dance Marcoux

Nermin Habib Farag/

Nermin is an Egyptian artist, choreographer, contemporary dancer and philosophy graduate.

She is a graduate of the professional dance programme at the Cairo Contemporary Dance Center and a member of the International Dance Council "CID-UNISCO" in France.

After graduating, Nermin performed in a short film entitled "Chest" by Nonne Savalhalom. Selected for the "SHORT WAVES" festival in Poland, it won first prize at the Aarhus and Barcelona festivals.

In 2016, she joined the first interdisciplinary musical theatre group in Cairo. She has subsequently participated in numerous festivals, performances and residencies in Egypt, France, Germany, Italy, Liverpool, Tunisia, Jordan and Algeria. She gained experience by exposing herself to different types of contemporary dance and performing arts techniques.

In 2018, she began a series of residencies with Hungarian choreographers to share societal practices and cultural diversity in Egypt and Hungary, and presented two different shows in Cairo and Budapest.

In 2019, Nermin received a scholarship from MOPHRADAT to participate in an intensive contemporary dance training programme in Amsterdam. On her return, she co-founded "ECHO", an independent company that implements community arts projects outside the capital, and received a grant from the European cultural programme "EUNIC" two years in a row to develop a curriculum in the most needy places for learning dance and performing arts.

Recently, Nermin was selected to take part in the Goethe-Institute initiative "Un|controlled gestures", aimed at young choreographers from Arabic-speaking countries, in cooperation with "HAU" Hebbel am Ufer Berlin.

She has also been chosen to take part in the "fear as an artistic statement" residency programme between Egypt, Jordan and Bulgaria. Alongside her work, Nermin devotes a great deal of time and effort to teaching various movement classes to women, children and people with disabilities, with the aim of changing negative thinking about learning through dance, regardless of age, gender or social status.

As an Egyptian artist, Nermin is particularly interested in the cultural heritage of dance in Egypt, such as Oriental dance and Tahteeb, the 'stick game'. For this reason, she has studied and taught these types of movement, focusing on the application of Egyptian dance culture with other contemporary dance techniques.

"Growing up didn't have the chance to practice any art activities as I was told female bodies are not designed for that action, made me realize the power of the voice and the body for self-expression as an important tool to express my identity and taking lead for all the major steps in my life."

Residency project:

This is an artistic creation in duo with Mahmoud El Haddad. The artists are working on a project based around belly dancing, provisionally entitled "Soul(o)...".