PRECIPITATE | the participants
Bassam Abou Diab - Lebanon
Bassam Abou Diab is a Lebanese actor, dancer and choreographer, focusing on contemporary dance and folklore. He’s been dancing with Maqamat Dance Company for several years where he worked on four creations: “Mushrooms and Fig Leaves”, “Hibr”, “That Part of Heaven” and “Watadour”.
Bassam also performed in many theater plays with different directors in Lebanon like Nidal al Ashkar, Jawad al Asadi, Ossama Halal, Rouaida al Ghali, Badih Abou Chakra, and Malek Andary. In addition, he created, choreographed and danced in 5 performances: "not connected", "under the flesh", “Of What I remember”, “Eternal” and “Pina My Love”.
He co-created a performance titled “Incontro” with Jacopo Jenna in which they dance together, and another co-creation project “Who cares” with four young Mediterranean choreographers. He also directed and choreographed “The Siege/L’Assedio” with Monica Ciarcelluti and directed plus choreographed for Green/Dance entropy company part of “home” presented in New York, both performances were based on ‘Rituals and movements’ workshop that he facilitated. And last but not least, he directed and choreographed “Phalastinian karma” with the National Academy of Rome.
Kathryn Spence -
Scotland
Kathryn is a dance artist and choreographer based in the Shetland Islands. Their choreography work is often inspired by the environment, and my community-based work is inspired by people. Kathryn studied Postgraduate Diploma Community Dance at Laban, London. Their work has toured internationally, with a highlight being on Sadler’s Wells main stage. They recently made a dance film with collaborators which was commissioned by The BBC and is currently available on iPlayer as part of their Dance Anthology. Kathryn teach Shetland Youth Dance Company and Dance for Dementia classes and was a Regional Artist for Dance North. They have also programmed and produced dance work, including being Co-Director of DanceLive Festival 2019.
links: website
Liz Strange - Scotland
Liz Strange is an Edinburgh-based actor who specializes in visually driven theatre that is devised, interactive and subversive. She has worked extensively in physical theatre with companies such as Company Of Wolves, Mischief La-Bas, Al Seed Productions, Tatraum Projekte Schmidt, Hearts & Minds, Plutôt la Vie and Surge.
Liz trained as an actor at the Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts and The Desmond Jones School of Mime and Physical Theatre both in London, and the City Varsity Film and TV School in Cape Town. She has continued to train further in ensemble practice, clown, and bouffon. Liz also has a degree in Community Education from the University of Edinburgh and is currently undertaking the Professional Development Award in British Sign Language and Deaf Studies.
She is a company member with Theatre Of the Oppressed company Active Inquiry, where she facilitates theatre projects with a wide range of community groups and organizations. She also often works with writers workshopping scripts in development and performing rehearsed readings.
She is currently collaborating with Judith Milligan, Estlin Love, and Fiona Oliver-Larkin on The Furies.
links: instagram
Sarah Fadel - Lebanon
Sarah Fadel received her MFA in Choreography (with Merit) from the University of Roehampton – London, UK (2017). During her studies, she choreographed and collaborated with other artists on many pieces including “...Not Really.” (In a collaboration with the writer Lloyd Slinger), and “THAWRATH” in collaboration with composer Sophya Polevaya (Royal Academy of Music). Her thesis “Zekra” was based on her practice that uses translation processes as a tool for movement generation. Her interest in translation and linguistics
stems from her BA in translation which she received from USEK, Lebanon (2011). In addition to the two degrees she holds, she took courses at the University of Paris VIII in dance studies. She also holds a Dancer Prima Diploma and a Teaching Certificate from Al Sarab Alternative Dance School where she has been teaching for the past 15 years. She’s been part of the Al Sarab Dance Company since 2007, choreographing and performing in several company productions.
