Performance art, dance, theater, collaboration.
Producer, Director, Choreographer.
Maker of dreams.
My entire life I have been imagining other worlds. With a focus on folklore, much of my work personifies the struggle against boundaries, real and imagined.
I am not afraid of leaping into the unknown, exposing vulnerabilities, or confronting frightening emotions. This allows me to create from a place of truth within myself, functioning both as a personal catharsis, as well as a tool to challenge my audience to look into their own inner life.
There is often darkness - I hope to laugh in it.
A theater arts specialist and an intercultural dancer combining traditional Middle Eastern and Contemporary dance, Djahari weaves story and movement to create sensational theater. With a predilection for blurring the lines between the beautiful and grotesque, she seeks the invisible thread that connects us all. She has traveled the world as an instructor and performer.
Djahari studied at Will Geer Theater’s Academy of the Classics, led by a repertory of renowned theater professionals specializing in techniques of Voice, Movement, and Text, and earned her BA in the School of Theatre, Film and Television at UCLA. She enhanced her theater work with continuous training in various dance genres. She studied with Iranian ballet choreographer, Abdollah Nazemi, and was a principle dancer in Pars National Ballet Company for 10 years. In 1999, she founded Desert Sin as a means of merging her love of theater and dance with an “outside the box” approach. An experimental Middle Eastern Dance company that combined social commentary, intricate story telling, puppetry, and more, Desert Sin made a name for itself around the world.
Djahari has produced in both Los Angeles and New York, in such venues as Hollywood's Historic Ivar Theater, off-Broadway's Zipper Factory Theater, Dixon Place, Galapagos, (Le) Poisson Rouge, and House of Yes. Original productions include "Musée des Femmes”, “Sita’s Fire”, “Twitchers”, “Sex and Taboo”, “Winter in the Woods”, “Cloud Cuckooland”, and current project, "The Ballad Tree". From 2021-2023 she co-produced and choreographed the annual immersive event, "Mountain Madness" in the Catskills, which was a recipient of the 2023 Delaware Arts Grant. Djahari has also been the recipient of Dixon Place Work-In-Progress residencies, as well as Australian residencies for both Critical Path Research, and Legs on the Wall. In 2020, Djahari and long-time collaborator David Kamm co-founded Gloaming Project, an artist residency and performance series program.
Djahari resides in the Western Catskills, where she continues to develop new projects, teach occasional workshops, and live vibrantly.