I saw the snow and I touched the snow

In transit in the world

The beginning of 1989: Hooman Sharifi, born in Teheran in 1973, arrives in Norway after a stopover in Beirut (Lebanon). His mother, who smuggled him out of Iran, would join him in Norway a few years later. From East to West, in the hope of more professional opportunities. A future.

Via street dance and hip hop, Hooman Sharifi became fascinated in movement, studied dance and founded his Impure Company. Since 2002, several of his productions have been presented at the Kaaitheater.

Sharifi is every inch a nomad. His productions come about ‘in transit’, travelling from one place to another, from one residence to another. This is apparent in his productions, even though in his first works he never explicitly talks of his personal story as emigrant. In 2005, he created a solo for himself: We failed to hold this reality in mind. Here for the first time he refers to his autobiography. His only attribute on stage is a tiny Persian carpet…

Since then, his work manifests a need ‘to speak’, to use language, texts. Various elements come together in the solo he is creating for Spoken World, the need to dig deeper into his own biography and into the condition of the emigrant in general, the need to articulate a story in words and the inescapable drive to move in a space filled with light and sound. The performance has two parts. In the first ‘spoken word’ part, Sharifi focuses directly on the audience. Then – ‘when I no longer know what  to say’ – he starts to dance, making use of material from We failed to hold reality in mind.

I saw the snow and I touched the snow is a performance about Iranian coffee grounds in which one can read the future, about the aroma of Lebanese bread, about being in transit in the world…