About walking, water, and being watched

Mayan Alexar received a grant for the development of new work. About walking, water, and being watched is an attempt, a ritual, a confession, a dance, a contemporary miracle, a form of resistance, a song, a multidisciplinary work, a reality check, an act of solidarity, a lecture-performance, or perhaps just another form of human gathering. The performance aims to explore the symbolic and performative act of walking as a bridge between the concepts of impotence and miracles. Grounded in movement research and physical theatre, it draws on the narratives of Hagar’s search for water in Arabic mythology and May’s repetitive pacing in Footfalls by Samuel Beckett. Through these narratives, it seeks to articulate a story of a contemporary walker in the city of Amsterdam. Through the interplay of movement, live music, and text, the performance investigates themes of repetition, persistence, and transformation, while questioning the power of everyday acts of resistance and the possibility of contemporary miracles.

Mayar is a Syrian-Palestinian-Dutch multidisciplinary performance artist and theatre practitioner. His practice explores the mental spaces people inhabit, particularly in moments of crisis and catastrophe. Through performance, he gives form to the imagined worlds people create to escape or navigate harsh realities. His research draws on mythology, political theory, and linguistics, with recurring themes including dreams, the afterlife, utopia, and dementia. He finds inspiration in the ways the imaginary and the tangible coexist, and in how they shape our perception of reality and the world around us Over the past decade, Mayar has developed and presented his work across the Netherlands and internationally, between the WANA region, Northern Europe, and Canada.