Decolonizing the Heart: Dancing the Political

Movement workshop for decolonizing the body

Sunday, May 3

⏲ 10AM PT ○ 1PM ET ○ 6PM GMT

2.5 hrs - Movement Workshop

Join Aviva Arts’ Artistic Director Debórah Eliezer and special guest Saed Mansour for a live, online workshop.

Our bodies carry stories, pain, and memory that extend beyond our personal experience, shaped by ancestry, identity, and the political and social worlds we move through. In this workshop, we will explore and embody these layers of perception through movement, improvisation, and creative expression.

Drawing from Saed’s years of somatic performance, participants will engage with questions such as: What histories live in my body? How do social and political realities shape the way I move? And how might we transform or transcend these imprints, even if just for a moment?

Through guided exercises, reflection, and improvisation, we will explore identity, gender, collective experience, and personal narrative, creating space for emotional depth, care, and joy.

This workshop is open to all levels. No prior experience is required, only a willingness to move, explore, and be present. We will move at a pace that supports each participant while gently inviting creative risk and embodied expression.

What to expect:

• Embodied movement and improvisation practices
• Reflection on personal and political themes
• A supportive, grounded, and exploratory environment

Whether you are seeking creative expression, political engagement through art, or a deeper connection to your body and community, this workshop offers a space to move, reflect, and transform, together.

🟣 Registration: here on Eventbrite!

🟣 Fee: $35 - $70* (see options below)

🟣 Join us via Zoom: The link will be sent to your email after registration.

Pricing Structure

We offer a sliding scale to support accessibility while also sustaining the artists and this work.

🟣 Supported Rate — $35*

For those who would benefit from a lower price. Full access to the workshop.

🟣 Standard Rate — $60* (Early Bird discount: $10 off!)

Covers the full cost of your participation and supports the continuity of this work.

🟣 Solidarity Rate — $70*

Supports the artist more directly and helps keep this work accessible to others.

✨ Full-Price Bonus (Standard & Solidarity Rates)

Choose the full-price option and receive access to two additional sessions in the Decolonizing the Heart series:

• May 10, 2026: Celebrating the Song of the Mother with Amal Bisharat & Debórah Eliezer
• May 17, 2026: Poetry as Resistance with Gabriel Cortez

This is an opportunity to continue the journey across different artistic practices, deepening your exploration of expression, voice, and storytelling through the body and beyond.

*Eventbrite fees will be added

Financial & Values Statement

We invite you, if you are able, to align your payment with your values.

Saed is a touring Palestinian artist working independently, without institutional support while navigating a systemically inequitable and unstable financial landscape. As part of a Palestinian minority living in Israel, he faces ongoing social and structural marginalization. Your contribution directly supports his ability to continue creating, teaching, and sustaining his work and life.

Choosing to pay the full price is a meaningful way to support all marginalized artists to ensure transformational work can continue to exist at the grassroots level and reach others.

If you have the financial capacity, we encourage you to choose a higher tier, this is a direct way to put your values into action and support marginalized artists.

_______________________ Meet the facilitators ___________________________

Saed Mansour is a Palestinian freelance performance artist, choreographer, teacher, and festival producer, previously working in tech. His work explores emotional, communal, and socio-political processes, creating spaces for connection, safety, and reflection. Born Palestinian with Israeli citizenship, Saed’s lived experience is deeply political and embodied, shaped by generational and ongoing trauma. Through performance and teaching, he engages with these layers, using vulnerability to build bridges between artist and audience and to open space for complex conversations. His movement language is rooted in extensive self-research and draws from practices such as Sufi whirling, Windstyle, mindfulness, and Authentic Movement. In 2026, Saed is touring between Palestine and Europe, continuing to develop Dancing the Political. www.saedmansour.com/

Debórah Eliezer is an Arab Jewish theater maker, writer, social activist, post-zionist and California fire survivor, is Founder of Aviva Arts an Associate Artist with Golden Thread and serves on SWANA Alliance of TheatreMakers Board. Her work focuses on disrupting assumptions about art, human values and society. She has devised and performed in numerous world premieres, recently creating the multidisciplinary walkthrough installation and live performance Burning Wild with Aviva Arts in SF. With foolsFURY, Eliezer wrote and performed (dis)Place[d] about Iraqi Jews,which toured the US and UK as well as 15 other world premieres including producing the FURY Factory Festival of Ensemble and Devised Theater for 15 years. She holds a BA Cum Laude from SFSU and a certificate in Sound, Voice Music Healing from CIIS. www.avivaarts.org

pictures by Aline Zandona