مهند رشيد Muhanad Rasheed

Muhanad Rasheed (born in Baghdad 1985) is a dancer, choreographer and musician, In 2007, he and a group of fellow artists founded the dance company Iraqi Bodies,

Early years

Muhanad began painting during his childhood, and from the age of 9 cultivated an interest in listening to Western music. His interested extended to cinema and poetry as well. Muhanad comes from an artistic family, as his brothers are filmmakers. This early exposure led him to enter the world of arts from an early age. He entered the Institute of Fine Arts in Baghdad at age 15, where he studied painting for three years before finding himself drawn to the world of theatre. He transferred to the Institute’s theatre department where he created many theatre productions and received prizes from the Institutes’ festivals. He has also participated in many regional theatre festivals such as the ‘Experimental Theatre Festival’ in Cairo 2002.

Dance

Muhanad has experimented with ‘Butoh’ and contemporary dance, and further developed his dance experience through his own research, and subsequently participated in many works as a dancer and choreographer. His first performance as a dancer and choreographer in ‘The Last Breath,’ took multiple prizes including ‘Best Performer and Script’ in Philadelphia Youth Theatre Festival 2005 in Amman/ Jordan. After ‘Last Breath’, Muhanad created his most important project- the founding of dance group "Iraqis Bodies". Their first dance performance, ‘Crying of my mother’ (2007), received prizes at the Theatre Festival in Jordan 2007 and the second place in the Airowaves selections in London 2009.

After the success of ‘Crying of my mother’, Muhanad and Iraqis Bodes toured throughout Europe and the Middle East, including the Kalamata dance festival 2009, Birmingham international dance 2010, BIPOD Beirut International Platform of Dance. Iraqi Bodies continues to tour internationally.
Muhanad’s dance performance ‘Mourning’ 2009 with the International Dance Theatre company in Amsterdam, premiered perform at the Dancing on the edge festival in Amsterdam in December 2009 and toured to other cities in Holland as well. Additional engagements are planned for Holland in 2010 and also 2 shows Syria.

Iraqi Bodies

In 2006 Muhanad and his friends fled from Iraq to find another place to live and make art. The situation in Baghdad after the last war in 2003 was main reason to flee for many Iraqi people. Some of their community could no longer make dance and theatre because they were not in the same country anymore, but in 2007, Muhanad and three Iraqi dancers met again in Jordan and Syria, to form their new dance company Iraqi Bodies. ‘Crying of my mother’ was their first dance production. Since then the company has made additional dance theatre and installation performances, and often tours abroad with their work.

Music

In 2009, Muhanad started to compose music alongside his career in dance as he dreamed before. His first score was the soundtrack for his solo dance ‘Obsession’, which was presented in an art museum in Casablanca, Morocco in 2010. He also scored ‘dream is a broken mirror of realty’, a site specific performance that was presented at the Mellemrum festival 2010.
He and his Iraqi musician friends are creating an original score for a new dance performance ‘Thieves’ in collaboration with the choreographer Leyya Mona Tawil.

Cinema

Muhanad’s performance range also includes acting in many short movies. His first role as an actor in a feature length movie was in ‘Underexposure’, which premiered in 2004. This movie took many international prizes such as ‘Best Director’ in the Rotterdam Arab Film Festival 2006. Muhanad recently took a main role in Hajaz Kar’s new feature length movie which will start shooting in 2012 .

Upcoming dance performances 2011

Insomnia is a new dance work of Muhanad Rasheed with the Iraqi Bodies Company.

Thieves is a new dance & music work in collaboration with Leyya Mona Tawil from Dance Elixir USA

A new production with the International Dance Theatre company in Amsterdam, yet to be titled.