The Carol Rifelj Faculty Lecture Series presents a talk on Wednesday, Feb. 26, from 4:30-6 p.m., discussing “From ‘Arab Street’ to Stage: Muslimness and Masculinity in Maghrebi Contemporary Dance.” This lecture will be held in the Franklin Environmental Center, The Orchard-Hillcrest room 103, 531 College Street in Middlebury, and is free and open to the public.

Over the past two decades contemporary dance in North Africa has emerged as a fusion form of street vocabulary, bboy virtuosity, traditional Sufi ritual, Orientalist trope, and postmodern aesthetic. This talk will focus on how shifting notions of Muslim corporeality in the region intersect with gender performativity, local political economies, and transnational artistic production networks. Through case studies of works by choreographers Abou Lagraa, Khalid Benghrib and Hervé Koubi, fieldwork research illuminates how dancers navigate the possibilities and constraints of artistic aspiration and their expressions of religious identity both on and off stage.

For more information visit middlebury.edu/events.