This panel, curated and facilitated by Thobile Maphanga, unpacks the choreographies that engage the politics of movement of cultural workers and outputs such as dance across territorial borders. What can (dance) artists and festival makers in our current times learn and share about navigating the limited and limiting options we have to move with freedom and grace? What strategies can we learn from the past and other fields that might aid us in the navigation of the current madness of borders closing in on / against us as we attempt to share global stories and ways of being? What does it mean to be a worldly artist in the current day and is it worth it?
THOBILE MAPHANGA is a South African dance practitioner, writer, and creative collaborator passionate about her continent and finding more holistic solutions to resolving issues of well-being and full living through the arts. She enjoys working across multiple sectors as she believes solutions can be sourced from varied understandings of the world and how people see and experience it. Her current re-occurring work endeavours are as Project Manager, Assistant Curator and Editorial Steering Committee member for JOMBA! Contemporary Dance Experience, a 26-year-old international contemporary dance festival with an online colloquium. She plays the role of performer, dramaturg and creative collaborator with hannahmadance and the People United based in Germany and Luxembourg. She is co-convener of the African Festivals Network recently re-established in 2024. And currently serving as Co-Facilitator and Mentor for The Festival Academy. She recently joined Culturescape festival in Basel as they prepare to execute their second iteration of the Sahara edition.
ABD AL HADI ABUNAHLEH is an artist who investigates movement compositions, their relationship to the human body, to knowledge and how performing arts can connect communities to a reclaiming or re-imagining of lost epistemology. Hadi is currently the Artistic Director of Jordan-based platform Studio 8, and the Artistic Director of an independent biannual festival – International Dance Encounter Amman (IDEA). Hadi’s creations, co-creations and collaborations have been presented at venues such as: Jordan National Gallery of Fine Arts (Jordan), National Center for Culture & Arts (Jordan), AUC Falaki Theater and Gallery (Egypt). Asia Culture Center (Korea). Royal College of Music (UK). Bunker Theater (UK). Ringve Music Museum (Norway) and Institute for Musicology (Hungary). Hadi is a 2019 production awardee by Culture Resource (AI-Mawred AI-Thaqafy) in performing arts .
ORWA NYRABIA is a prominent figure in documentary film and art. Since 2018, he has been the Artistic Director of the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA), the world’s largest documentary festival. Under his leadership, IDFA made strides in international representation and gender parity. Before IDFA, he co-founded Syria’s first independent film festival, DOX BOX, and produced films such as Republic of Silence (Diana El Jelroudi, Venice 2021 ), Notturno (Gianfranco Rosi, Venice 2020), Silvered Water (Ossama Mohammad, Cannes 2014), Return to Homs (Talal Derki, IDFA 2013), and Dolls, A Woman from Damascus (Diana El Jeiroudi, IDFA 2007). His work has earned awards, including the George Polk Award and the HRW Courage in Filmmaking Award. Nyrabia is a member of AMPAS the German Film Academy, and the Dutch Film Academy, and serves on the boards of several prominent organizations.
DR. PRINCESS SIBANDA is a scholar artivist whose research interests lie in participatory performance forms and their intersections with gender, sexualities and environmental justice in Africa. She has curated a number of theatrical interventions in Zimbabwe and South Africa on African queer stories and environmental justice, which she conceptualizes as ‘Festivals of the Oppressed’. In 2018, she was awarded the Canon Collins Scholars Scholar award as well as a community engagement award (UKZN) in recognition of her scholar-artivist work.
KATERYNA BOTANOVA is an independent cultural researcher and curator who lives and works between Ukraine and Switzerland. She writes and lectures on ecosystems, decoloniality, and solidarity in societal transformations and cultural practices. She co-curates the Swiss multidisciplinary biennial Culturescapes, where she worked with the cultural landscapes of the Amazon and Northern and Western African regions (2019-2025). Currently, she is a head of analytics at the Frontier Institute, Kyiv, and an affiliated curator at the Research Platform of the PinchukArtCenter, Kyiv. Botanova is a member of PEN Ukraine and a member of the advisory board of RUTA-Association for Central, Southeastern, Eastern European, Baltic, Caucasus, Central and Northern Asian Studies. The last book she edited, Reclaiming History: Decoloniality and Art in Ukraine after 1991, is coming out in the spring of 2025. In the summer of 2025, she will curate exhibitions Kherson: Embrace of the Steppe in Mystetskyi Arsenal (Kyiv) and Archipelago of History in PinchukArtCenter (Kyiv) .