NYAF at La MaMa MOVES! Performing Histories: Live Happenings

In celebration of the fierce poetics of Arab avant-garde poets and artists Joyce Mansour and Etel Adnan, this four-day “happening” illuminates La MaMa ETC with a kaleidoscope of live dance, music, poetry, and film. Presented as part of the La MaMa MOVES! Festival and the New York Arab Festival, the program brings together a dynamic constellation of New York-based Arab and Arab American artists whose work blurs boundaries and reclaims narrative space with raw intimacy and visionary force.

Featuring choreographer and dancer Nadia Khayrallah, poet and performance artist Andrew Riad, actor Amr Kotb, musicians and composers Michael Joseph Burdi and Carol Gimbel, and films by choreographer and filmmaker Sarah Brahim, the event unfolds as a living archive of resistance, memory, and transformation. Together, these artists channel the ghosts of Arab surrealism and diasporic longing into new rituals of expression—hybrid, fractured, luminous.

PANELS: Performing Histories
As part of the ongoing research project Tawareekh: Contemporary Arab Art Histories and within the framework of New York Arab Festival, a panel discussion will take place on May 4th following the 5pm performance. The panel will explore performance making, decolonial practices, and underrepresented art histories. 

Opening with keynote presentations by Palestinian performance artist and filmmaker, Khaled Jarrar, and Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape theatermaker and multi-disciplinary artist, Opalanietet, the discussions will delve into alternative art histories, personal narratives, and methodologies for creating dance and theatre in challenging contexts.

ABOUT

About the New York Arab Festival:
New York Arab Festival (NYAF) is a multidisciplinary festival spanning all genres of art, culture, design, cuisine, philosophy, and intersecting industries. It programs arts and culture from the Arabic-speaking region and the Arab diaspora and showcases Arab American artists. NYAF was established in 2022 to commemorate Arab American Heritage Month and fight the erasure of Arab and Arab American identities from NYC, a place Arabs have called home for over three centuries. NYAF is organized and run by its founding members: Artistic Director and Curator Adham Hafez, Urbanist and Curator Adam Kucharski, and founding Senior Producer Cindy Sibilsky. NYAF is produced by HaRaKa Platform and powered by Wizara LLC in partnership with many celebrated institutions in NYC and worldwide. NYAF 2025 runs April 1-May 30.
www.newyorkarabfestival.com
@newyorkarabfestivalofficial

CREDITS

NYAF at La MaMa MOVES! Performing Histories: Live Happenings is conceived and curated by Adham Hafez, directed and produced by Cindy Sibilsky and developed in collaboration with the artists Andrew Riad, Nadia Khayrallah, Carol Gimbel and Michael Joseph Burdi. New York Arab Festival is a celebration of Arab and Arab American arts and culture, taking place yearly in New York City.

BIOS

Michael Joseph Burdi (Musician)

Michael Joseph Burdi is a multi-instrumentalist and composer of Syrian and Italian descent from Brooklyn, New York. Michael plays traditional Arabic instruments, such as oud, ney, darbuka, and riq. Michael plays locally and internationally with his band, Harmal, formerly Baharat Band, and other ensembles. Michael uses the maqam modal system to compose and create a new sound that is rooted in the tradition of these ancient instruments and scales.

Carol Gimbel (Musician)

Carol Gimbel is a trailblazing violist, creator, and radio host known for “obliterating the traditional audience-performer boundary.” From the stages of Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center to concerts in barns, storefronts, silos, even a transformed generating stations, her critically acclaimed initiatives—such as Music in the Barns and the award-winning #1000Strings—reimagine how audiences experience classical music. Ms. Gimbel has led the premiere and commission of numerous  major works, including two recent releases: a celebrated Canadian chamber music album on New Focus Recordings, praised as “brilliant, stunning and skillful” (The Wire), and Chamber Works for Viola on Navona Records, showcasing the evocative music of composer David Jaeger, C.M.. She made her New York debut at Lincoln Center’s Rose Studio in 2019 and has since appeared at festivals such as Piccolo Spoleto, Ottawa ChamberFest, and Festival de Febrero, collaborating with renowned artists including Bob Cafaro, Cullan Bryant, Marina Poplavskaya, Laura Hamilton, and the Attacca Quartet, with a standout performance of Schoenberg’s 2nd String Quartet for the Kaleidoscope Series, attended by the Schoenberg family. Currently, with the generous support of the Canada Council for the Arts Digital Strategies Fund, Ms. Gimbel is exploring strategies for making music pedagogy more accessible with the development and early testing of a prototype gamified musical instrument. She also co-hosts the weekly classical show Why Do We Only Listen to Dead People? on WFMU 91.9FM. Ms. Gimbel performs on the ex- Emanuel Vardi c. 1725. www.carolgimbel.com

