Fix Me

Overview

An Egyptian Muslim dancer, an American Jewish acrobat, finding, loving, and using each other. Fix Me is a full-length dance theater piece that explores queer male impulses across disparate cultural contexts and sheds light on the precariousness of intimacy, free expression, and relationships. The duet uses dance, physical theatre and acrobatics to tackles a universal cause and concern, sharing their side of the struggle with one another and merging two individual stories into one.

This project is part of “Egyptian Queer Uprising,” a three-part performance and research project centering queer expression in Egypt. The piece had residency showings in Philadelphia in April, and Cairo in June. This is the world premiere performance run before it will return to Egypt in November, 2023. The piece will be available for tour starting in early 2024. 

Cannonball, produced by Almanac Dance Circus Theatre, is the first and largest independent festival hub of the Philadelphia Fringe that presents risk-taking independent artists in back-to-back performances next to delicious lounge spaces, fostering creative collisions and community conversation.

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About the Artist

This is a collaboration between Almanac Dance Circus Theatre (Philadelphia, USA) and NÜT Dance Company (Cairo, Egypt), created and performed by Ben Grinberg and Hazem Header. 

Ben Grinberg (he/they) is a Philadelphia-based performing artist, director, clown and educator working at the intersection of contemporary circus and ensemble dance theatre. His work embraces the earnest awkwardness of connection and the mess of existing in a world of collapsing structures. He is a graduate of the inaugural class of the Pig Iron School for Advanced Performance Training (now the Pig Iron UArts MFA, where he is also on Faculty). Grinberg is co-founder, and longtime Artistic Director of Almanac Dance Circus Theatre, an award-winning and internationally touring physical performance ensemble, and from 2017-2021 was a founding core faculty member at Circadium, the nation’s first certificate granting program in contemporary circus performance. He is a founding producer and program manager of Cannonball, a guest coach in performance skills for Pitch Catch Circus, and was a 2022 Breaking Walls Festival invited choreographer in Cairo, Egypt. With Almanac, they won a 2020 Rocky Award, a 2017 Suraya Award, and a 2019 Barrymore Award for Outstanding Movement/Choreography for xoxo moongirl, which they also directed. Grinberg’s work has been presented by Jacob’s Pillow, FringeArts, New York Live Arts, Bill T. Jones, Philadelphia Contemporary/Reggie Wilson Fist and Heel Performance Group, the Mexico City International Festival of Contemporary Dance, Assembly Festival, Circus Now, and more.

Hazem Header is an Egyptian contemporary dancer and choreographer. After studying personal training, bio-mechanics & kinesiology, and after leading a long career in sports, Hazem decided to focus on contemporary dance in 2009. Hazem studied at the Cairo Contemporary Dance Center, a governmental center at the Cairo Opera House. In 2014

Credits