Knot - Afra Al Dhaheri & Dovydas Stramaitis | Just One Tile - Islam Elarabi

Two solo dance works push the boundaries of contemporary dance, visual art installation, and street culture, exploring themes of entanglement and freedom.

The evening features:

• Knot - dance meets sculptural installation.

• Just One Tile - vibrant, rebellious solo merges Mahraganat with contemporary dance. 

Knot - Afra Al Dhaheri & Dovydas Stramaitis

Co-commissioned by The Arts Center, Knot is a dance solo that unfolds at the intersection of dance and visual installation. It’s situated within a sculptural installation where hair extends into rope – shifting from intimate bodily material into architectural structure. Long extensions stream from the performer’s head, transforming gradually into rope that anchors onto the ceiling and surrounding space. This rope-hair continuum forms a monumental web in which the performer is physically entangled. She is sustained by the structure, restricted by it, and inseparable from it. 

In Knot, the rope is not a passive scenography, but an active choreographic force that shapes gesture, limits it, expands it, and defines it. Through this interdependence of body and material, Knot dissolves boundaries between subject and environment, and choreography and sculpture – the performer does not perform inside the space, she becomes the space. 

Rooted in Al Dhaheri and Strimaitis’s ongoing exploration of hair, Knot posits it as a site where nature and culture collide. But here, this collision evolves into transformation. Hair becomes rope. Body becomes structure. Craft becomes architecture. This continuum is where identity is negotiated: not fixed, but constantly mediated between internal forces and external systems. A complex medium and a polysemic element through which the body expresses and resists, the hair anchors the piece conceptually and visually, intertwining personal narrative and collective history.

Just One Tile - Islam Elarabi

Just One Tile is a solo performance by Egyptian dancer and choreographer Islam Elarabi that merges Mahraganat with contemporary dance to embody emotions of power, pride, fear, anger, and joy. The work draws on Elarabi’s lived experience and collective memory, transforming the pulse of Egyptian street culture into a profound stage language. Rooted in Mahraganat — the vibrant, rebellious music and dance born from Cairo’s streets — the piece reclaims a cultural expression often dismissed as “non-art.” Through Just One Tile, Elarabi challenges such perceptions, affirming Mahraganat as a legitimate, contemporary art form that carries social, political, and emotional depth. The performance unfolds as an act of resistance and self-assertion, reclaiming visibility for a community that continues to be misrepresented or overlooked.

Elarabi’s movement language builds from a locally grounded practice, creating his own autonomous artistic vocabulary. With minimal elements, he crafts vivid imagery that reflects both exhaustion and liberation. The work embodies “a choreography of struggle and release,” as described by the ZKB Jury, recognizing the artist’s ability to transform personal material into a powerful, poetic expression of resilience.

In Just One Tile, a single floor tile becomes a metaphor for space, identity, and survival. As PS Zeitung noted, Elarabi “crouches on the smallest surface, fists raised to shield himself from a symbolic guillotine... His dance unites the imagined heroic self-image of victorious resistance with the fragility of surrender.” The performance evokes the spirit of Cairo’s Tahrir Square—a collective yearning for freedom—while balancing immense physical power with poetic sensitivity. Through light, sound, and embodied rhythm, Mahraganat becomes the sound of rebellion, carrying the urgency and hope of those who continue to dance despite constraint.

First presented as a work-in-progress at the UN|Controlled Gestures Residency in Cairo and Berlin, Just One Tile continues to evolve as an intimate yet universal portrait of struggle, resistance, and belonging.

Afra Al Dhaheri (Knot - Artistic Direction, Installation)

Afra Al Dhaheri’s work is rooted in her experiences growing up in Abu Dhabi and the wider UAE – a place of recent and rapid change. Working across various mediums including mixed media, sculpture, drawing, painting, installation, photography, and printmaking, she draws out notions of time and adaptation, rigor and fragility. With each experiment, there is a new phase, each new phenomenon or actualization plucked from her unique vocabulary of references – repetition acts as a method for prolonging time as much as a tool through which to truly experience or realize each stage of a work.

Born in 1988 in Abu Dhabi, UAE, Afra Al Dhaheri obtained her MFA from Rhode Island School of Design, Rhode Island in 2017. She had her residencies from The Salama bint Hamdan Emerging Artists Fellowship, in partnership with the Rhode Island School of Design (2014); Porthmeor Studios, St. Ives, Cornwall, UK (2019); Viafarini, Milan (2022); and The Watermill Center, NY (2023). She was among the finalists for the Richard Mille Art Prize 2022. Photo by Greg Adamski

Al Dhaheri is the Creator and Artistic lead for the project Collective Exhaustion (2024), with the inaugural production supported by the National Grant for Culture and Creativity at the Ministry of Culture and Youth of the United Arab Emirates. Public commissioned works include: Union of Artists, commissioned by Dubai Culture in collaboration with Art Dubai (with artists Khalid Albanna, Shaikha Al Mazrou, Asma Belhamar and Mohamed Ahmed Ibrahim) (2024); and Pillow Fort Playground, Public Art Programme, Expo 2020, Dubai, UAE (2021).

Solo exhibitions include: National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington DC (forthcoming); Sharjah Art Foundation, Sharjah, UAE (2025); Give Your Weight To The Ground, Green Art Gallery, Dubai, UAE (2023); Split Ends, Green Art Gallery, Dubai, UAE (2021) and Inevitable Ephemera, T + H Gallery, Boston, MA (2016).

