Eman Hussein

Eman Hussein

dance, choreography, video

Cairo, Egypt & Zurich, Switzerland

Artist in Residence at Rote Fabrik from July to September 2023

Eman Hussein studied dance, street art, theater, and martial arts. Her works merge laborers daily movements and contemporary dance, amongst other arts. Working with individuals outside of art institutions is her main inspiration. She collaborates with craftsmen and workers and lives with them to learn their movements inside their workshops. Her dance film, which have been shown and won awards internationally, combine aspects of public space and contemporary dance movement. She is interested in merging all the arts she is learnt so far, as she seeks to create artistic visual works of contemporary dance, martial arts, and theatre. She is passionate about body’s natural movements in public spaces and workspaces, through experimenting with movements in spaces and attaching them to creative visual cues. Working with individuals outside of the “normal” arts institution is her main inspiration for choreography. She collaborates with craftsmen and workers, lives with them to learn their movements inside their workshops so that she has a reliable understanding of their relationship with tools and equipments and she produces works that merges the labourers daily movements and contemporary dance, amongst other arts.

Smell of Cement, dance piece

The smell of cement is very sharp, and iron too; everything on a construction site is very tough. The sun shining over their head, the workers are carrying the city on their shoulders, while constructing a building. The site manager is drawing and planning like a choreographer, the workers are like dancers. My new dance piece will be a reflection on the relation between the movement of construction workers, the structures and spaces of buildings, and contemporary dance: Body memory and work memory related to space. Working with the body goes beyond the idea of pain and sweat of the physical work itself. There is also fragility, with often not insured bodies at work, and suffering from being distanced from family and home. Besides the burning of the sun or the cold of the mornings, missing family brings another challenge on an emotional level, that impacts the quality of movement. I observed in my previous research in El Gouna (Egypt), how construction workers move mostly in a sharp way, and are constantly repeating the same movements. The work conditions stress their physical and emotional balance. They constantly work on risky grounds. Often high above the city, they have to find balance in every moment; otherwise, they fall. These are some precarious aspects dancers share with construction workers. We also test physical pain - we also work with the repetition of movement - we also often don’t have insurance because of another fact we share with the construction workers: salaries are neither high nor stable - and another crucial moment we share is the constant body movement in space. I want to combine contemporary dance with the movements of construction workers. Between cement and beauty, the worlds of the aesthetics of contemporary dance and the world of intense physical, sharp, sometimes cruel construction work, come together.

Coaching by Christoph Leuenberger

Courtesy of IG Rote Fabrik and Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia Cairo

www. prohelvetia.org.eg

Photo credits : Porträt wurde von Nooshin Shafiee, die anderen sind screenshots courtesy of the artist