Samar Haddad King
Palestine
Director, Choreographer, and Composer
Performing Arts,Music,Cultural Management
Samar Haddad King is the artistic and founding director of Yaa Samar! Dance Theatre (YSDT). She graduated from the Ailey/Fordham BFA program under the tutelage of Kazuko Hirabayashi. Her works have been performed in 19 countries on four continents, with commissions throughout the US and abroad including Hong Kong Arts Festival (Hong Kong), Hubbard Street 2 (Chicago), Ramallah Contemporary Dance Festival (Ramallah), The Walk/St. Ann’s Warehouse (New York), Good Chance Theatre (Marseille), and others. Her awards and fellowships include the Prix des Jeunes Créateurs Palestiniens pour la Diversité des Expressions Artistiques (Palest’In & Out Festival, Paris), La Fabrique Chaillot Residency (Chaillot – Théâtre national de la Danse, Paris), The Center for Ballet and the Arts at NYU, and Toulmin Creator (CBA/National Sawdust, NYC). Theater and musical theater credits include Dead Are My People (Noor Theatre, NYC) and We Live in Cairo (American Repertory Theater, Boston). She is a 2023 Creative Capital Wild Futures: Art, Culture, Impact awardee for her new multidisciplinary project Radio Act.
Samar Haddad King
Palestine
Director, Choreographer, and Composer
Performing Arts,Music,Cultural Management
Samar Haddad King is the artistic and founding director of Yaa Samar! Dance Theatre (YSDT). She graduated from the Ailey/Fordham BFA program under the tutelage of Kazuko Hirabayashi. Her works have been performed in 19 countries on four continents, with commissions throughout the US and abroad including Hong Kong Arts Festival (Hong Kong), Hubbard Street 2 (Chicago), Ramallah Contemporary Dance Festival (Ramallah), The Walk/St. Ann’s Warehouse (New York), Good Chance Theatre (Marseille), and others. Her awards and fellowships include the Prix des Jeunes Créateurs Palestiniens pour la Diversité des Expressions Artistiques (Palest’In & Out Festival, Paris), La Fabrique Chaillot Residency (Chaillot – Théâtre national de la Danse, Paris), The Center for Ballet and the Arts at NYU, and Toulmin Creator (CBA/National Sawdust, NYC). Theater and musical theater credits include Dead Are My People (Noor Theatre, NYC) and We Live in Cairo (American Repertory Theater, Boston). She is a 2023 Creative Capital Wild Futures: Art, Culture, Impact awardee for her new multidisciplinary project Radio Act.
Juror
RedZone
2018
Featured Artist
Spring Festival Tazzamun
Tazamon
2016
Bound
Bound is an evening-length dance theatre production by Yaa Samar! Dance Theatre that features an international cast of American, Japanese, and Palestinian performers. Situated between mobile planes that act as buildings, borders and projection surfaces, the performers of bound are confronted by an evolving landscape, fraught with boundaries that continuously test their physical and emotional limits. Layered over and between the live action, the story of two lovers separated by circumstance unfolds via Skype. Created by Samar Haddad King and set to an original score by Boikutt, this multi-media performance tells the universal story of people who are restricted by society, politics, geography or gender, and examines what it means to be bound: to a place, a person, an ideology, to noise, to silence.
Grantee
Production Awards
Round 01
2015
Unstable Aesthetics