Creative Residency Artist 2019
ZAHRA SHAHAB
Zahra Shahab is an independent dance artist and choreographer living on the unceded territories of the Coast Salish people. She is a graduate of the University of Calgary School of Creative and Performing Arts as well as the Modus Operandi Contemporary Dance Training Program directed by Tiffany Tregarthen and David Raymond. Often creating costume design or installation elements alongside choreography, her work looks to the fantastical to imagine alternative queer futures and ways of being that exist beyond white supremacy. Her practice examines the multiplicity of characters that we use to adapt to the world both as a tool for survival as well as portals of expansion into ways of being that are beyond our cultures normative script. She has presented choreographic work and experimental films in Calgary at the Fluid Festival, Calgary Underground Film Festival, University of Calgary and Alberta Dance Festival, in Vancouver at Dance in Vancouver, The Dance Centre’s 12 minute max, Shooting Gallery Performance, Festival of Recorded Movement, and New Works Performance, as well as in Toronto at the Toronto Dance Theatre’s Emerging Voices Program. As an interpreter she has worked for Out Innerspace Dance Theatre, Company 605, The Biting School, Hong Kong Exile, Mardon + Mitsuhashi, Mascall Dance, Emmalena Fredrikkson and Daisy Thompson.