A night of live art performances, by Hiva Sedaghat Sedaghat & Ensemble Decipher’s abstract dance piece, “The Sound Sleep Has Been Shattered”, Azadeh Kangarani’s self-referential play titled “Strung Up at the Airport”, and Esha Sadr & Ramin Etemadi Bozorg one time performance art piece titled “A DOCUMENT FOR A CERTAIN DEATH”.
Show 1: “ The Sound Sleep Has been Shattered”
In that moment when the consciousness of day has long left you and the sound sleep has been shattered, the moment does extend and it keeps stretching within you into a dark night; until your awakening arrives and falls on its knees, facing a long long day.
Show 2: A DOCUMENT FOR A CERTAIN DEATH
Esha Sadr and Ramin Etemadi Bozorg are exploring the meaning of Marino Marini poem, “It was built, destroyed and it remained a sad song on the world” in their one-time performance art piece.
Show 3: “Strung Up at the Airport”
Strung Up at the Airport is a self-referential play, written and performed by Azadeh Kangarani. She shares her memories of being in different countries and her struggles with police officers because of her passport. Her various encounters with other people at different airports make her revise her approach and her judgments of other nationalities. She also questions her own identity and tries to find an answer to it.
Show 1: The Sound Sleep Has Been Shattered
Choreographed and performed by Hiva SedaghatSound designer: Ensemble DecipherSet designer: Sadra Tehrani
In that moment when the consciousness of day has long left you and the sound sleep has been shattered, the moment does extend and it keeps stretching within you into a dark night; until your awakening arrives and falls on its knees, facing a long long day.
Hiva is an Iranian choreographer, dancer and performance artist from Tehran, and currently based in New York City. Coming from a background of architecture, photography and literature, she first got to know Contemporary Dance via the underground scene in Tehran which gave her the opportunity to bring together her personal, social and political experiences through making interdisciplinary pieces that are a mixture of dance, theatre and video.
She continued her journey in this field by participating in various workshops, masterclasses, intensive programs and laboratories in Iran, Lebanon, Turkey, Europe and most recently in NYC.
Her Dance Pieces: “Through the Skin”, “Azi Dahaka”, and “Room” have been presented at festivals across Europe and the Middle East, including the MaHa Body Movement Festival, the Beirut International Platform of Dance, The Zürcher Theatre Spektakel, and Spring Dance Festival.
She has participated in many international artistic residencies and has a strong passion for collaboration and exchange with different cultures and artists from around the world, her artistic journey which live somewhere between personal quotidian events and common human emotions, create a space for improvisation, imagination, transformation and communication as a response from the introverted body of an Iranian woman, vulnerable at times, resilient at others.
Her recent research and current projects are focusing on Iranian and Eastern myths and culture and their relevance today, both personally and globally.
Ensemble Decipher is a modular, experimental music group that performs with vintage, contemporary, and emerging technologies. Founded in 2017 by Niloufar Nourbakhsh, Ensemble Decipher strives to redefine performer virtuosity by drawing on the technological advancements of our time in order to highlight new voices and ways of listening. By reexamining new music and integrating technology into their performance practice, Ensemble Decipher seeks to reflect on and challenge the power structures that lace the field of electroacoustic music. Recent works commissioned by the group have mobilized network technologies, accelerometers attached to rocks, boxes trained via machine learning to respond to touch, acoustic instruments, and laptops. This has led Ensemble Decipher to collaborate with notable composers and technologists including Mara Helmuth, Margaret Schedel, Hannah Davis, Yaz Lancaster, and Lainie Fefferman and premiere works by many others. Recent feature performances include concerts at the Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States, International Computer Music Conference, New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival, Network Music Festival, and an ensemble residency at EarFest. Current members include Joseph Bohigian, Robert Cosgrove, Eric Lemmon, Chelsea Loew, Taylor Long, and Niloufar Nourbakhsh. For the current season Ensemble Decipher has been awarded a SUNY PACC Prize and a USArtists International Grant from the Mid-Atlantic Arts Council to commission composers Kamala Sankaram, Paul Leary, Daria Semegen, Jose Tomás Henriques, Jamie Leigh Sampson, and Mari Kimura for performances in Denmark and across New York State.
Show 2: A DOCUMENT FOR A CERTAIN DEATH
Performers and Creators: Esha Sadr & Ramin Etemadi Bozorg
Esha Sadr and Ramin Etemadi Bozorg are exploring the meaning of Marino Marini poem, “It was built, destroyed and it remained a sad song on the world” in their one-time performance art piece.
Esha Sadr-Eshkevari is an Iranian artist and writer. Born in Nooshahr in 1983, Esha spent her childhood in port cities of Iran, attending exceptional talents school from 1994 to 2001. She attended Art and Architecture University and graduated with MA degree, she divides her time between Prague, Vienna, and Tehran during her PhD. in Theater, Film, and Media. Esha has been working on many Intercultural and interdisciplinary art projects. She works in a variety of media including documentary film, theatre, performance art, video art, and writing. Esha has exhibited performances throughout Iran, USA, France, Germany, and Morocco, since 2012. She has also begun a video art & text series which she named “Little Confessions of Life” more than 100 less than 1miniute mute videos since 2011. In addition, she has been published by numerous art critics in new media and theater media within.
Ramin Etemadi-Bozorg is an Iranian conceptual artist. Born in 1977 Tehran, He produces work in a variety of media redominantly sculpture, including painting, performance art, video art and installation. Ramin graduated in BA ainting from Art and Architecture University, Iran in 2001. He has been involved in many new-media projects that have emerged in Iran for the first time. Examples of his past work was introducing performance arts and video arts for the first time in Iranian history. He is a member of “Iranian Society of Painters”, “Iranian society of sculptures” and “Iranian promotion of visual arts”. Through Ramin’s work he expresses the compassion which has been partly banned or forgotten due to the characteristics of his society. He constantly documents anything from the social-political events to the most intimate personal unspoken. Ramin had fourteen solo exhibition (painting, sculpture, video art), fifteen performance arts, and also attending more than seventy group exhibition, art festivals, Expo and Biennale in Iran, USA, Canada, Germany, Switzerland, Australia, Turkey, Morocco, UAF, Armenia and China.
Show 3: “Strung Up at the Airport”
A one-woman show created by Azadeh Kangarani
Performer and Creator Azadeh Kangarani
Strung Up at the Airport is a self-referential play, written and performed by Azadeh Kangarani. She shares her memories of being in different countries and her struggles with police officers because of her passport. Her various encounters with other people at different airports make her revise her approach and her judgments of other nationalities. She also questions her own identity and tries to find an answer to it.
Azadeh Kangarani is a freelance theatre director, actor, and writer. She started her career in Tehran her hometown and continued, in UAE, and in Europe. Currently, Azadeh is based in Washington DC and works as a multimedia journalist.
Azadeh was a television line producer and TV news show director at Radio Free Europe in Prague, Czech Republic (2016-2021)
She was a lecturer at Prague City University in the Department of Media & IT and Charles University in the Czech Republic (2017-2021). She graduated from The Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (2016) And currently is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Theatre Studies at Charles University. Azadeh maintains being active in diverse and multicultural environments where there are opportunities to share her values with others.