Healing is communal, healing is spiritual, healing is in the body and in spaces in between, healing is to be in harmony with plants and nature. “What do you feel when you think about the spiritual power of plants and ancestry?”

After Fertile Ground, the plant spirit which migrated 50 years ago with the Nani (mother’s mother) of Fazle from Surinam to the Netherlands, continues to be an important inspiration in the artistic and spiritual practice of Fazle Shairmahomed.  In 2024 it shifted into a community festival initiated by Dancing on the Edge where contributions of different artists came together in community rituals. To learn more about the contributions of other artists please check out Dancing on the Edge.

Who are we when we narrate our stories through plant spirits?

Legacy & Seeds performance ritual has been developed through a series of Labs and the BAUairDOTE residency in an open creation and preparation process. The process and performance ritual has been led by Fazle Shairmahomed with plant spirits and artists-in-community Anima Jhagroe-Ruissen and Farah Rahman, other community members and in collaboration with DOTE, Shaymaa Shoukry and Ahmed Saleh.


Labs

In the Labs, preparation rituals, we connected with plant spirits through dance and all our senses, asking the question: How can we be in solidarity? In a time where we are witnessing genocides and ecocides on our screens, it feels like we are failing as humanity.
How did we arrive at a place where humans think of themselves as separated from nature? How come indigenous people who nurture deep relations with land are still being uprooted today? While we resist, it is important to keep honouring life, to show up in solidarity when we both hold space for grief, and honour a sense of togetherness.

Henna Lab (with Anima Jhagroe-Ruissen in collaboration with Fazle Shairmahomed)

A Lab about the creation of stories in collaboration with Henna/Mehndi. Storytelling and Henna come together in a ritualistic space. We explore the different stages of Henna, from leaves, to powder, to paste. Exploring communal designs for the performance dance rituals.

Incense Lab (with Farah Rahman in collaboration with Fazle Shairmahomed)

Participants were invited to develop their awareness of spices that resonate with them, and to reflect on how they have come into their lives. What migration histories do these spices carry with them? Are they connected to childhood memories? Are they connected to painful histories of cultural appropriation and exploitation? How can we give new meaning in a communal process by creating incense with these spices? We created incense for the public community rituals.

 

About Festival Legacy Seeds – Dancing on the Edge statement

Legacy & Seeds was the last Dancing on the Edge Festival. We celebrated 18 years of artistic exchange and collaboration with countless artists and partners in the West Asia and North Africa region and Europe.
In recent years we have increasingly responded to a world in crisis, turning the spotlight on constructed (unequal) systems and how we relate to the rest of nature. On how everything is connected. How ‘we’ are inextricably linked to what is happening ‘there’. We work in awareness of context, always asking ourselves, ‘Which artistic forms do we need now?’

In the shadow of the continuing, unrestrained state violence and colossal destruction in the WANA region, the festival (her organisers & artists) mourns and rages in solidarity with the artists who have created and performed with Dancing on the Edge over her life-span:
Legacy & Seeds holds space for layered stories, grief. Being together and listening deeply can shape practices towards justice, change. Ritual is our form.

Read more about the Festival and Dancing on the Edge

 


Initiative and co-creation: Dancing on the Edge – Legacy & Seeds 2024
Artists in community / space holders: Fazle Shairmahomed, Shaymaa Shoukry, Anima Jhagroe-Ruissen, Farah Rahman, Damani Leidsman, Amael el Yousfi, Dayna Martinez Morales, Ikram Tajioui, Yun Lee, Anne de Andrade, Pırılti Onukar, and plant spirits
Sound art: Ahmed Saleh
Photos: Ellard Vasen