Dancing the Art of Weeping: 

A Collaboration with Piñata Dance Collective and Mary Hazboun

Woven into each evening of performances in FLACC 2024: El Grito por Thawra الثورة ,  is a projected intermedia installation by renowned, Palestinian visual artist, Mary Hazboun. Based in Chicago, Mary’s work highlights the nuanced traumas of women and their resistance against different forms of oppression that is manifested in the military machine, patriarchal societies, and forced migrations.  As part of this Latinx-Palestinian solidarity project, Bay Area Dance choreographers, Leila Mire, Liz Duran Boubion, Nefertiti Altán and Madyline Jaramillo will be setting works to the images and vocal narrations by Hazboun. 

I.

A Hill and a Valley 

Choreographer and Performer: Leila Mire

Detached- Mary Hazboun (Title of Drawing and Text) 

Music: The piece is set to “Tallat el Baroude” by Sanaa Moussa, a well-known Palestinian folk song dating back to the 1936-1939 Palestinian revolt against the British Mandate. Traditionally, women sang this song to express their anguish and grief over losing husbands and sons, and it powerfully captures the sorrowful image of women waiting for their loved ones to return from war. According to tradition, a surviving warrior would take up the weapons of his fallen comrades to return them to the family—typically to the wife or eldest member—honoring the memory of those lost.

II.

Dancing the Art of Weeping

Choreographers and Performers:  Nefertiti Charlene Atlan, Liz Duran Boubion and Madyline Jaramillo

Music/Sound: Mary Hazboun (narrations), Nefertiti Altan (Key), 

Le Trio Joubran, “Masâr” (Wall Dance), El Jehaz- Gaza Unedited: 24/7 Drone 

(Bodyland), Seaside (War Child) 

Drawings and Text: Mary Hazboun

1. I wish I was a Bird 
2. Bodyland
3. War Child
4. Key
5. My Home is in a Suitcase
6. Indigenous Refugee Experience
7. Wall Dance

Liz Duran Boubion is a second generation Chicana and queer choreographer, the artistic director of the Piñata Dance Collective founded in 2011 and founder of Festival of Latin American Contemporary Choreographers (FLACC) since 2014.  Ms. Boubion has held several choreographers residencies in the US, Mexico and Germany and is a Tamalpa Life-Art Practitioner. She received her BA in Dance from CSU Long Beach in 1993 and her MFA in Creative Inquiry from California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco in 2011. Boubion has been published in InDance Magazine, Stance on Dance, Life As A Modern Dancer and is registered with the International Somatic Movement Education and Therapy Association (ISMETA). She teaches dance to all ages and abilities and is a regular guest teacher in local universities, Contact Improv jams and national dance festivals. www.lizboubion.org, www.flaccdanza.org

Nefertiti Charlene Altan is a native-black queer interdisciplinary performance artist who has created work at the intersection of the body, sound, rhythm, and place with artists from the Americas, Africa, and Europe for over a decade. Of Guatemalan roots born and raised in the bay area, California, she has lived in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil since 2013, where she has studied, created, and practiced contemporary and folk performing arts within a Latin-American context as an extension of her Afro-indigneous latinidad. She received her BA in anthropology and community studies from UC Santa Cruz in 2006, a technical degree in dance from the Bahia State Cultural Foundation (FUNCEB) in 2016, and has studied and performed with esteemed mestres and pioneers of Afro-Brazilian dance and music in Bahia and Pernambuco. She received her MFA in dance practice from Saint Mary’s College of California in 2024.

Madyline Jaramillo (they/she) is a queer artist of Mexican, German, and Irish descent and grew up in Nisenan, California (known also as Grass Valley). Madyline has explored a variety of dance forms—including contemporary, contact improvisation, somatic movement, hip hop, ballet, modern, and vertical dance.

Currently, they are a student at Sonoma State University, pursuing degrees in Dance and Business, while also being a newly enrolled cohort member at Rennie Harris University, attending academic lectures led by scholars of hip hop dance history and culture. 

Madyline strives to be deeply involved in their surrounding communities while studying. They are an organizer with Students for Justice in Palestine and conduct the Dance Collective, a club on campus that has hosted weekend workshops in the past to bridge local dance teachers, local dance community, and students. Madyline moves to direct their artistic purpose toward projects that serve as a practice in embodied expression, activism and reimagining dance spaces. 

Leila Mire (she/her) is a researcher, performer, choreographer, community organizer, educator, and writer. Her studies focus on the role of imperialism and Zionism in modern dance and problematize how folk dance is used to advance neoliberal agendas. She is currently in the Theatre, Dance, Performance Studies PhD program at UC Berkeley and is a graduate of NYU (MA in Performance Studies) and George Mason (BFA in Dance Performance.) To follow her work subscribe to leilamiredance.com