Photo credit: Sjoerd Derine
Who is Zahira Mous
Freedom: Joy through Connection & Creation
Zahira has explored artistic and spiritual practices across the globe, extracting a deeper understanding of varying cultures and languages and how they influence humanity and, by extension, the arts - and vice versa, how the arts influence humanity. Her entire journey is about liberation through dance, meditation, writing, and creativity. Zahira invites you to find your joy and free yourself.
Zahira Mous holds a Master of Fine Arts in Dance and a Graduate Certificate in Women’s & Gender Studies from The University of Oklahoma (US) and a Bachelor of Theatre in Education from Noordelijke Hogeschool Leeuwarden (NL). Zahira is the director of dance theater company Project Zahira with a home base in Amsterdam, and the dance education outreach program Changing Lives Through Dance, and she is the founder of NGO the Healing Arts Foundation. Zahira's choreographic works have been shown and her workshops have been facilitated internationally in the United States, the Netherlands, Brazil, India and Greece.
Greatly inspired by the late German choreographer Pina Bausch, Zahira creates works that seamlessly merge dance and theater. With an interest of creating empowering experiences, she derives from her dancers’ personal stories. Overarching themes of (the search for or the peeling away of) identity seep through Zahira’s dance theater works - with an emphasis on social awareness regarding gender identities, gender (in)equality, and women empowerment.
Zahira works with professional performers as well as with people that seek emotional freedom and flow in life. Her aim is to facilitate healing through dance; via her professional dance productions, such as Reclaiming the Goddess and Who am I without my Story? as well as global dance education outreach programs and retreats. Her method Art in Motion is a healing practice of movement & creativity, in which the dancer or participant is invited to listen to the wisdom of their body. More recently, she developed a training called the Presence Process for Performers, during which she coaches professional dancers and performers with compassion and facilitate a foundation for the performer’s self-knowledge, self-development and self-worth.
Besides her professional training in dance and theater, Zahira is a certified Ayurvedic Yoga Massage therapist, aerial yoga teacher, and has completed training in art therapy, meditative therapies such as Mystic Rose and No Mind, Primal and Path of Love. The continuous inner work informs Zahira’s practice to offer to the world.
Additionally, Zahira creates Energy Art; these are paintings that Zahira creates by meditating on and tuning in with her client’s energy, evolving into artworks that show their aura and energy through colors and shapes. Clients have perceived the commissioned art works as a reflection of themselves, a mirror of sorts from which they can learn more about themselves.
Beyond her work as an artist, Zahira is a writer. She wrote for Dans Magazine for seven years as a dance critic and dance reporter, having switched over to Theaterkrant in 2020. Currently, she is writing her memoirs which are predicted to be published in 2021.
Welcome to a space of freedom. May you be inspired to reclaim yours and live your life in flow and creativity.
