We are excited to share we have been successful in receiving Arts Council England project funding to deliver a Research and Development period across 2023 and 2024.
About Shrouk
Shrouk El-Attar(she/her orthey/them) is a Queer Electronics Engineer and belly dancer. Born in Egypt, they have been living in the United Kingdom as a refugee since 2007. They are an activist forrefugee rightsin the UK, and for LGBT rightsin her native Egypt.
Shrouk has solidified prominence within hersector with their passionate activism. Named as one of the 100 Most Influential Women in The World in 2018 by the BBC, Shrouk passionately advocatesfor LGBT+ rights and sharestheir personal experience of being a Queer Arab through Egyptian belly dance performances.
“As an Egyptian, I grew up with bellydance being simply called "dance ". The term “bellydance” is a Westerncoined name that isn’t even descriptive of the authentic practice - we don’t use our bellies to dance, it is performed by everyone, for everyone (not just by women for men’s entertainment), and the original Egyptian costume even covered the stomach and arms. On Google, nearly everybody in image search is white, western, female, and looks nothing like me. It often feels like I have been wiped out of my own culture.”
About Dancing Queer
Fusion of theatre and drag, art and engineering, encompassing the live experience of queerrefugees. A performance that mixes belly dancing, robotics, Arabic songs, magic tricks, and more! A show made with, by and or LGBTQ+ refugee communities.
Future Development
Funding from Arts Council England has enabled a research & development period of Dancing Queer to take place across 2023 & 2024, allowing Shrouk to expand their work from a one person belly dancing show into a bigger scale performance work incorporating live music, movement, set, technology and video. Dancing Queer R&D will bring together Shrouk’s experience and expertise as an engineer, drag artist and belly dancer performing alongside a new belly dancing life-size robot prototype!
A 3 week Research and Development period will take place in early 2024 with a range of collaborators including;
Musicians - Oud Player, Tabla Player, Darbuka Player, Violinist and Arabic Percussionist
Aerialist
Lighting Design
Set Design
The project will also open opportunities for 4 introductory performance roles for local refugees who are interested in theatre and performance.
Engagement
The development period will also enable Shrouk to design a blueprint process for touring work where local refugee communities work with them to process & retell their own stories in their local city, alongside increasing career opportunities in which local people are able to take ownership over their stories and how they want to tell these stories.
As part of the project development, we are working with two refugee charities - Bristol Refugee Rights and their Pride Without Borders participants alongside Cardiff based organisation Glitter Cyrmu. Through this collaboration, Shrouk will deliver 2 x storytelling and script writing workshops with participants that will feed into and inform Dancing Queer performance work.
