
Ouroboros
UPCOMING:
Ouroboros
March 28-30, 2025
Stageworks Theatre, Tampa, FL
Ouroboros is an interactive, evening-length, theatrical solo dance presented in the round that resurrects and centers the ancient healing symbol of Ouroboros. The performance weaves personal storytelling, contemporary and Middle Eastern dance, cabaret-style song, and finger cymbal/zill play through English, German, Turkish, and ASL, inviting audience participation. Ouroboros takes the audience on a journey of memory, place, and paradox. It explores the cyclical and entrapping nature of time and culture, the lost history and continued relevance of embodying nature in the form of the snake dance, embodied feminine wisdom of the past and present, and society’s relationship to dance and language.
With original music composition by Shamou, and live accompaniment by Sathapat Sangsuwan, dramaturgy by Joanna Furnans, costume design by Katrin Schnabl, lighting design by Alejandra Favila, set design by Delena Bradley, sound design by Sathapat Sangsuwan, and ASL coaching by deaf artist Susan Elizabeth Rangel.
Preview from the 2024 premiere at Links Hall: “Nejla Yatkin’s Ouroboros combines dance with healing circles” by JT Newman of the Chicago Reader
Ouroboros is a National Performance Network (NPN) Creation & Development Fund Project co- commissioned by Art2Action, Inc. in partnership with The Dance Complex, Multicultural Education and Counseling through the Arts (MECA), and NPN. (The Creation & Development Fund is supported by the Doris Duke Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency. For more information, visit www.npnweb.org.) Ouroboros has been made possible by the New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Dance Project, with lead funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. With additional residency support from the Morrison Shearer Foundation at Ragdale, Links Hall, and the Ford Foundation.
by Nejla Yatkin
