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MENACASEA 2026 Symposium Music, Dance and Spirituality in Muslim Contexts

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Stylised illustration of dancers in colourful clothing performing expressive movement in a theatrical composition for MENACASEA

  • Status

    Ended

  • Date

    28 Oct 2026 to 30 Oct 2026

  • Location

    Aga Khan Centre & Online
MENACASEA Programme

The Institute of Ismaili Studies (IIS) and the Dance, Music and Performing Arts of the Middle East, North Africa, Central Asia and Islamic Southeast Asia (MENACASEA) research network are pleased to present the fourth MENACASEA Symposium. 

This international gathering brings together scholars, artists and practitioners to explore dance, music, movement and performance traditions across the Middle East, North Africa, Central and South Asia and Muslim contexts in Southeast Asia. The 2026 symposium focuses on the relationship between music, dance, movement and spirituality in Muslim contexts, examining how embodied and musical practices shape religious experience, artistic expression, cultural identity and communal life.

Across diverse Muslim societies, music and movement have long played important roles in spiritual and cultural practice. From devotional rituals and religious theatre to folk performance traditions and contemporary artistic works, these forms of expression offer valuable insights into questions of meaning, belonging, memory and transcendence.

The symposium encourages interdisciplinary dialogue between scholars and practitioners working across fields including musicology, dance studies, anthropology, religious studies, history, performance studies and related disciplines.

Panels and Speakers

Day one

  • Professor Zayn Kassam, Professor Anthony Shay and Dr. Hakim Elnazarov

Chair: William Hofmann

  • Multilayered Transcendence: How Religious Music Upends Narratives of Dominance in the Contemporary Middle East
    Tala Jarjour

Chair: Riaz Rhemtulla

  • When Patterned Movement is Not Dance: The Alevi Semah as Non-Dance, Devotion and Commemoration
    Sinibaldo De Rosa
  • Veiled Sensualities: The Aesthetics of Concealment, Desire, and Sacred Movement in Moroccan Sufi Performance Suchismita Ghoshal
  • Layered Devotions: Sound, Movement, and the Transformation of Ritual Practices in Yazd
    Narciss Sohrabi

Chair: Daryoush Mohammad Poor

  • The Poyamal Funeral Dance and its Spiritual Meanings among the People of the Pamir Mountains
    Hakim Elnazarov
  • Dancing Through Loss: Mourning, Memory, and Resistance in Contemporary Iran
    Maryam Rezaee
  • The Body Remembers First: Sound, Movement, and Lived Spirituality in Contemporary Iran
    Banafshe Amiri
  • Hal, Improvisation and the Spiritual Conceptualization of Time
    Shahrzad Khorsandi
  • Staging Spirituality, Innocent Sexualities and Glorious Histories: Choreographic Strategies of State Folk Dance Ensembles to Create Idealised National Identities
    Anthony Shay
  • From the Elite to the People: The Choreographic Evolution of Meshkatian and Shajarian’s Masterpieces in Post-Revolutionary Iran
    Daryoush Mohammad Poor

Day 2

Chair: Shahrzad Khorsandi

  • From Zawiya to Stage: The Performance of Devotion in Egypt
    Walid Ghali
  • The Emergence of “New Dance” in Iran: From Underrating “Old” Dance and Movement Forms to Borrowing from Them
    Afshin Derakh’shesh
  • Sacralising the Stage: Spirituality and Respectability in Belly Dance
    Suhaila Salimpour

Chair: Sinibaldo De Rosa

  • The Performing Arts and Education About Muslims: “Kathak Dance” as a Case Study for Narrative Storytelling and Audience Engagement.
    Riaz Rhemtulla
  • A Step Towards Contextualising the IIS Secondary Curriculum: Integrating Performative Central Asian Qasida-khani Tradition into Teaching and Learning Practices in the Region Sayed Munir Shah
  • Living the Qasida: Music, Faith, and Everyday Devotion in Wakhan, Tajikistan
    Chorshanbe Goibnazarov

Chair: Walid Ghali

  • “O Honoured and Esteemed Isis”: Imagining Ancient Spectacle for Egypt’s Modern State
    Roberta L. Dougherty
  • Stars, Dreams and Djinns in Egyptian Golden Age Cinema (1940s–1960s)
    Maria Faidi
  • From Samia Gamal to Farida Fahmy: Dance and National Representation in Nasser’s Egypt
    Naiara Müssnich Rotta Gomes de Assunção

Chair: Hakim Elnazarov

  • Breaking the Silence: Women, Religion and Musical Transformation in the Hunza Valley
    Qudsia Naunehal Shah
  • The ‘Mongol Play’ (Mughul-bozi): A Traditional Musical of Wakhan
    Abdulmamad Iloliev
  • Raqs-i Aspak (The Horse Dance): An Endangered Expression of Ancestral Memory and Pamiri Cultural Identity
    Maruf Noyoft and Aliah Najmabadi

Day 3

Chair: Roberta L. Dougherty

  • When Movement Ascends towards Divine Harmony: Music, the Body and Devotion in the Ikhwan al-Safaʾ and the Chishti Sufi Order
    Nida Fatima Sheikh
  • Dhamaal – Rhythmic Dhikr at the Shrine of Lal Shahbaz Qalandar
    Shafaat Saleem
  • Sounding Lineage: Qawwali, Sama, and the Ritual Assemblage of Devotional Sound
    Wajiha Naqvi

Chair: Anthony Shay

  • Ethnochoreohistory: A Critical Reframing
    İdris Ersan Küçük
  • The Relationship between African Sufism and Candomblé through Dance
    Carolina Grandela Tortuero
  • To ‘Move like Water’: Narrating the Past and Performing the Future through Malay Muslim Zapin Dance
    Katia Chaterji
  • Eileen Srebernik, Roberta L. Dougherty and Anthony Shay
    The publishing roundtable includes a writer/scholar, a librarian from a major university (Yale), and an editor from a scholarly press. They will present the process through which a scholarly book is published and provide advice for scholars about how to approach the publishing of a scholarly book. This roundtable is designed especially for new scholars to begin the publishing process.
  • Professor Oliver Scharbrodt
  • Professor Anthony Shay
  • Dr. Hakim Elnazarov

Special musical event

As part of the symposium, participants are invited to a special evening musical event on 29 October 2026 at the Ismaili Centre, London.

Further details will be announced with the conference programme.

Organisers

This symposium is jointly organised by The Institute of Ismaili Studies and the MENACASEA research network.

Please note filming and photography may take place during the event, and be used across our website, newsletters and social media accounts. These could include broad shots of the audience and lecture theatre, speakers during the talk, and of audience members participating in Q&A.

Views expressed in this conference are those of the presenting scholars, and do not necessarily express the views of IIS.

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