A Feminine Warrior

Sara Gebran, Venezuelan/Danish/Lebanese choreographer, performer. Born 1964 in Venezuela, resident in Denmark since 1996. Graduated in 1992 as a dancer from the Instituto Superior de Danza, Caracas, and began working as a choreographer in 1993.  She is the artistic director of the company Public Eye.

Artist Profile
Sara Gebran’s work is performance art – a melting pot of dance, gestural expressions and sounds, combined with a rawness and an unpolished edge, full of explosive energy. Gebran’s works are loaded with social and political subjects, mixing seriousness with satire and sarcasm. She introduces provocative thoughts to the spectators, provokes them and contradicts them in constant challenging interaction with the spectator, indirectly as well as directly. Gebran explores movement in relation to sound and space, taking off in the dancer’s individual expressions and their physicality. She builds up her work out off fragmented scenes, movements and rhythms, resulting in “…a different way of choreographing carried through with femininity and raw-power”. – Weekend Avisen (DK). She has been described as “…a post-modern, psycho-Pina spin on American TV’s Charlie’s Angels”. She received the international price of the Bergnolet/Scandinavian Platform with She Shrinks in 1999. She is now touring in Europe and the Middle East. She currently teaches professional dancers and dance students in Denmark and abroad. 

Current Productions

Il n'y as pas de pommes au paradis
(2006)
Based on components from Waiting for Godot, The Anticrist, El Desbarrancadero of Fernando Vallejos, and a number of religious rituals, assembled in an irrational pattern. The idea of paradise, as described to us by different power structures, rules and norms, is examined, as well as the possibility of breaking from it.
Language: Spanish and English. Could be done in Arab and French.

Review Extracts

“The volcanic Venezuelan Sara Gebran with sharp humour…”
Le Figaro (FR), Frontiers, June 2004

“An invitation to close combat – just bring it on…  Gebran plays with political and personal boundaries … Gebran’s strength is that she can be amazingly audacious with the sweetest smile. ... This sort of political dimension is much needed in the dance milieu’s otherwise so silent public, ‘lost in abstraction.’”
Politiken (DK), Frontiers, April 2004

"...Gebran, whom the gentlemen Buñuel and Dalí might have found amusing if they had met, is reminiscent of a bizarre Beckett-figure [...] a clown of multiculturalism [...] She confronts the audience with an otherness that opens for reflection. In some ways the aesthetic resemble the "beauty warriors" solos created by Jan Fabre for strong women, but Gebran is less sophisticated, more politically direct and feministic. The performance creates an appetite for more. A woman who makes apple-sauce out of cultural codes and the concept of gender is woth exploring."
Svenska Dagbladet (SE), Il n'y as pas de pommes au paradis, March 2006

International Tours

2007
Oct.-Nov.: Performance project in collaboration with Patricia Portelo, Belgium
October: Istanbul Dance Festival, Istanbul, Turkey
September: ”Ex:changing Memories of Movements”: creating meeting grounds in Scandinavia. An exchange project between Middle East artists and Scandinavian artists in Århus, Copenhagen and Stockholm.
June: Uzés Dance Festival, Uzés, France
June: Los Impresentables Festival, Madrid, Spain
June: Dance Across Borders, Bard College, Hudson, NY/USA 
June: Judson Church, NY/USA
April/May: Tour in the Middle East (Beirut, Amman, Tunis, Jerusalem, Ramallah). Combined with teaching dance workshops.
March/April: Recidency in Rio de Janeiro with 20 choreogrphers from Europe and Latinamerica, to create new works followed by tour in Barzil Barzil at the end of the period.

2006
Tour Il n'y as pas de pommes au paradis at Panorama Festival in Rio de Janeiro and San Gonzalo in Brazil. 
Premier of ”LAA MA ´FI” (No there isn’t) a performance for 3 Arab dancers for ”Images of the Middle East” (Copenhagen/DK)
3 weeks research in Tunis, Damascus and Beirut. Supported by DCCD, in relation to the summer project LAA MA´FI for ”Images of the Middle East” (Copenhagen/DK) and for the research project ”Exchanging memories of movements” for 2007.
Grand Theatre of Gröningen (Gröningen/NL)
Baggårdteatret (Svendborg/DK)
Moderna Dansteatern (Stockholm/SE)
Dance Festival Kiosk.ShotCuts (Hamburg/DE)
Show Case (Copenhagen/DK)
Venezuelan festival solos and duets (Copenhagen/DK)

2005
Sophiensaele (Berlin/DE)
The Danish Institute (Damascus/SY)
Théâtre Duchamp (Rouen/FR)
Festival Dream Shot (Antwerp/BE)
Theatre WARD EL SHAMS, Beirut (Beirut/LB)
BIT Teatergarasjen (Bergen/NO)