Eman Hussein

Eman Hussein, is an Egyptian dancer, choreographer, and dance filmmaker based in Zurich. She studied dance, street art, theater, and martial arts. Her works merge laborer's daily movements and contemporary dance, amongst other arts. Working with individuals outside of art institutions is her main inspiration. She collaborates with craftsmen and workers and lives with them to learn their movements inside their workshops. Her dance films combine aspects of public space and contemporary dance movement. They have been shown and awarded internationally

She is interested in merging all the arts she has learned so far, as she seeks to create artistic visual works of Contemporary dance, Martial arts, and Theatre. She is passionate about the body’s natural movements in public spaces and workspaces, through experimenting with movements in spaces and attaching them to creative visual cues. In 2021 she directed and choreographed the dance film “Belia” which has been presented and awarded internationally. The film won the Best Film Award at Bucharest International Dance Film Festival and at Mexico City Videodance Festival. Also, Eman Hussein won the Best Director Award at Zinetika Festival in Spain.

he solo dance piece Smell of Cement explores the movement repertoire of construction workers. In her research on large construction sites, choreographer Eman Hussein observed striking similarities to contemporary dance. Not only is the pain and sweat of the work inscribed in the sweating bodies, but also the emotional burden of precarious employment and the agonising distance from their families. The scorching sun, the sharp smell of cement, the fragility of these bodies repeating the same rhythmic movements with dance-like precision for hours on end, at great heights, on unstable ground, engulfed by noise, dust, and great danger – all this inspired Eman Hussein’s hypnotic choreography set on a scaffolding. 
Prior to the performance, the dance film Belia (2021) by Eman Hussein immerses viewers in the day-to-day work at an auto repair shop.