ABOUT

Jasad is Arabic for body.

Under the artistic direction of Meryem Alaoui, Jasad aims to highlight the experience of SWANA communities (Southwest Asia and North Africa) through contemporary dance.

The mission of Jasad is to bring humans together through dance, by promoting the research, creation and presentation of dance works and facilitating community engagement programs, with a focus on artists and audiences from North Africa, the Arab world and the Middle East, and their diaspora in Canada.

Collaboration, exchange and a spirit of openess and non-hierarchy, as well as experimentation and play are integral to the processes of dance making, performing and transmission at Jasad.

Artistic Director

Founder and artistic director of Jasad Dance Projects, Meryem Alaoui is a Toronto-based dancer and choreographer from Morocco. Born in Rabat, Morocco, she attended L’École Ballet-Théâtre Zinoun, led by the late Lahcen Zinoun, in Casablanca, before moving to Canada at 18 years old to study at Le Conservatoire de Danse de Montréal followed by The School of Toronto Dance Theatre. 

After graduating from the School of TDT, while pursuing a career as a performer working with choreographers in Toronto, Meryem became increasingly interested in choreography.

She has, since then, presented her work in festivals and venues across Canada, in Ontario, Quebec, Manitoba, and in Morocco.

In 2018, she founded Jasad Dance Projects, to support her vision of seeing more contemporary dance works created by and with artists, especially women, from the SWANA (Southwest Asia and North Africa) region in Canada and worldwide. 

Her current interests lie at the intersection of somatic research using movement and voice, and the exploration of contemporaneity through the reclamation of embodied performance practices, dances and knowledge from her culture as a Moroccan diasporic dance artist.

Meryem has received residency support nationally and internationally, namely at Hub14 and Dancemakers Centre for Creation (Toronto), Young Lungs Dance Exchange (Winnipeg), and Le HIBA_Lab (Rabat, Morocco), as well as project funding from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario and Toronto Arts Councils.

She is a certified Body-Mind Centering® Somatic Movement Educator, and she has facilitated multiple dance and movement workshops for dancers in professional settings as well as community and arts-education contexts, such as with Toronto Dance Theatre, Tanya Lukin Linklater, Arts Etobicoke’s art programs for seniors, Haneen Women Choir and The Arab Community Centre of Toronto.

Meryem also regularly performs in improvisational performance situations, such as at Audiopollination (Array Music), at Coexisdance, with Charles Smith of the wind in the leaves collective, and previously with Minae Omi and the noise band AnaEQ.

Board of Directors

Jasad Dance Projects is a not-for-profit organizations registered in Ontario since 2018.

We are grateful to have received the guidance of Jasad’s founding board members Natasha Powell, Coman Poon and Christina Giannelia during our early years.

Previous board members included Jasmine Hawamdeh and Corinne Skaff, who have significantly contributed to Jasad’s growth.

We are now proud to have Hind El Ouardi, Noor El-Husseini, Garry Neil and Meryem Alaoui as current members of the board of directors of Jasad.