Knot - Afra Al Dhaheri & Dovydas Stramaitis | Just One Tile - Islam Elarabi

Experience two powerful dance solos exploring identity, resistance, constraint, and freedom.

Two solo dance works push the boundaries of contemporary dance, bringing movement into conversation with sculpture, street culture, identity, and freedom.

The evening features:

• Knot - dance meets sculptural installation.

• Just One Tile - Mahraganat and contemporary dance meet in a powerful solo about identity, resistance, and belonging.

Knot - Afra Al Dhaheri & Dovydas Stramaitis

Co-commissioned by The Arts Center, Knot unfolds at the intersection of choreography and visual installation. Long hair extensions gradually become rope, stretching from the performer’s body to the ceiling and surrounding space. The resulting web supports her, restricts her, and shapes every movement, turning the installation itself into part of the choreography.

Building on Al Dhaheri and Stramaitis’s ongoing exploration of hair, Knot looks at identity, culture, and transformation through the relationship between body and material. Hair becomes rope, body becomes structure, and movement becomes inseparable from the space around it.

Just One Tile - Islam Elarabi

Just One Tile is a solo by Egyptian dancer and choreographer Islam Elarabi, bringing Mahraganat and contemporary dance together through emotions of power, pride, fear, anger, joy, and resistance.

Drawing on lived experience and collective memory, Elarabi transforms the energy of Egyptian street culture into movement. Rooted in Mahraganat, the music and dance culture that emerged from Cairo’s streets, the work challenges its dismissal as “non-art” and reveals its social, political, and emotional force.

With minimal elements, Elarabi creates a physical language that moves between struggle and release. A single floor tile becomes a space for identity and survival, while moments of intense movement meet vulnerability and restraint.

The work also draws on the spirit of Cairo’s Tahrir Square and its associations with collective resistance and the pursuit of freedom.

First presented as a work-in-progress during the UN|Controlled Gestures Residency in Cairo and Berlin, Just One Tile continues to evolve as an intimate exploration of struggle, resistance, and belonging.

Experience two distinct performances where movement carries more than choreography, opening space for questions of identity, constraint, resistance, and freedom.

Event Duration

Duration: 1 hour and 30 minutes 7:30 PM – Knot - Afra Al Dhaheri & Dovydas Stramaitis: 30 minutes Interval: 30 minutes 9:00 PM – Just One Tile - Islam Elarabi: 30 minutes

Who's Performing?

Knot Artistic Direction: Afra Al Dhaheri and Dovydas Strimaitis Installation: Afra Al Dhaheri Choreography: Dovydas Strimaitis Performance: Hanna-May Porlon Dramaturgy: Agnès López-Rio Lighting Design: Thomas Laigle Musical Composition: Isa Najem, Dario Felli Technical Direction: Adrien Hosdez Costume Design: Morta Nakaitė Production: Alix Ruyant for Still Waiting Just One Tile Created and Performed by Islam Elarabi

About the Artists

Afra Al Dhaheri (Knot - Artistic Direction, Installation) Afra Al Dhaheri’s work is rooted in her experiences growing up in Abu Dhabi and the wider UAE – a place of recent and rapid change. Working across various mediums including mixed media, sculpture, drawing, painting, installation, photography, and printmaking, she draws out notions of time and adaptation, rigor and fragility. With each experiment, there is a new phase, each new phenomenon or actualization plucked from her unique vocabulary of references – repetition acts as a method for prolonging time as much as a tool through which to truly experience or realize each stage of a work. Born in 1988 in Abu Dhabi, UAE, Afra Al Dhaheri obtained her MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design, Rhode Island in 2017. She had residencies from The Salama bint Hamdan Emerging Artists Fellowship, in partnership with the Rhode Island School of Design (2014); Porthmeor Studios, St. Ives, Cornwall, UK (2019); Viafarini, Milan (2022); and The Watermill Center, NY (2023). She was among the finalists for the Richard Mille Art Prize 2022. Photo by Greg Adamski Al Dhaheri is the Creator and Artistic lead for the project Collective Exhaustion (2024), with the inaugural production supported by the National Grant for Culture and Creativity at the Ministry of Culture and Youth of the United Arab Emirates. Public commissioned works include: Union of Artists, commissioned by Dubai Culture in collaboration with Art Dubai (with artists Khalid Albanna, Shaikha Al Mazrou, Asma Belhamar and Mohamed Ahmed Ibrahim) (2024); and Pillow Fort Playground, Public Art Programme, Expo 2020, Dubai, UAE (2021). Solo exhibitions include: National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington DC (forthcoming); Sharjah Art Foundation, Sharjah, UAE (2025); Give Y

Event Policies, Terms, and Conditions

• The Arts Center at NYU Abu Dhabi is committed to providing a safe and healthy environment for all patrons. • Entry to the NYUAD Campus is through either the East or West Parking or the Welcome Center. • Please note the new campus entry requirements: you must present both your event ticket and the campus access QR code sent by email through NYUAD Campus Safety. • As per current Department of Culture and Tourism guidelines a Green Al Hosn is NO LONGER needed to attend public events in Abu Dhabi. • The wearing of face masks is NO LONGER required in most indoor public places, including campus buildings. • For access and wheelchair bookings, please email: nyuad.boxoffice@nyu.edu

How to get there

By car: Take Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan St/E10, Al Mina, and Sheikh Khalifa Bin Zayed St/E12 to Laffan St. Exit at Sheikh Khalifa Bin Zayed St/E12. Continue on Laffan Street to your destination. GPS navigation is advised. By public transportation: You can take bus 170 (Al Saadiyat New York< University Via Abu Dhabi) to the Saadiyat New York University 3 bus stop and take a short walk from there. By taxi: You can easily reach your destination via taxi or by using a ride-hailing app. Please note the new campus entry requirements: you must present both your event ticket and the campus access QR code sent by email through NYUAD Campus Safety.