7 - 11 December, 25 - 29 January
Image credit Brian Hartley.
Unlearning in Movement (working title) is an early-stage research and development project exploring Scotland’s colonial ties to Palestine through institutional archives and choreographic practice.
Emerging from Farah’s work Balfour Reparations (2023–present), the residency responds to a growing need for spaces where Scotland’s colonial histories can be collectively encountered, questioned and unlearned. Audience responses to Balfour Reparations revealed both significant gaps in public access to these histories and a desire to move beyond passive consumption or inherited feelings of guilt towards more active processes of reflection, accountability and learning.
During the residency, Farah will investigate how colonial histories are constructed, preserved and circulated through institutional archives, and ask how these narratives might be reactivated, disrupted and reframed through the body.
The residencies will explore embodied and participatory approaches to archival material and provide space to process complex histories physically, developing counter-narratives through movement, dialogue and collective experimentation.
Sharing
tbc – December week
Farah will lead a company class that explores sharing processes of dealing with institutional archives, by confronting, undoing and reframing the narratives they carry through the body of the past, present and future.
About the Artist
Farah Saleh is a Palestinian dancer, choreographer and scholar based in Scotland. She has studied linguistic and cultural mediation in Italy and in parallel continued her studies in contemporary dance. Since 2010 she took part in local and international projects with Sareyyet Ramallah Dance Company (Palestine), the Royal Flemish Theatre and Les Ballets C de la B (Belgium), Mancopy Dance Company (Denmark/Lebanon), Siljehom/Christophersen (Norway) and Candoco Dance Company (UK). Saleh has also been teaching dance, coordinating and curating artistic projects, including the Sareyyet Ramallah Summer Dance School, which she co-founded in 2016. In 2014 she won the third prize of the Young Artist of the Year Award (YAYA) organized by A.M. Qattan Foundation in Palestine for her installation A Fidayee Son in Moscow and in 2016 the dance prize of Palest’In and Out Festival in Paris for the duet La Même. She was an Associate Artist at Dance Base in Edinburgh 2017-2021 and in 2023 she earned her practice-based PhD from Edinburgh College of Art. In 2024, Saleh started a lectureship in Global Majority Performance at Theatre Studies Department at Glasgow University.
Collaborators
Creative Producer: Helen McIntosh
Studio Companion & Dramaturg: Luke Pell
Performers & Collaborators: Dani Abulhawa, Nadia Khattab, Theo Panagopoulos, Sasha Shadid,
Filmmaker and Performer: Theo Panagopoulos
Socials links