2009: Performance, Ritual, Reality ~ workshop at the DAI with a final presentation at the Rijksmuseum Twenthe ~ as part of The Other Sudan Festival

The Dutch Art Institute (DAI), Enschede in collaboration with the College of Music and Drama (Khartoum) and the Institute for Theatre Studies (Amsterdam) organized a five days workshop, for students and young artists from various cultural backgrounds, entitled "Performance, Ritual and Reality". The initiators' aim was to set a multidisciplinary platform (dance, theatre, visual arts and performances) researching on various practices in relation to the often rather transparent - dividing lines between theatre, rituals and reality.

The workshop took place in Enschede, under the roof of the DAI (faculties and DAI house) from the 2nd until the 6th of November 2009 and concluded with a presentation on the 6th of November at the Rijksmuseum Twenthe in Enschede. 

"Performance, Ritual and Reality" was part of THE OTHER SUDAN festival (http://www.artsafrica.org) and will be lead both from Sudanese choreographer Stephen Ochalla and Netherlands based visual artist Monali Meher from India, bringing those seemingly different cultural backgrounds and practices into a dialectic frame. The organizers could boost quite an already fruitful connection to Sudan. Mieke Kolk (THE OTHER SUDAN festival) is the president of the FOUNDATION ARTS IN DEVELOPMENT SUDAN (http://www.artsafrica.org), while DAI initiated a successful workshop in Khartoum in 2007 as part of the HERE AS THE CENTRE OF THE WORLD project (curated by Lucy Cotter, Gabriëlle Schleijpen & Alite Thijsen) - which set off several collaborations with individual Sudanese artists. 

The participants list already included c students from the DAI as well as alumni, students from the Choreography Master Program of ArtEZ, visual artists and performers from Sudan and students of the Institute for Theatre Studies (Amsterdam).