If you’ve ever filled out any kind of official form for insurance, a loan, a job application, the United States Census, or even to sign up for your COVID vaccine, you’ve probably filled out that section on “Race and Ethnicity.” And there are the usual categories: White, Hispanic, Black, Indigenous,...
Service and Celebrity
I’m not someone who’s really into “celebrity culture,” but I admit that I’ve been really glued to what’s happening with Prince Harry and Megan Markle, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex in England. Part of that is definitely because I’ve been watching The Crown on Netflix, which follows the life...
Embracing Change
One of the things about being an Adjunct Professor at a college is taking professional development courses. And I’m taking one about implicit bias and sensitivity in the classroom, which has been really fascinating for me. Of course, I’m reflecting on all the situations I’ve found myself in where I’ve...
Healing and Empathy
Lately I've been thinking a lot about empathy. Do we need to have gone through the same experiences to have empathy for others? Or can we have empathy even if we haven't had shared experiences? And if not, how can we truly identify with one another’s struggles, pain, and heartbreaks?...
Witnessing Nagwa…
Close your eyes, and imagine... Cairo, Egypt. Summer 1968. You’re at an outdoor festival. The scent of jasmine fills the air. The 35-piece orchestra plays their opening bars—new music with ancient roots. And then the great and incomparable Nagwa Fouad enters the stage. The audience is smashed together, and you...
Endings on Opening Night
Life isn't "black and white." There are all these shades of grey—and so many colors—that create beauty in it all. They're never static, either. The shades and colors change all the time. Every day, I'm feeling that challenge of being fluid, accepting and knowing that nothing will ever stay...
What the body knows
Have you ever gotten weak at the knees and felt like your body couldn’t hold you up? Like you couldn’t even breathe? And the feeling came out of nowhere? One of those experiences when your body had such an immediate and visceral response before your mind even had a chance...
Going in to go out
As the stay-at-home order here in California goes on and on, week after week, month after month, I keep thinking about the concept of Home Position. When my body is in Home Position—the starting posture of my dance format—I go into a kind of meditation. It’s where I find awareness...
What does freedom mean?
I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about the recent events here in the United States, wondering what I could possibly say that would be appropriate or meaningful right now. And today is the 19th of June, the date in 1863 when Black people in the United States were...
I am Inspired
I am INSPIRED. I am so inspired by you. You have fed my soul through my entire life. I grew up listening to your music. My mother grew up listening to your music. Every move I manifested in my childhood, if it wasn't music from the Middle East, it was coming...