Bel (Khashabi Theatre, Palestine, 2011); Badke (A.M. Qattan foundation, KVS Theater, and Les ballets C de la B, Brussels 2012- 2017); bound (Yaa Samar! Dance Theatre and Sareyyet Ramallah, Ramallah, 2014); Against a Hard Surface (Yaa Samar! Dance Theatre Hamburg 2017); Modern Curses, co-directed and choreographed by Bashar Murkus and Wakim (Khashabi Theater, Haifa 2018); Last Ward (Yaa Samar! Dance Theatre, Paris, 2018); The Cabaret (Khashabi Theatre, Haifa, 2018); The Father (Al Jawal Theater, Haifa, 2021); LOSING IT, co-creat ed with Samar Haddad King (Festival Theaterformen, Yaa Samar! Dance Theatre, Khashabi Theatre, Hannover, 2021). She is a production manager of Haifa Independent Film Festival 2019 & 2023 and member of Yaa Samar! Dance Theatre (since 2014) and Khashabi Theatre (since 2008).

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.

Eimi Imanishi is an award winning Japanese American filmmaker who grew up in France. Her short films include “Battalion To My Beat” (2016) which was shot in the Western Saharan refugee camps in Algeria and screened at over 50 festivals worldwide including Toronto International Film Festival, and won the Canal+ Award for Best International Short at Le Festival du Court Metrage de Clermont-Ferrand in 2017; and “One-Up” (2016), which won Best Narrative Short at IndieMemphis and was released online as a Vimeo Staff Pick film and won Short Of The Week. Imanishi is a 2018 Sundance Directing and Screenwriting Fellow, a 2018 Film Independent Directing Fellow, and a 2019 Time Warner Fellow. She is developing her first feature film titled “DOHA - The Rising Sun”.

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

About our ticket prices: JACK operates with a sliding scale ticket model and a standard general admission price of $25.

This covers only a small fraction of what it takes to make this work and keep JACK’s doors open. We subsidize ticket prices as much as we can to ensure accessibility to our performances for all audiences. Please know that your ticket purchase goes directly to supporting the artists (50% directly to the artist and 50% towards the fee JACK guarantees them to present their work .)

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