in conversation_nasa4nasa

MAY MAKKI X nasa4nasa: promises

01AUG24 Following nasa4nasa’s performance “promises” at 99 Canal, dancers Noura Seif Hassanein and Salma AbdelSalam engage in a conversation with May Makki surrounding their practice.

In this conversation, the Cairo-based performance duo nasa4nasa (Salma Abdel Salam and Noura Seif Hassanein) reflect on their practice, which began in 2016 as an Instagram-based response to limited access to performance spaces in Egypt. Their early experiments with short-form, site-specific videos evolved into durational, spatially engaged live works such as SUASH and promises, with a consistent emphasis on improvisation, relationality, and environmental responsiveness.

They discuss how built environments act as a “third choreographer,” shaping both aesthetic and conceptual concerns. The conversation also introduces their current research-driven project, Sham3dan, which critically engages with the gendered and colonial histories of Egyptian dance traditions.

Throughout, they interrogate the shifting relationship between digital and embodied performance, emphasizing a desire to return to spontaneity within increasingly institutionalized and archival frameworks.

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“We didn’t know that this would become a piece. It was just a score we gave each other in rehearsals to just connect. And the more we did it, the more we felt like it served how we were feeling. We started it in October, I think, so it was really this moment of just taking a breath, allowing things to happen, being slow, being connected—and this idea of really grieving. We felt like we needed some space in the studio to just grieve, yeah, and together, and alone, and grieve the current, and grieve the past, and just sit with it for a minute..”

nasa4nasa

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TRANSCRIPT
recorded on 04.08.2024

May Makki I want to thank 99 CANAL for being such great hosts, and also colleagues at BOFFO who were very collaborative with sharing nasa4nasa while they were in town. Thank you to them. And, of course, Noura, and Salma, thank you so much for being up for doing this and for sharing promises again in New York City.

nasa4nasa Yeah, thank you. Thanks for having us.

May Makki So, I know people here have different levels of experience with your work. Some people might follow you on Instagram, some may have caught some of your recent performances here. I think it’s helpful to back up to 2016 when you started nasa4nasa as an Instagram account. Can you take us back to that time? How did you start that? Why did you decide to start working in that way?

Salma Abdel Salam I'll start. (laughter). So we've been friends for a very, very, very, very long time since we were six. It varies, because there's an age difference, but like six-ish and we studied dance together at the Cairo Contemporary Dance Center and we had chemistry. We had a very similar background and movement and like language, movement/language. And then at dance school, it kind of really clicked. And in 2016, after each of us had done some things, we decided we wanted to work together, not knowing what it would be. So we just said, let's set up an Instagram page. It's low risk, low cost, low everything, low commitment, and let's start just dumping stuff onto Instagram and just see what will happen. Also, we weren't sure how to access the dance stages or the spaces that were kind of closed off or non-existent or shrinking because of the political situation.

Noura Seif Hassanein We also wanted to create images and short videos that fit into the Instagram account. So initially we started as an Instagram account. We started creating for Instagram, and it was very visual in the beginning. We were attracted to functional spaces, and how we move in functional spaces, and how to collaborate with spaces. So a lot of very staged images in visually appealing spaces. In 2016 Instagram was very different than now.

May Makki I was looking at your timeline on Instagram. It started in 2010 and then video started in 2015.

Salma Abdel Salam Exactly, and stories in like.. 2019, 2020, something like that. So, yeah, I wonder if there were stories about how we would have done it because then we were also limited to one minute. So we'd really like, go into a space and be like, Okay, we have one minute to figure something out. Sometimes the video would be 10 seconds, sometimes up to a minute. Sometimes we'd slow it down, glitch it. So we were also interested in using that medium.