Samar Haddad King
Artist
Artistic/Founding Director of Yaa Samar! Dance Theatre (YSDT), graduated cum laude in choreography from the Ailey/Fordham BFA program under the tutelage of Kazuko Hirabayashi. With YSDT, King has created over 30 original works which have been performed in 10 countries across 4 continents. Her awards and commissions include: Hubbard Street 2 – National Choreography Competition; Palest’In & OUT Festival (Paris, France) – Prix des Jeunes Créateurs Palestiniens pour la Diversité des Expressions Artistiques award; and the Palestinian Museum (Palestine) among others. In 2018 King was awarded La Fabrique Chaillot residency at Chaillot – Théâtre national de la Danse (Paris, France) for the development of Last Ward. King frequently collaborates on theatrical and musical theater productions, including the upcoming production of We Live in Cairo (American Repertory Theater, Boston, Massachusetts). She regularly lectures on her work at institutions including TanzKongress (Hanover, Germany), University of Virginia (Charlottesville, Virginia), and Columbia University Center for Palestine Studies (New York, New York), and co-authored a chapter on dance in the Arab World with Sandra Noeth for the 2nd edition of Contemporary Choreography (Routledge, January 2018). She is a 2019/20 Fellow at the Center for Ballet and the Arts at NYU.
