Life Style: ‘You get tested a lot,’ part-Arab designer Amina Muaddi says after building $55m label in four years

ABU DHABI: The NYU Abu Dhabi Arts Center will host an exciting calendar of music events, film screenings, theater shows, dance performances and workshops in October, the Emirates News Agency reported.

On Oct. 1 and Oct. 2, award-winning director Joanna Settle and NYUAD Alumni Reem Almenhali will present a revival of a 2020 theater production exploring life as an Emirati woman through the integration of poetry in Arabic and English. 

The center will host a live discussion with Jordanian filmmaker Zaid Abu Hamdan on Oct. 3, following a screening of his film “Daughters of Abdul-Rahman.” The story revolves around four estranged sisters who are forced to band together to find their father, who has gone missing.

On Oct. 5 and Oct 6., Ravi Coltrane, Grammy-nominated saxophonist, will host an in-depth music masterclass titled “Cosmic Music: A Contemporary Exploration of the Music of John and Alice Coltrane — Ravi Coltrane,” as he reimagines the spiritual and ecstatic music of two jazz pioneers.

Almenhali is scheduled to return on Oct. 10, when she will share her approaches to writing poetry into theater scenes in an interactive workshop titled “Including Poetry in Theater — Approaches to Writing Scenes.” Hosted in Arabic and English, participants will be guided through writing exercises to start a journey of their own.

Settle’s workshop on Oct. 11, titled “An Exploration of a Director’s Approach,” will walk participants through her approach to directing for theater, opera and performance art, as she shares some of her case studies. 

On Oct. 24, Compagnie Hervé Koubi co-founder Guillaume Gabriel will lead participants through some of the fundamental principles of urban and contemporary dance in his “Urban and Contemporary Dance Workshop: What the Day Owes to the Night” (original in French: “Ce que le jour doit à la nuit”). 

The workshop will return on Oct. 26, but this time it will combine contemporary and urban dance with martial arts.