Amr Kotb (Performer)

Amr Kotb is a New York-based, Egyptian-American writer and actor. Active in film, theater, TV, voiceover, and commercials, he is drawn to dry/dark comedy and social commentary. He recently starred in a one-act that he wrote and directed, which showed at the Brooklyn Art Haus. He has written, produced, and acted in several satirical sketches and news reports, including “Headlines with Amr.” His acting credits include Law and Order: SVU, “Arrangements,” and “Life is Good,” among others. He also writes essays and editorials on society, culture, and politics, with a recent piece in “New Lines Magazine.” His pilot, Public Servitude, was recently selected as a quarterfinalist in the 2025 Screencraft Screenwriting Fellowship. IG: @amrqotb Bluesky:  @amrkotb.bsky.social Website: www.amrkotb.com

Nadia Khayrallah (performer)

Nadia Khayrallah is a Lebanese-American dance artist, writer, (dis)content creator and community (dis)organizer, rooted in history and fantasy, form and groove, esoterica and common sense. They have worked as a company member with Parijata Performance Projects, Gotham Dance Theater, Jonah Bokaer Choreography, and Artists by Any Other Name. They have presented choreographic work through Pageant, Arab American National Museum, Time & Space Limited, Little Island NYC, Dixon Place, Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance, Queens College Arts Festival, Screendance Miami, YallaPunk, and New York Arab Festival, and New York Fashion Week. Nadia is Programs Assistant at Dance/NYC, a teaching artist in schools, and a part of movements around labor and Palestinian liberation in the performing arts.

Andrew Riad (Performer and Poet)

Andrew Riad (b. 2000, Cairo) is a Coptic Nubian Egyptian artist and poet exploring the intersection of poetry, research, and play. He works with textiles, text, filmography, photography, found objects, and culinary practices to undo a monolithic history and propose a [re]imagined and [re][un]written history, revealing silenced narratives. His projects are research-based and driven, but they also mythologize life in an attempt to configure an opportunity for play and imagination. For him, language is the experience of sound and ritual; of symbol and gesture, and as such, is a site for resurrection and imagination. Riad is a graduate of New York University Abu Dhabi (May 2022) with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Literature and Creative Writing and Legal Studies and is a current MFA (Writing) student at Pratt Institute (May 2025). He is an alumnus of the Salama Bint Hamdan Al Nahyan Emerging Artists Fellowship (SEAF) and of SAMT Alternative School. His work has been shown and published regionally and internationally, including Mizna Arab Art Journal, Makhzin, The Poetry Project, 421 Arts Campus, and elsewhere. IG: @frequentlytranslating

Khaled Jarrar (Keynote Speaker, May 4 Panel)
Jarrar was born in 1976 in Jenin, Occupied Palestine. He works in diverse mediums to explore and alternate perspectives surrounding identity, disappearance, and memory, unpacking their narrative limitations. Using his past as an anchor impedes his body in complex situations. Khaled Jarrar’s work addresses global issues in symbolic and transmutational ways through performance, film, installation, photography and sculptures. 

Opalanietet (Speaker, May 4 Panel)

Ryan Victor Pierce, also known as “Opalanietet,” is a member of the Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape tribal nation of New Jersey.  Upon graduating from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, Opalanietet has performed in workshops and productions at such renowned New York theatrical institutions as New Dramatists, LaMaMa E.T.C., and New York City Opera at Lincoln Center.  In November of 2020, Opalanietet made history by giving the first-ever Lenape Land Acknowledgement at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade on NBC. In 2012, Opalanietet founded Eagle Project, a theater company dedicated to exploring the American identity through the performing arts and our Native American heritage, http://www.eagleprojectarts.org.  Through his leadership, Eagle Project has collaborated with and performed at the Public Theater, Nuyorican Poets Cafe, and Ashtar Theater in Palestine.  In April of 2020, Eagle Project collaborated with the American Indian Community House of New York City and First Nations Theatre Guild to create Native Theatre Thursdays, a virtual reading series of new Native work. Opalanietet is currently studying for his doctorate in Theatre & Performance Studies at the City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate Center, and has been a teacher of Contemporary Indigenous Theatre & Performance at The New School in New York City and SUNY Purchase.