2024 McKnight International Choreographer
Photo credit: Hanna Hrabarsk
Meryl Zaytoun Murman is a Lebanese American choreographer and filmmaker and a permanent resident of Thessaloniki, Greece. Her art juxtaposes choreographic, cinematic and live art practices to create movement pieces that emphasize interactivity and intimacy and have been presented in Mexico, Turkey and throughout Europe. Her queer films and choreographies derived from experiments at the intersection of cinema and dance disrupt popular notions of spectacle, the body, virtuosity and gender, and her film le Pain was an official selection at international festivals receiving the Audience Choice award at East End Film Festival in London.
Murman has guest taught at ImpulsTanz International Dance Festival in Vienna, Companhia Instavel in Porto, Zelyonka International Dance Festival in Kyiv, and at Tulane University, CalState Long Beach University, and The Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. Thematically, her work is engaged with moving bodies, particularly between borders and across binaries, and human rights in transitional spaces. She has twice received international fellowships through the US Embassy to implement multi-faceted projects with female and LGBTQ+ refugee populations in Ukraine and Northern Greece exploring sexuality, gender, and the effects of assimilation and migration on the body. These projects integrate trauma informed pedagogy, a kinesthetic approach to media, ritual and public performance intervention. Her work has been supported by the National Performance Network, the Arab American Museum, and the Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography. She is currently in development on her first feature film, ways of forgetting.
For more info, visit: merylmurman.me