CREATRIX
CONTEMPORARY DANCE, THEATRE, PERFORMANCE
WORK IN PROGRESS // 2020 - ONGOING
> Collaborators:
Choreographer: Mona El Husseini
Performers: Hala Farahat + Mona El Husseini
Dramaturg: Fatma Sarah El Kashef
Music Composition: Wael Kodeih + Love & Revenge
Light Designer: Nien-Tzu Weng
Techinical Director: Darah Miah
Costume Design Consultant: Sophie El-Assaad
> Supported by:
Montréal, Arts Interculturels (MAI), Conseil des Arts de Montréal (CAM), Canada Council for the Arts
> Residencies:
Studio303 Residency, Centre de Création O Vertigo (CCOV), CAM+MAI Alliance Joint Support
> Exhibitions & Events:
Montréal, Arts Interculturels: Season 2023 - 2024 Programming
Creatrix* is a dance duet in collaboration with my mother, Hala - a medical doctor, science teacher, and mother of three - who is not trained in dance.
Using tokens, photos, and letters passed down across generations, we reflect on our past, where we come from and where we now find ourselves... We move through our genealogy in an attempt to better understand ourselves - and each other - by getting to know those who came before us.
We visit home in our fluid memories and vivid childhoods. We try to touch all that is fleeting and step on the intangible rhythms that animate our heritage. We bring our opposing worlds to one another and search for the common denominator between art and science, motherhood and girlhood, past and present. My mother always says she wants to write her memoir, so may this dance count as a prelude.
In Creatrix we ask: How do we give voice to stories suppressed within us? Can we ever consolidate the totality of our fragmented identity? Where do we meet and where do we part? And how do we collaboratively give voice to our shared past?
*definition: a female who brings forth or produces; a mother. A female founder, authoress, creatrix.
credits
PHOTOS BY: Roxanne Ross, Kimura Boyl / VIDEO 001 BY: Siam Obregon & MUSIC BY: Wael Kodeih
GALLERY
projects
PROJECTS
ABOUT
about me
Mona El Husseini is a dancer and visual artist, based between Montreal and Cairo. She completed her dance education at the Cairo Contemporary Dance Center (CCDC) in Egypt and studied International Business and Contemporary Dance at Concordia University.
Mona choreographs and performs her own artistic projects, she collaborates with other artists as a choreographer and performer, and she also teaches contemporary dance, barre, and pilates. Her pieces have been performed in Egypt, Germany, Italy, and Canada.
In 2023, Mona premiered Creatrix, a dance duet with her mother, and published Family Portraits, a graphic memoir and visual art series at the MAI (Montréal, Arts Interculturels). She is currently developing Monday or Tuesday, a dance solo, and Rabbet Manzel // House Goddess, a visual art series - both of which were presented at upRising Up festival in Puglia, Italy, in 2022.
In 2018, Mona had a performing role in When Arabs Danced, a TIFF- and FIFA-featured documentary film by Jawad Rhalib, and in 2022, she was the lead actress in ‘Gigi’ and in ‘Mango’, two short films by director Randa Ali. That same year she choreographed ‘Mama,’ a theatre piece by Nathalie Doummar, which was presented at Théâtre Duceppe and at Festival Juste Pour Rire in Montreal.
Mona is the current recipient of the Conseil des Arts de Montréal (CAM) + Montréal, Arts Interculturels (MAI) Alliance joint support program.
Artistic Approach
In her artistic process, Mona goes beyond dance and traces the thread that connects the different art forms she practices including martial arts, visual arts, and writing. She is interested in how stories are transmitted, shared, and told through the body across generations. She finds the dance in the encounter between the intimate and the collective, the traditional and the contemporary, and in the space where the inner and outer meet.