nasa4nasa: They f**k with dance and everywhere is their stage

Two entities become one in nasa4nasa, a Cairo-based dance collective pushing the boundaries of what dance can be in the age of mass virtual consumption. Founded in 2016 by dancers Noura Seif Hassanein and Salma AbdelSalam, the collective uses Instagram as their stage, challenging traditional notions of performance through static imagery and experimental choreography. The two dance in arachnid oneness, leveraging their creative chemistry to create moving installations. There’s a playful irreverence in their content, inviting viewers to embrace the chaos of the new age while experiencing dance in all its forms. 

Both Noura and Salma studied at the Cairo Contemporary Dance Center (CCDC), before earning scholarships from danceWEB, which gave them five weeks of dance training in Vienna as part of the renowned IMPULSTANZ International Dance Festival. The two discovered their synergy in an improvisational piece they did during their studies, deciding to form a collective years later to honour it. The title ‘nasa4nasa’ is a portmanteau—not an ode to the famous space program—combining the founder’s first names, with the ‘4’ implying a mutual causation, that they dance for the sake of themselves, for the act of it. 

Seizing the potential of an online audience, the collective began uploading videos exploring movement in jarring spaces—limbs peeking behind ferns or folding over in warehouses. Donning matching outfits and blank stares, the two appear ominous and unsettling, but rapturing in beauty all the same. “We began as an Instagram account by creating images, and videos in alternative stages which we would post on Instagram,” nasa4nasa tells Dazed MENA. “We wanted to be able to create work without the constrictions that were attached to creating live works. We were also interested in utilising Instagram differently, as a stage in itself, that would house but also inform our work.”

The duo stand side by side in their posts, mirroring each other’s stances; two branches of the same tree. Other times, they’re melded together into some singular apparatus, difficult to tell where one person’s limbs start and the other’s ends. Only in their videos do we see the sinuous synchronicity of their movements. Even with the haphazard nonchalance of their online presence, their mesmerising talent is what keeps viewers coming back. Though there’s a practised symmetry to their dances, it’s the comfortable informality of nasa4nasa’s social media accounts that makes the collective novel. 

Their debut performance ‘SUASH’ came after a year of preparation, set in a squash court in Cairo in 2019. Their unconventional choice of venue reflected their approach as a collective, accommodating the space rather than the routine. They harnessed the theatricality of the space, which was immediately obvious to them. Soon the performance became a symbiotic push-and-pull; the confines of the squash court would dictate the breadth of their movement, and the duo themselves would morph the room into a stage just by occupying the space as they did. It was a performance of reciprocal negotiation. “We hope to keep on carving out space that allows us to create work that can broaden and inspire what dance can be for us,” the duo shares. 

nasa4nasa’s works interrogate the concept of failure and the beauty that can be found within it, transposing repetition and chance into instruments of meaning. Instead of demanding comprehension, their choreography revels in chaos, offering viewers a moment to find their own delineatory rhythm. They embrace the unpredictability of their medium, engaging with themes of boredom, vanity, and failure to provoke their audiences to think with the movement. “nasa4nasa seeks to foreshadow alternative spaces as occupied stages,” they expound. “The collective can be taken lightly or seriously; it is meant to do both.”

Their latest piece, ‘Sham3dan,’ collaborated with dancers from the Egyptian contemporary dance scene. Performed in Cairo in 2024, the piece explored the ‘Sham3dan;’ the Egyptian candelabra dance, and its evolution. Nine dancers crowned with candelabras commanded the space, creating a kinetic tableau. The collective collaborated with musician Ismail Hosny, who scored their 40-minute performance. “It premises the founding mothers of this dance as the ghosts have carried on the dance to our present,” the duo clarifies. “The fictions surrounding their lives always highlight the sacrifice of dance. Sham3dan highlights systems of power in choreography, revealing the commitment and violence of its mastery while seeking to form new assemblages.”

With their undeniable talent and organic approach to their digital space, nasa4nasa are reimagining what it means to dance in the contemporary age. “We hope to make work that examines what contemporary dance can be and mean for us and our audience.”