nasa4nasa
Sonsbeek 2026
Park Sonsbeek, Arnhem
Inleiding
Promises, 2026
Photo: Marjon Gemmeke
This performance, first presented in 2024, unfolds at sunset on opening night and takes the form of an improvisational score in which two bodies attempt to compose a listening field of sensitive proximity. Through slow, taut movements, they negotiate distance and tenderness, appearing and disappearing in relation to one another. Each iteration becomes a renewed attempt at a promise—to each other, the audience, the space—while acknowledging that a promise carries the possibility of failure. The insistence is on being with one another and striving for a synchronicity that continually breaks, to move alone yet generate a shared field.
About the artist
nasa4nasa (est. 2016, Cairo) is a dance collective in Cairo co-founded by dancers Noura Seif Hassanein and Salma AbdelSalam. Housed primarily on Instagram, they explore image-making and online presence as their ongoing dance practice. In 2025, their performance Sham3dan (Candelabra) had its international premiere at Art Basel (Unlimited) presented by Gypsum Gallery (Cairo), Belluard Bollwerk (Fribourg, Switzerland), and Festival de Marseille. In 2025, Promises was performed at My Wild Flag, Stockholm and Lafayette Anticipations, Paris, and in 2024, at venues including Art Explora Festival, Marseille and 99 Canal, New York. NO MERCY premiered at Rawabet Cairo in 2022, and was performed at venues including Danspace Project, New York, 2024; Zürcher Theater Spektakel, Zurich, 2023; Dream City, Tunis, 2023; and D-CAF Festival, Cairo, 2022. In 2018, their debut SUASH premiered at Next Festival, Kortrijk, Belgium and MDT Moderna Dansteatern, Stockholm, and in 2019, was performed at Maadi Sporting Club, Cairo and Young Choreographers’ Series, ImPulsTanz, Vienna. In 2019, End of Times premiered at Gypsum and was adapted for Movement Research Festival, Judson Church, New York, 2022. They have participated in group exhibitions including the 2021 13th Gwangju Biennale’s Live Organ’s Online Commission with Promises b2b, a video series screened at Lafayette Anticipations in 2025.
Developed during a residence at Something Great in Berlin, with support from the Goethe-Institut, Caïro
Presented by Sonsbeek 2026