■Visiting Fellows
December 7–December 28, 2022　
Morishita Studio (Tokyo)

■Program Outline
Mille et une nuits
As part of creative development for Mille et une nuits, a new work set to premiere at Montpellier Danse in 2024, Sorour Darabi’s research focused on the relationship between the human voice and body, and explored a very particular aesthetics of the unnatural voice. As someone who identifies as transgender, Darabi regards an attempt to dissociate voice from the body as a political aesthetic that can change the existing relations between the human voice and body. S.he deconstructed the voice and sought out an entirely new existence by connecting knowledge of the past to future-oriented technology.

■Artist talk
Mille et une nuits
Date: December 8, 2022 / 4:00–4:45 p.m.
Venue: The Cantonese Club (Yokohama)
Summary: In this talk, Darabi introduced s.her latest project, which is based on research into Scheherazade as a figure from queer mythology in contemporary Iran and Silk Road countries. S.he shared s.her endeavors to elucidate aspects of Scheherazade’s mythology as someone who is both gentle yet also related to conflict and fury, and to understand Scheherazade’s essential connections to queer feminism.

■Wokshop
Vulnerability
Date: December 15, 2023 / 7–9 p.m.
Venue: Morishita Studio (Tokyo)
Summary: This workshop on the titular theme of vulnerability shared Darabi’s creative approaches with participants.

■Profiles
Sorour Darabi is a self-taught performance artist born in Iran and based in Paris since 2013. Since relocating to France, s.he studied at the Centre chorégraphique national Montpellier, and staged Subject to Change in 2015 and Farci.e in 2016. In 2018, s.he gained wider recognition for Savušun. Influenced by the Muḥarram mourning ritual in the Islamic calendar, this ode to affect, vulnerability, and the affected, and dealing with questions of grief, fear, and suffering, premiered at Montpellier Danse. More recently, Darabi was commissioned by Kunsten Festival des Arts to create Mowgli (2021), inspired by the idea of the jungle as a boundless realm of intersecting contemporary myths. The same year saw the premiere of Natural Drama, which probed the concept of nature.