Class Overview:

Soft Bodies: to reconnect with our bodies in a caring, supportive environment. We come together to soften our shells, to move, dance, breathe, voice, touch (with consent), and rest together as a community. We learn to sense our somatic experience from the body, directly from our tissues, so we can be more present and embodied. So we can resist collectively the dehumanization of our kind, humankind.

Instructor:

Meryem Alaoui is a Toronto-based dancer and choreographer from Morocco. Born in Rabat, Morocco, she attended L’École Ballet-Théâtre Zinoun, led by the late Lahcen Zinoun, in Casablanca, before moving to Canada at 18 years old to study at Le Conservatoire de Danse de Montréal followed by The School of Toronto Dance Theatre. In 2018, she founded Jasad Dance Projects, to support her vision of seeing more contemporary dance works created by and with artists, especially women, from the SWANA (Southwest Asia and North Africa) region in Canada and worldwide. Her current interests lie at the intersection of somatic research using movement and voice, and the exploration of contemporaneity through the reclamation of embodied performance practices, dances and knowledge from her culture as a Moroccan diasporic dance artist. She is a certified Body-Mind Centering® Somatic Movement Educator, and she has facilitated multiple dance and movement workshops for dancers in professional settings as well as community and arts-education contexts, such as with Toronto Dance Theatre, Tanya Lukin Linklater, Arts Etobicoke’s art programs for seniors, Haneen Women Choir and The Arab Community Centre of Toronto.