We are thrilled to announce the recipient of the CAM + MAI Joint Support Fellowship 2022-2023: Mona El Husseini, for her project Creatrix.
Open to professional choreographers from culturally diverse backgrounds, the mentorship program offered annually by the Conseil des arts de Montréal and MAI (Montréal, arts interculturels) aims to foster the development of dance artists living in the territory of Montreal and to support them in a process of research, creation, and production of work.
In this mother-daughter choreographic duet, Mona El Husseini is inspired to share the links woven through dance themes across art and science and generational histories. Her project explores the relationship and issues of the creative process in the medium of dance, science, and education.
In Creatrix, Mona El Husseini and her mother actively reflect on their past and explore different ways of telling their individual and collective stories. Driven by nostalgia and homesickness, this piece examines their heritage and the socio-cultural components that feed their diversity. They find through dance the place where the scientist meets the artist, the rational meets the intuitive, the past meets the present, and the mother meets the daughter. with artists of Arab origin and to share their knowledge and experience of Arab culture.
A partnership between the Conseil des arts de Montréal and the MAI, this joint support program offers the selected artist a package of mentorship and support, including a $10,000 stipend and hours at the CAM and MAI rehearsal studios. The artist will also be invited to carry out an artistic and technical residency in the MAI spaces, and her project will be part of the MAI’s official 2023-2024 programming.
About Mona El Husseini
Mona El Husseini is an Egyptian-Syrian Contemporary Dance artist based in Montreal. She completed her dance education at the Cairo Contemporary Dance Center in Egypt and studied International Business and Contemporary Dance at Concordia University. She teaches Barre, Pilates, and contemporary dance in Montreal and at the professional training program at the Cairo Contemporary Dance Center in Egypt.
In the creative process, Mona goes beyond the dance and traces the thread that weaves the different art forms she practices including Martial Arts, painting, and writing. In unpacking questions of personal identity and heritage, Mona is interested in how stories are transmitted, shared, and told through the body across generations. She finds the dance in the place where the inner and outer meet, the traditional and the contemporary converse, and in the encounter between the intimate and the collective.
This project is produced with support from the Government of Quebec and the City of Montreal as part of l’Entente sur le développement culturel de Montréal, and from the Canada Council for the arts.
