Photo : Morgane Guillou
Jaune
Rayanne Fawaz
Biography
Raya/Rayanne/ريَّان was born in Lebanon.
Growing up in Beirut, she discovered the ballet scene and danced recreationally from a young age. Alongside ballet, she was occasionally exposed to dabke, the traditional Levantine line dance often seen at social gatherings and community events.
In 2018, she moved to Montreal to study Bioresource Engineering. By 2024, feeling a need for movement, grounding, and a deeper connection to her body and roots, she decided to step away from that path and explore dance more fully.
In Montreal, she took any classes she could access; contemporary dance, floorwork, contact improvisation, house, movement practices, and traditional forms. These experiences gradually deepened her interest in non-Western styles and encouraged her to reconnect with her culture while experimenting with different approaches to dance.
Today, she dances in hope to explore new practices, carried by an evolving mix of styles and cultures, all while continuing to question what “contemporary” dance really means for her.
Artistic Approach
During her time in Lebanon, looking to analyze sustainable agricultural practices in her hometown after being sold “innovative sustainability” in Montreal, Raya realized that many Western innovations find their source in grassroots Eastern traditional practices. Dance is one of them. Her interest in traditional Levantine dance, or dabke, then started to grow… researching the origins of movements and their relation to the earth, the geography, the labor, and the kinship. And in that matter, all movement can be traced back.
Following that thought, Raya starts to question the change of these traditions through time. Why are certain cultures allowed to evolve and others frozen in time to be observed as exhibits?
For her solo, Rayanne wonders what dabke would look like if it were to evolve in her contextual space-time. What it would look like if it were allowed to live in her expat body.