CaDance Festival: Basis for being

A house party in Tehran, 1991.
This is the setting for a recreated evening that choreographer Sina Saberi invites us to experience together. It begins with a memory—both deeply personal and strangely collective. But what happens when you revisit a moment that no longer fully belongs to the past, nor entirely to yourself?

Saberi invites us to re-live that night and, through dance, (re)discover both ourselves and our shared histories. What unfolds is a choreographic journey through different “states of being”: the child, the outsider, the dancer, the host. Slowly, layers are peeled back—through movement, image, and ritual. Personal recollections blend with live performance, opening a window to the resilience of joy.

The host travels with the audience through moving images of a past that is no longer fixed—changing with every step and glance.

basis for being is a poetic and immersive performance that invites you into a reimagined celebration—part memory, part imagination. It is an intimate gathering shaped by dance, nostalgia, and transformation. Saberi welcomes you not just as a spectator, but as a guest.

A tribute to identity, memory, and the radical act of coming together—through dance.

During his residency at K3, Iranian choreographer Sina Saberi explored both traditional and contemporary forms of movement within an Iranian cultural context. With this work, he creates a choreographic process of memory—drawing from images of a past that is neither wholly personal nor entirely present.

*گس or Narges is a Persian word that a woman's name, an allusion to the eye of the beloved, and the word for daffodil. 

In the context of 80 years of freedom, Korzo presents Embodied Freedoms - a series of dance films that make the deeper layers of freedom tangible - during the month of May. Prior to Basis for Being, we will show the 4 dance films (10 minutes in total) followed by an Artist Talk.

Especially for this evening, programmer Nitchka Wefers Bettink will talk to choreographer Roshanak Morrowatian about the film she made. Like Sina Saberi, Roshanak was forced to flee Iran. In her film Khorsid | Sun, she embodies her answer to the question: What does freedom mean to you?

You can book a free ticket via the ticket button.

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