Liza Sulaiman (1994) grew up in Amsterdam in a family with Iraqi and Belarusian roots. She started dancing hip-hop at a young age with Solid Ground Movement and performed in productions by Alida Dors and Bryan Druiventak. Following her graduation in Choreography from the Fontys Academy of the Arts, she was supported by deSingel in Antwerp, Productiehuis Rotterdam, and ICK Dans Amsterdam.
In her work, Liza focuses on that which remains systemically underrepresented: untold stories, suppressed emotions, and the images we avoid. She explores how we relate to our own bodies and those of others in an unequal world. At the same time, she is drawn to the contrasts of human existence, where memory and oblivion, distance and proximity, stillness and intensity, and the digital and physical converge. Balancing between these polarities, she weaves movement, video, and sound into poetically layered, multidisciplinary universes to explore themes such as displacement, war, media, resilience, and transformation.
This coming season, Liza Sulaiman will focus on the friction between the physical body, digital media, and systemic power. Building on the research of Body:(Not)Found, I examine the concept of filtering: how systems of power use media to distort, censor, and erase human presence, and how the body asserts agency to disrupt these filters and reclaim its space.
I will work with the tension between visibility and absence by exploring the threshold where the body disappears. Through a dialogue between lighting, video projections, and physical movement, I play with fragmentation, allowing parts of the body to be obscured, hidden, or erased from the stage.
Central to this research is the folksong Nijmet El sobh (نجمة الصبح) by Palestinian vocalist Sanaa Moussa.