Cosmos is a solo performance resulting from the collaboration between Clément Dazin and Ashtar Muallem, a contortionist and aerial acrobat dancer. Clément Dazin invites Ashtar to express her own exploration in an emotional and humorous show, depicting multiple attempts to find spirituality and the energy that connects our emotions to our bodies. They take the audience on a journey through intimate relationships with their spiritual practices and resurface existential questioning of a city-dwelling woman in her thirties, with the aid of the body and dance.

From sacred to profane, the engaged and elastic body spirals into extraordinary dimensions, prompting the audience to ponder whimsical thoughts and revealing the paradoxes present in Ashtar’s being in a sensitive and touching manner. Her self-deprecation, weaving between memories and fiction, blurs the lines between what is real and what is invented: the confusion begins…

Taking inspiration from her grandmother’s memories, this solo gradually transitions into an invitation to a clownesque and collective ceremony !

The body that disorients, the mind and body in contradiction. Contortion.

Ashtar’s body is elastic, stretching and contorting, and then she addresses the audience, proposing ceremonies’ ideas for ceremonies: making the most virile man in the room cry on stage and collecting his tears for THE ceremony, taking a virgin’s hair for THE ceremony, printing the Facebook photo of someone’s ex from the audience and burning it, collecting the ashes for THE ceremony.

From the presentation of her little stories, Ashtar will move towards the extraordinary, through both text and body. As the performance progresses, her body will drift and take on “paranormal” postures.

Conception Clément Dazin and by Ashtar Muallem
Sound design Gregory Adoir Light and stage design Tony Guérin
Administration, production, distribution La Magnanerie – Anne Herrmann, Victor Leclère, Hortense Huyghues-Despointes, Debora Laufer, Margot Moroux

Producer La Main de l’Homme Coproducers KLAP Maison pour la danse, Marseille With the support of la Biennale Internationale des Arts du Cirque de Marseille and the British Council of Jerusalem

Cosmos / Awalem ‘عوالم’

The show has been translated into Arabic and has been touring since the 2023/2024 season in Egypt and Palestine.

Co-written and performed by Ashtar Muallem
Co-written and directed first time by Clément Dazin
Script Development in Arabic 2023 Ashtar Muallem and Emile Saba
Second director Emile Saba
Music creation Gregory Adoir
Light design Tony Guerin
Stage manager and light Edward Muallem

Production and coordination Ashtar Muallem, Company La Main de l’Homme, with the participation of ASHTAR THEATRE
With the support of The British Council – Palestine (hosting project ‘British Council Jerusalem Creative Space’), the French Consulate – Jerusalem, Goethe Institut – Ramallah

Trailer of the show here.

Ahstar Muallem

Ashtar Muallem is a Jerusalemite multidisciplinary artist working on the intersection between circus, dance, and theatre. Performing since the age of 14, and professionally for the past decade since her graduation from the Centre National des Arts du Cirque in France. Ashtar creates and produces her personal work, in 2023, she produced “Awalem” the Arabic version of Cosmos in Palestine, collaborating with Emile Saba as a second director for this piece. Her debut solo “Enheduanna” in 2019 was directed by Iman Aoun in co-production with Ashtar Theatre in Ramallah. In 2013, she co-created “B-Orders” with Fadi Zmurrod, a duo performance produced by the Palestinian Circus, that won the Total Theatre and Jackson Lane Award at the Fringe in 2015.

Ashtar has performed with renowned companies in Palestine and Europe. In 2019, she was part of the show “Inops“, directed by Clément Dazin with his company La Main de l’Homme. She also performed with the Swedish company Circus Cirkör in “Epifonima” in 2018 and “Movements” in 2017. Additionally, she was part of the political cabaret “Vinnaren Tar Allt” in 2018 with Malmö Stadsteater in Sweden.

She participated in the production of “Après Coup, Project Un Femme#2” in 2017, directed by Severine Chavrier. Ashtar performed for four years with the iconic show “Badke,” 2013-2017 with Les Ballets C de la B, Al Qattan Foundation, and the Royal Flemish Theatre. Ashtar also acts in series and films and is working on her first feature-length documentary, which will be shot in Palestine.