About Us
Zoya Sardashti
Founder, Artistic Director, & Performance Facilitator
A Brief Biography
Born in Denver, Colorado to an Iranian father and American mother, Zoya spent most of their childhood in the southern part of the United States. In school, raising a hand to declare the family name, Sardashti, evoked an invisible mark of displacement. However, participating in theatre offered community. A person’s ability to create movement and play with words held more significance than the origin of a name.
Zoya Sardashti is a performance researcher, socially engaged artist and cultural mediator. Across the last 12 years, Zoya has engaged communities in Seoul, London, Los Angeles, Glorenza, Venice, Florence, Bolzano, Milan, and San Diego. They have a MA in Performance & Creative Research from the University of Roehampton and MS in Conflict Management & Resolution from the University of San Diego. This year they are completing a doctoral dissertation entitled, Formulations of Assembly: A Practice-Based Approach to Performing Nonviolence under the supervision of Dr. Judith Butler at the European Graduate School.
Collaborators
Curator, Research Consultant, & Performance Facilitator, Carolina Truzzi
Choreographer, Margherita Landi
Illustrator, Ladan Tofighi
Sound Producer & Videographer, DJ Shirman
Costume Designer & Consultant, Kristina Foley
Performer, Farnoush Nik
DJ/Live Performing Artist, DJ Sard
Interactive Technology Artist, Nix
Movement Consultant, Susan Pfeffer
Technical Director, Silvio Palladino
Joseph Sardashti
is a DJ and live performing artist, blending influences of hip hop, techno, and lofi electronics into his blistering hardware sets. Spending the last 5 years in Detroit, he expanded his versatility and range through multiple label releases and the late night audiovisual party series, Equalizer. With the changed landscape of live music, Sard has spent his recent time gathering music, building synthesizers, and focusing on new forms of dance-focused experiences.
is an experimental performer and dance-maker based in Tehran, Iran. She uses her background in architecture and personal life experience as social materials for new approaches to storytelling in contemporary dance.
Farnoush Nik
Nix Campbell
works in the fields of graphic design, user experience, and interactive technology. While looking for a practice to visualize his trans-masculine experience, he gravitated towards methods that allows him to manipulate the body through video, augmented reality and real-time installation.
Their projects have manifested as devised theatre, dance, performance, and performative interventions. As an intervention designer and mediator, Zoya creates adaptive structures for participation that use cultural exchange as an approach to diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts. They work in multilingual contexts and empower participants to translate social theory in their own words while guiding them to perform ideas as an applied practice in everyday life. These activities encourage participation that generates forms of inclusion in multiple cultural settings.