Selected group exhibitions include: Whispers on the Horizon, Taipei Biennial 2025, Taiwan (forthcoming); A Time Between Ashes and Roses, Aichi Triennale 2025, Japan (2025); Public Matter, Public Art Abu Dhabi Biennial, Abu Dhabi, UAE (2024); Between the Tides: A Gulf Quinquennial, NYUAD Art Gallery, Abu Dhabi (2024); On Ma, Galleria Pedro Cera, Lisbon, Portugal (2024); Acacia Seeds, Galerie Balice Hertling, Paris, France (2024); Icon. Iconic., Art Here 2022 x Richard Mille Art Prize, Louvre Abu Dhabi, UAE (2022); Portrait of a Nation II: Beyond Narratives, Manarat Al Saadiyat, Abu Dhabi, UAE (2022); Zemanna, Manarat Al Saadiyat, Abu Dhabi, UAE (2022); Tadaroj (Gradation), Sharjah Islamic Arts Festival, Sharjah, UAE (2021); Between the Sky and the Earth: Contemporary Art from the UAE, Middle East Institute, Washington, DC (2021); Under Construction, Misk Art Institute, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia (2021); Hair Mapping Body; Body Mapping Land, ICD Brookfield Place, Dubai, UAE (2021); Beyond: Emerging Artists, Cromwell Place, London, UK (2021); Conscious Becoming, Tatjana Pieters, Ghent, Belgium (2021); Beyond: Emerging Artist, Manarat Al Saadiyat, Abu Dhabi, UAE (2020); From Within, Riyadh, KSA (2019); Avoid Bad Dreams, Green Art Gallery, Dubai, UAE (2019); Barcelona to Abu Dhabi, Manarat Al Saadiyat, Abu Dhabi, UAE (2018); and Emirati Expressions, Manarat Al Saadiyat, Abu Dhabi, UAE (2011 and 2015) amongst others.

Based in Abu Dhabi, Al Dhaheri also works as an Assistant Professor at Zayed University - Abu Dhabi.

Dovydas Stramaitis (Knot - Artistic Direction, Choreography)

Dovydas Strimaitis is a Lithuanian choreographer living and working in France. He graduated in 2019 from the Bachelor of Dance program at Codarts in Rotterdam, where he also initiated his choreographic research. After completing his internship year with Jitti Chompee, Jan Martens, and Marina Mascarell, he danced with the Ballet National de Marseille from 2019 to 2022 where he worked with the choreographers Peeping Tom, Alessandro Sciarroni, Lucinda Childs, Lasseindra Ninja, Tânia Carvalho, and Oona Doherty among others. Since 2022, he has been a freelance dancer, working notably with Dalila Belaza and Korsia.

In 2021, he premiered his first professional solo, The Art of Making Dances, at the New Baltic Dance festival in Vilnius. In 2022, Strimaitis founded his company Still Waiting. His piece, A Duet, premiered in 2023 at the ArtDanThé festival at Théâtre de Vanves and received the Golden Stage Cross in Lithuania for the Best Choreography of the year.

His work, Hairy, was selected as a finalist for the Danse Élargie competition organized by Théâtre de la Ville in 2022. The same year, he created a solo version of Hairy, which led to the full-evening group version that premiered in 2024 at the New Baltic Dance festival in Vilnius. This full-evening piece has toured internationally in such places as Théâtre de la Ville (Paris), festival Actoral (Marseille), RomaEuropa, and Madrid en Danza, among others.

Strimaitis’ works are characterized by rigorous structures, a minimalist yet physically demanding vocabulary, and detailed musicality. Although they are often not narrative-driven, they unfold a line of thought shaped by his experience of growing up in Lithuania, a country positioned between Western and Eastern imaginaries. This context, marked by a society in transition after Soviet occupation and engaged in an accelerated process of Westernization, has heightened his sensitivity to ambiguity and identities in formation. His pieces explore the tensions between determinism and individual freedom, between what shapes us and what we choose to become, as well as the role of the gaze of others in constructing identity. For Strimaitis, contemporary dance is a phenomenological field in which the moving body – site of experience, perception, and contradiction – allows these dynamics to be examined with sensitivity and precision, exemplified by the recurring motif of hair: an integral part of the body, an identity marker, yet an almost external element that resists control.

Islam Elarabi (Just One Tile - Creator, Performer)

Islam Elarabi is a professional dancer, choreographer, and instructor certified by CID UNESCO. A graduate of MAAT | Cairo Contemporary Dance Center, he specializes in Mahraganat and contemporary dance, creating work that bridges culture, identity, and movement. His teaching has helped formalize Mahraganat as a teachable dance form, presented in workshops across the Middle East and Europe. Elarabi has performed internationally, including at D-CAF Festival (Cairo), Liverpool Arab Arts Festival, Biennale Tanzausbildung (Berlin), and the UN|Controlled Gestures Residency Programme. His works include Again and Again (2018), Herding (2019), The Illusory Parade (2021), and Just One Tile (2024–ongoing).

Knot

Artistic Direction: Afra Al Dhaheri and Dovydas Strimaitis

Installation: Afra Al Dhaheri

Choreography: Dovydas Strimaitis

Perfomance: Hanna-May Porlon

Dramaturgy: Agnès López-Rio

Lighting Design: Thomas Laigle

Musical Composition: Isa Najem, Dario Felli

Technical Direction: Adrien Hosdez

Costume Design: Morta Nakaitė

Production: Alix Ruyant for Still Waiting

Just One Tile

Created and Performed by Islam Elarabi