Dr Dani Abulhawa | داني ابوالهوى

Profile

I joined the School of Performance and Cultural Industries at the University of Leeds in September 2021. Prior to this I worked for 9 years at Sheffield Hallam University, and 4 years at the University of Chester. Since 2006 and alongside my academic roles, I have worked professionally in the arts, as a performer, director, producer, facilitator and mentor.

I completed a Practice-as-Research PhD in 2015 in the Performance department at the University of Plymouth. My research explored the social conditions that inhibit women’s use of public urban space through the activity of public urban playing. This enquiry developed from my decades long skateboarding practice and the experiences I had as a woman playing on a skateboard in public urban spaces. Findings from my research have been used by companies and organisations working on play and urban space design, and those looking to encourage women’s and girls’ use of public play facilities.

I have trained in: Creative Articulations Process (CAP), Ashtanga yoga, Laban Efforts, human-centred design for community working, and Six Viewpoints. 

Responsibilities

• Programme Leader for BA Theatre & Performance and Theatre & Performance with Enterprise

Research interests

My professional work and research since 2006 typically involves the use of testimony, somatically-informed movement, choreography, video and audio artwork. I am interested in how these elements combine to bridge empathetic gaps, and the impact of performance and art works that aim to initiate social and or political change. My research interests are located within the tradition of Practice Research, involving the creation of artworks or theatrical productions. The following is a selection of key projects:

In 2014 myself and three collaborators founded Accumulations, a community of dance and movement artists based in the North of England. We support artist-researchers to test and develop somatic and choreographic practice through access to our shared studio space in Manchester, or through peer-to-peer professional development activity. Our studio is an ongoing laboratory for much of my professional practice and I am interested in approaches to the creative process, and the development of systems and models that help to support creativity. In 2016, we produced Precarious Assembly – an evening takeover of the Whitworth Gallery in Manchester, featuring commissioned artworks by women artists that explored female lineages of creative practice through movemen-based performance. 

In 2015 I began working with SkatePal, a charity who build skateparks and support practitioners’ skateboarding practice in the Occupied West Bank. I helped to build SkatePal’s second skatepark in Asira Al-Shamalyia, in the north of the West Bank, and began conducting a research project in collaboration with the charity. This explored how the physical culture of skateboarding, and the social forum of the skatepark circumvents restrictions of movement and other social effects of the occupation.

In 2022-23, I worked on a Leverhulme Trust funded research project in collaboration with researchers at Nottingham Trent University (PI: Carrie Paechter) on a project exploring women and girls’ experiences at skateparks. My work as part of the team involved the production of an audio play called ‘Skatepark Allyship’ (published, 2023). The script was based on interviews that came from the research and I worked in Collaboration with composer, Guillaume Dujat who created a soundscape for the piece. The artwork is designed to be listened to on headphones, whilst the listener is located in a skatepark or an area suitable for skateboarding and play. It can be accessed here. 

In 2023-24, I was comissioned to produce a skateable/playable sculpture by Take A Part and KARST in Plymouth as part of the PRIME Design project. For this I worked in collaboration with Structural Engineer, Bedir Bekar. The process for creating these playable/skateable sculptures was participatory, involving the PRIMEdesign youth commitee. It was a conversation and a collection of dreams and sketches, that came together through the PRIMEdesign project. We imagined a fictional future scenario in which an extreme weather event had blown down the iconic butterfly-shaped roof of the Civic Centre, crash landing it to the ground. We imagined that creative recyclers of the city had refashioned the roof pieces (along with the trunk of a fallen tree) into these objects for play. Unfortunately the work was never exhibited as planned as part of Plymouth Culture. Leeds Art Gallery selected the work (presented alongside Skatepark Allyship) for their exhibition Found Cities, Lost Objects, curated by Lubaina Himid. The sculptures were exhibited from Jan - April 2024 for gallery visitors to play on. More details here. 

In 2024, I co-produced and directed the show, Voices of Resilience at HOME, Manchester. This project examined the role of testimony in theatre as a tool for humanising Palestinian lived experiences in the context of dehumanising representations in mainstream Western media, and investigated the ethical and emotional dimensions of staging testimonies, particularly focusing on how the filtering and interpretation of such stories influence audience reception. The show subsequently toured to the Edinburgh International Book Festival and the Barbican Centre. Working in collaboration with independent publishing house, Comma Press, the event centred around the diary of Atef Abu Saif, Gazan writer and sometime minister of culture for Palestine, who was visiting the besieged Strip in early October with his teenage son when the most recent escalation of violence broke out. His diaries were published in media outlets around the world, and collected together in Don’t Look Left, published by Manchester’s Comma Press in December 2023. Extracts from the book were interspersed with performances of Palestinian poetry. Poets featured in the show include esteemed Gazan writers, Refaat Al-Areer and Hiba Abu Nada, both of whom were tragically killed in October and December 2023. The show was accompanied throughout by live oud music, performed by Egyptian artist Ahmad Adnan. For the show, we commissioned a series of videos filmed in Gaza by Hossam Abo-Shammallah.

Qualifications

• PhD, University of Plymouth, 2015
• PGCert Learning & Teaching in HE, University of Chester, 2007
• MA, Manchester Metropolitan University, 2006
• BA (Hons), University of Northampton, 2005

Professional memberships

• Fellow of the Higher Education Academy

Student education

I teach on the Applied Theatre and Intervention masters programme and the undergraduate Theatre and Performance programme.

Current postgraduate researchers

• Bev Adams