The URB 25 festival brings two solo dance pieces to Stoa, which will be seen in the same performance.

Both works explore the creator’s journey to their own identity through street dance. First performer is Hozan Omar with Layers, the second one is French Nach: Cellule.

Hozan Omar
Layers is a solo street dance performance by Hozan Omar that combines popping style with a soundscape featuring Kurdish music and electronic sounds. The piece addresses the performer’s Kurdish roots, identity issues in Finland and the challenges of living between two cultures. Through dance, Omar explores emotions such as curiosity, pain, and confidence.

Hozan Omar is a Helsinki-born dancer and a dance teacher. In year 2015 he graduated from the Street dance programme of the Swedish Åsa Folklögskolan. He has been travelling a lot for dancing and participating in various competitions. In years 2013 & 2016 Omar won the Finnish Championship of popping. Omar has performed in several TV productions and music videos.

As a dancer, Omar is self-confident and he thinks that performing brings out the most of his potential. Omar has been seen as a performer at the URB festival during 2021 and 2022. Layers is his first own solo performance.

Duration: 40 min

Nach
Nach’s career began with krump, a dance style that originated in Los Angeles in the 1990s from rebellious energy in response to police violence in African-American neighborhoods. The discovery of this extremely expressive dance style, which plays with the tensions and explosions of the face and body, made an impression on Nach’s training and movement language.

In this solo, which takes the form of a self-portrait, Nach questions her own relationship with krump, her desire to take it elsewhere, and combine it with other genres. Her powerful, skillful dance goes deep, questioning its impact and paving the way for the paths she has taken.

Nach is a French dancer and choreographer, who discovered krump at 22 after watching Rize, David Lachapelle’s documentary. She soon began exploring the stage and the creative process, collaborating with artists like choreographer Heddy Maalem and musicians Koki Nakano and Ruth Rosenthal. In cinema, she worked with the Kourtrajmé collective on a project about transmission, body, and posture. In 2017, she created her first solo, Cellule, followed by Beloved Shadows in 2019 after a stay in Japan, where she explored Noh theatre, bunraku, and butoh dance. Committed to telling meaningful stories, Nach’s work blends dance, visual arts, and other artforms. Her works often interrogates femaleness and identity.

Duration: 45min.