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Performances

Performances

Banafsheh Sayyad, NAMAH and ZARBANG have performed extensively in North America, Europe and Australia. The artists can be presented in the following configurations:

  • Banafsheh's solo dance with recorded music
  • Banafsheh’s solo dance with 2 musicians with or without an orator
  • 3 NAMAH dancers with 2-4 musicians and 1 orator
  • 5 dancers with 4 musicians

The following is a description of a recent configuration:

ZARBANG & Banafsheh with NAMAH
 Mirror

An evening of wild and whirling dance, world-class drumming, music, and evocative poetry, featuring world premieres as well as repertory pieces. This is a well-established collection of masters, seasoned from years together on the world circuit, and all at the top of their game. Mirror was commissioned by the prestigious Dance Center at Columbia College in Chicago for the Sufi dance innovator Banafsheh Sayyad, who had a residency at the center in 2008. Mirror features Banafsheh’s internationally recognized dance company NAMAH, and her long time collaborating percussion ensemble, the world renowned ZARBANG, and together they sweep the audience into a remarkable journey inward, into the Mystery of being alive and living with Heart.

Mirror reflects our common human heritage- that of our full glory and majesty being veiled in the self-absorbed egoism, which wreaks havoc in our world. The premise here is, our human-veil keeps us from seeing and being our true Divine Nature, thus we tend to reflect only selfishness, fear, and apathy. The event examples the action and courage needed to lift our veil, to reveal instead our own shining goodness, that we may now trust and take part in the larger Sacred Dance with full faith in its reflecting the Greater Good.

 Mirror is a platform for discovery, for life lived through love- and a groundbreaking evolution in gender balance, and no harm is intended throughout this entire event. Here for the first time the male-dominated tradition of Sufism is being transmitted through the feminine, celebrating sensuality and the Sacred Connection with wild abandon yet mindful, embracing movement and music. The spoken word is drawn from the teachings of Rumi as well as Banafsheh’s own writings. The evening’s music, a hypnotic wall of sound, is composed and arranged by ZARBANG.