Laura Hicks & Eslam Elnebishy:
Nouns as Verbs

Laura Hicks is a Canadian-born choreographer based in Frankfurt, Germany. She creates works that structure improvisation through movement qualities and encounters. She questions bodily states, affects, and intentions, drawing inspiration from incongruity, relationship, vitality, and multiple layers of meaning and humor. Her work is contextualized by contemporary dance and theater practices with a minimalist, conceptual aesthetic but strong physicality. The work often includes the use of voice. She creates solo works as well as group pieces.

From 2015- 2019 she produced collaboratively under the names “Hicks&Buehler” and “Hicks and Reynolds”, and since 2020 her work has been produced under the name Laura Hicks Projects. From 2020- 2022, Hicks premiered three new choreographic works, participated in two funded research residencies, re-performed Der Klumpen, and toured Making Impressions and Other Failures to Marburg, Bonn, and Croatia.
Currently, Laura Hicks Projects is producing four full-length choreographic works available for guest performances: The Lump, Making Impressions…, Third Space, and Gut Symmetries.

Thematically, Laura Hicks’ choreographic work is driven by questions dealing with kinesthesia, emotional states, and affect or relationship with others. Her work is unique in its use of the improvisational skills of the performers and their ability to fill in specific movement qualities that fit or influence the works in very different ways. Movement states are determined by how they relate to other performers or the themes of the work.

Many of Laura Hicks’ works have all-female or nearly all-female performers and portray female performers in androgynous roles that demonstrate physical strength, endurance, and honesty while subtly drawing from current socio-political issues.

Eslam Elnebishy is a choreographer and dancer, Born and raised in Cairo, Egypt and currently based in Frankfurt, Germany.
He is a graduate of Maat|CCDC contemporary dance school in Cairo, Egypt. He studied in the year-long program in Cairo initiative for liberal studies and arts (CILAS) 2016 and completed a Masters in Choreography and Performance (CUP) in Giessen, Germany.

His choreographic works explore a connection between spoken language and the body, with an interest in questioning current structures of the dance scene, and how it operates. Establishing choreographies that create narratives between what’s seen on stage, and the potential of what’s missing, that’s not seen. That interacts with the imagination, interpretation and memory of the audience.

Since 2017, he created works, like: Solo with others , Just tell me the truth!, Self Portrait, Taking Place, I’m not talking to you, Don’t watch, Go back to your seat, Please!, Once, it was a dream, Troubled Butterflies, Again and again and again.
His works were presented in festivals/venues like :
Zukunft tanzt Festival, Sommerwerft, Frankfurt tanzt- Open air festival, Tanzwerkstatt Europa Openstage- Munich, Landungsbrücken Frankfurt, Toplotsentrala- Sofia, City of Culture -Tunisia, CCDC Maat Dance platform-Cairo, Falaki theater- Cairo. He has been a resident artist with ID-Frankfurt Rhein Main, Sofia radar, Zukunft tanzt Festival, Goethe institute Cairo and Un/controlled gestures choreography project.

As a dancer, he participated in performances with choreographers like: Fabrice Mazliah, Marie-Lena Kaiser, Jorge Crecis, Olivier Dubois, karima Mansour, Nicolas Cantillon, Michael Klien, Manuel Pelmus and more