The Arts Center at NYU Abu Dhabi (NYUAD) is pleased to welcome back Aakash Odedra Company with the world premiere of its topical contemporary dance show #JeSuis on Wednesday, February 7 to Friday, February 9.

Award-winning Odedra is back in the UAE with a new ensemble work that explores the relevance of life and conflict. Working with a group of Turkish dancers, #JeSuis was inspired by their collective responses to misinterpretations of their motherland by the media. The performance is wrapped up in wider issues including refuge, instability and displacement, both politically and geographically; it explores the collective frustrations of life in homelands under conflict, where the meaning of “home” seems at risk.

Hosted in  The Black Box at The Arts Center, this performance is one of the closing events of the UK/UAE 2017 Year of Creative Collaboration in partnership with the British Council.

Born in Birmingham UK, Aakash has performed his self-crafted dance technique across the globe, being commissioned to create work in New York, Croatia, Canada, Italy and even for Her Majesty The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations and the closing of the London Cultural Olympiad. Akash Odedra Company was formed in 2011 not only for Aakash to develop his own choreographic work, but as a vehicle for commissioning solos. #JeSuis is the first group piece Odedra is choreographing for his own company.

In a time where the role of the media has been placed under high scrutiny across the world, Aakash, who recently arrived in Abu Dhabi, said: “It is a great pleasure to be working in an environment with people from all corners of the world; I feel this diversity will allow for platforms of positive discourse to take place through our medium of dance-theatre. #JeSuis touches on issues that affect us all as humans, it is a piece about those plights that have not been “hashtagged” by the mainstream media.

Amidst our times of war; our hope for the future is for spiritual uplift that embraces every person around the globe.”

“Aakash’s previous visit to Abu Dhabi, presenting his piece Murmur 2.0 about his own dyslexia, left a profound impression on our community. We’re thrilled to support this next major step in his artistic development, and the world premiere of a piece that engages in topical issues so powerfully. Aakash Odedra Company’s residency also marks a major leap in the integration of The Arts Center’s public programming with NYUAD’s academic departments. Professor Debra Levine just led a J-Term (January-term) class, “How Movement Makes Meaning” that tracked the development of the piece through the twin lenses of dance dramaturgy and refugee issues. We hope this level of deep interaction with our students will continue to inform the final dance theater piece, and that the documentation the students generated will continue to support the work as it tours to such venues as the Birmingham Hippodrome and London’s Sadler’s Wells."