Since her return to Lebanon in 2017, Sarah’s also been an assistant professor of Dance at the Lebanese American University, the Co-Artistic Director of Al Sarab Dance Company, and a committee member of the International Dance Day Festival in Lebanon. Sarah has collaborated with many artists, musicians, writers, and composers from many nationalities resulting in performances in London, Paris, and Lebanon, as well as working alongside Al Sarab Dance Company to create two dance films that were selected and screened in 13 international film festivals around the world.
links: instagram
Natasha Karam - Lebanon
Natasha Karam is a multidisciplinary creative practitioner based in Lebanon. She dances between movement, images, words, and sounds as a medium to question herself and her environment. Her focus mostly falls on the intersection between the human and natural world and the beauty existing in everyday life. As a visual artist, she participated in various group exhibitions in Lebanon and Scotland, with the most recent being part of Art Design Lebanon in December 2021, where she presented a mixed media installation called “Given The Time”, under the shade of an olive tree reflecting on the production of olive oil in time and space.
As a movement artist, she initiated a short dance film supported by Maqamat entitled “Turbulent Flow” featured in BIPOD festival 2022, in which she figures both as a dancer and choreographer. She is currently participating as a dancer in Body Watani’s ongoing project “Terranea” led by Leila Awadallah.
links: Instagram
Jian Yi - Scotland
Jian Yi is a multidisciplinary performance artist working across live art, experimental theatre, and contemporary dance. Jian Yi’s work has been performed and exhibited in major institutions such as Dance Base Edinburgh, Tramway, and CCA Glasgow.
“My practice is rooted in an ongoing inquiry into the ambiguities of emotional experience. I often investigate non-linear performance methodologies, expanding the practice of dance into the realm of the experiential-unconscious. I am interested in bridging the gap between our mind and our animal selves, the connection between the inside and the outside; exploring what happens when this border between public and private, exterior and interior, opens up. In my interrogation of these issues, the figure of the 'social outsider' takes center stage, estranging everyday realities through intensified mental and emotional states. Through my multidisciplinary work, I seek to explore the experiential trauma of marginalized persons within our society, such as neurodiverse and queer people of color, and how we reflect on the broader human condition. Working with psychic space to build a sense of physical embodiment, I am interested to process the complexities of personal suffering.”
PRECIPITATE | the mentors
Farah Saleh / mentor for Bassam & Kathryn
Farah Saleh is a Palestinian dancer and choreographer 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).
Also since 2010, Saleh has been teaching dance, coordinating and curating artistic projects. 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 she won 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 is currently finishing her practice-based PhD at Edinburgh College of Art and touring her latest works.
links: instagram
Lucy Suggate / mentor for Natasha & Jian
Lucy Suggate is a dance artist and choreographer based in the UK. Making working since 2003 she is recognised for her articulate and engaging solo performances as well as choreographic installations and public scores inspired by aspects of synchronicity and cooperation. Her movement practice is an ongoing inquiry into the perceptual and physical expansion that occurs when engaged in longterm moving and thinking. A lot of her current focus is around occupying spaces to practice in, investigating sustainability and revisioning future dance spaces as dynamic and flexible operations.
links: instagram I website
Lou Platt / mentor for Sarah & Liz
Lou is the founder and director of The Artist Wellbeing Company. In 2012, she began supporting the mental health of those working in creative industries when a local theatre company asked her for support. Since then she has slowly but steadily built innovative practices that support those working in creative industries, paying particular attention to where the performative and personal meet. Lou believes in helping all those working in the creative industries develop practices that are exciting, risk taking but are most importantly supported, self-aware and care-taking of those involved.
For Lou, being an Artist Wellbeing Practitioner is a unique synthesis of being a Dramatherapist, Clinical supervisor, Internal Family Systems Practitioner, and independent theatre maker/performer. Through use of compassionate therapeutic techniques, open dialogue and psycho-education, Lou strives to enable artists, production teams, venues and organisations to not only take radical care of their mental health and wellbeing, but to also reach and maintain their fullest creative potential.
Lou has worked as an Artist Wellbeing Practitioner within theatre, film, TV, dance, visual arts, writing and the music industries. She has worked with independent theatre productions with the likes of Caroline Horton & Ursula Martinez, through to supporting main house productions at Regents Park Open Air Theatre. She has worked for TV series and films such as I May Destroy You (BBC/HBO), Dangerous Liaisons (Starz), Floodlights (BBC), and is currently working with her team supporting over 20 productions or individuals in theatre, TV and Film.
links: Instagram I website