COOK, EAT & CLEAN – Ritual of Disobedience 

SAT 28 NOV

قــِرِشمــال | Ghereshmal

Artist: Ava Jalali & Parham Rostam

Format: Dance Performance

Duration: 30 min

Short description

قرشمال | Ghereshmal is a movement-based research project by Ava Jalali and Parham Rostam Abadi, drawing from a dance tradition of southern Iran. At its centre is Melmedas, a figure from southern Iranian folklore who appears as a beautiful woman before revealing her monstrous side—embodying tensions between desire, danger, seduction, and punishment. The work turns to خرامیدن | kharamidan, a mode of moving shaped by softness, sensuality, and intention. Through repetitive, rhythmic, and meditative movement, Ghereshmal asks: What happens when marginalized bodies reclaim sensuality? And what changes when the monster is given the power to tell her own story?

BIO

Awa Jalali is an Iranian dance artist based in Berlin. Her practice explores embodiment, visibility, and the politics of disappearance, questioning dominant ideas of presence and spectacle. Through performance, she creates spaces for collective reflection, where stillness, listening, and withdrawal become gestures of resistance and ways of imagining coexistence.

Parham Rostam Abadi

(b. 1996, Tehran) is an interdisciplinary artist based in Vienna. With a background in theatre directing, he is currently studying Performative Art at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. His practice spans performance, video, and installation, exploring queer, migrant, and BIPOC identities, visibility, belonging, and the lived realities of marginalized communities.

Credits

Music: Ali Kianian

Dramaturgy: Parham Rostam Abadi & Awa Jalali

Foto credits: @Armin Khaleghi