About the Artist

Valerie Sabbah

Montreal dance artist, Valerie Sabbah, is fascinated by creating immersive performance experiences, meticulously designed to guide the spectators into an individually private, yet collective movement towards the moment where each dance piece unfolds. Her surrealist works are fantastical sensory playgrounds where she obsessively dances and re-dances the political landscape of the female body. Her choreographic vocabulary is a hybrid of her roots in classical ballet and her practice with contact-improvisation stemming from her studies with Steve Paxton and Lisa Nelson’s work of tuning the body for spontaneous creation. www.kukoogarden.com

Selected credits: Enter LA Room (Théâtre du Bic), COTILLON I & II (Spect’Art), 100 years of Sleep (Théâtre St-Fabien), The W-Room (Maison pour la Danse & CAC Grant Recipient), Romeo & Juliette (Festival Phénomena), TAHARA (Maison de la Culture NDG).

2022 B·O·N·D International Virtual Performance Festival

B·O·N·D International Virtual Performance Festival was founded by Tianding He with an international artist team in the midst of the pandemic in 2020. The name “B·O·N·D” is short for “Beyond Our New Distance''. The festival aims to bond different entities, cultures and continents through the power of performing arts, despite political, economical or environmental challenges. Rooted in the noninstitutionalized and undefinable spirit of the avant-garde art, this pioneering annual festival keeps incubating and evolving in themes, media as well as sensory experiences .

In 2022, the theme of B·O·N·D Festival is Land · Body. During the first year of the post-pandemic era, adverse health effects and deaths are slowing down, while displacement separation and deprivation persisted in communities across the world. People were forced to leave their homeland because of warfare. Urbanites under tyranny are deprived of freedom and open access to all. Womxn bodies and lives are under oppression and systemic brutality. Near the exact time, humans started their fantastical exploration in both the universe and the metaverse. What are lands and bodies in new dimensions and cyberspace? The land and the body that we once took for granted–what do they mean now? How do we define its relationship and connection with us?

This year, we are excited to invite international artists nourished by lands of different continents, especially indigenous, immigrant and womxn artists, to share their unique experience of “land and body”. The digital screening starts from December 1-25, 2022. Meanwhile, we expand “B·O·N·D in Your City'', a series of artist-led, world-touring in-person live events, to more cities and countries in the world. On December 10th and 11th, multispace live performances, artistic dialogues, and community-creative circles will be hosted concurrently in New York (US), Montreal (Canada) and Santiago (Chile).

2022年B·O·N·D Festival对主题是“地·体”。这一年，疫病造成的死亡逐渐减少，但“流离”、“割裂”、“剥夺”却并未停止蔓延。因为战争，人们被迫离开故土；因为专制，城市失去了自由和自然；因为压迫，女性的身体与生命被斩断。当习以为常对生活被打破，我们不再拥有自由地站在阳光下对权利，不再有回到家乡那片土地的可能，“体”和“地”变得陌生，某种连接被切断。但伤口虽痛，人类的有机体仍然在奋力新生。打破空间，人们冲向宇宙；展开维度，人们向赛博世界求索。在那里，“地”和“体”又意味着什么？是怎样的关系？

地体一词，是一个地质学概念，代表地壳物质的碎块，从一个板块上断裂而后增生到另一个板块之上。这时地体仍保有它自己独特的地史，但它所附着的地壳之间的缝合线通常是一个断层。本届演出展邀请被世界各大洲土地滋养的原住民、移民和女性艺术家们，用他们的作品诠释“地”与“体”和生命的感知。

Festival Line-Up 活动日程

B·O·N·D In Your City

Dec 10, 2022 (Saturday)

2:00-3:45 pm Live Performance+talkback: azem 賽夏族語（靈魂）by Szu Shihmin

4:00-5:30 pm Co-creative circling – 踏步以成為地方 by Szu Shihmin

7:00-10:00 pm Live Performance + Screening + Multi-city talkback: `Chronicles from The Down Below — The diaries of two female bodies carrying Death by Valerie Sabbah and Lydia Jialu Li

10:00 pm-12:00 am Co-creative circling – How do we carry death within our living bodies? by Valerie Sabbah

Dec 11, 2022 (Sunday)

2:00-3:00 pm Live Performance: TAHARA by Valerie Sabbah

4:00-5:00 pm azem 賽夏族語（靈魂）by Szu Shihmin

6:00-7:00 pm Screening: Colonial Feelings by Verónica Díaz-Muñíz + Live Performance: Sand by Olga Rabetskaya

7:00-9:00 pm Multi-city Closing Conversation

9:00-9:30 pm Closing ceremony

Location

Accent Sisters

150 Bay Street, Art 150, studio 206, Jersey City, NJ 07302

***Entrance is at the corner of 1st street and Provost street, please see the map below.

*Please note that tickets are non-refundable, but may be exchanged depending on availability.

A﻿bout the Artist

Chronicles from The Down Below by Valerie Sabah and Lydia Jialu Li