Zahra Shahab was an intentional creative who dedicated over 12 years of her life to choreographing, performing and teaching movement and dance. With a childhood in Islam, a youth in Christianity, an early adulthood cracked open by feminism/queer theories and cradled by Sufi curiosity, she investigated spirituality, identity, and death through her artistic work. Often creating costume design or installation elements alongside choreography, her work looked to the fantastical to imagine alternative queer futures and ways of being that exist beyond normative cultural scripts. 

Her creative practice reflects her lifelong dedication to her own self-work; fearlessly facing her fears to become friends with her inner monsters. She recognized the multiplicity of characters that exist within each identity, and examined how they morph and interact within her inner and outer landscapes; rippling through the world around her. She welcomed collisions with the divine through experiences that would help her shed old versions of herself and make space for transformed beings to emerge. In her own words “the continual fluid process of generating identity in relation to the perceived world alongside the freedom to dismantle it the moment it began to crystalize. ~ The only certainty is flux, a space somewhere between dissolution and emergence.”

Zahra was born in Calgary, Canada as a first generation Canadian with Arab paternal roots tracing through Singapore, Indonesia and Yemen, alongside an British maternal ancestry. She began her practice in dance at the University of Calgary, receiving a Bachelor of Arts with distinction in 2014 along with a minor in Visual Studies. She relocated to Vancouver in 2015 to study with Modus Operandi Contemporary Dance Training Program and at Emily Carr University. (She presented choreographic work and experimental films in Calgary at the Fluid Festival, Calgary Underground Film Festival, University of Calgary and Alberta Dance Festival, and in Vancouver at Dance in Vancouver, The Dance Centre’s 12 minute max, Shooting Gallery Performance, Festival of Recorded Movement, PushOFF, New Works Performance, Dance West Network, as well as in Toronto at the Toronto Dance Theatre’s Emerging Voices Program. As an interpreter she also worked for many Vancouver based dance companies/choreographers such as Out Innerspace Dance Theatre, Company 605, The Biting School, and Hong Kong Exile.)

She was a loving sister to five siblings, a dear daughter, a close friend to many, an inspiring teacher, an admired choreographer and dancer, an aspiring poet, an inquisitive visual artist, a persistent activist, and a devoted spiritual being. She is deeply loved by many. Zahra died unexpectedly at age 32 during an intentional solitary period of deep self reflection; a deep dive into re-discovering her core being and connecting with Spirit. We do not know how or why she left this world, but we know she now lives on in her truest possible form. Her expansive limbs now fully stretched out, wrapped around this world holding all of her dear ones. We miss her dearly and hope to continue to nurture the seeds she has planted here on earth.