Performance art, dance, theater, collaboration.
I have spent my life imagining other worlds. Rooted in folklore, I blur the boundaries between mythology and the deeply human, shaping movement, sound, and story into living dreams.
I am drawn to vulnerability and emotional risk, creating in the spaces where beauty and discomfort coexist.
There is often darkness. I hope to laugh in it.
Djahari’s work bridges contemporary dance and theater, using choreography as the primary storytelling tool. Rooted in the structures of folklore and ritual, she builds mythic performance worlds that explore death, longing, decay, and transformation. In close collaboration with musicians, and through text, visual dramaturgy, and object elements, her work blends movement, story, and image to create immersive landscapes where the boundaries between dream, memory, and myth overlap. Her performances often unfold like contemporary rituals, inviting audiences into shared spaces of transformation and imagination.
Trained in Persian Ballet and contemporary dance, she was a principal dancer with Pars National Ballet for over a decade and studied under Iranian choreographer Abdollah Nazemi. She also trained at Will Geer Theater’s Academy of the Classics and earned a BA in Theater Arts from UCLA, grounding her interdisciplinary practice in both rigorous theatrical training and long-term engagement with traditional and contemporary movement forms.
In 1999, she founded Desert Sin, a Middle Eastern dance-theater company that fused narrative, social commentary, and theatrical spectacle. Her original works have been presented in Los Angeles and New York at venues including the Ivar Theatre, Zipper Factory Theater, Dixon Place, Galapagos, (Le) Poisson Rouge, and House of Yes.
Her productions include Cloud Cuckooland, The Ballad Tree, Twitchers, Winter in the Woods, Sita’s Fire, and Musée des Femmes. The Ballad Tree was the recipient of the 2024 Delaware County Community Arts Grant. Early development of her work has been supported by two Work-in-Progress residencies at Dixon Place in New York City. From 2021–2023, she co-produced and choreographed Mountain Madness, an annual immersive performance event in the Catskills; the 2023 edition was also supported by the Delaware County Arts Grant.
Since 2020, she has collaborated with musician David Kamm in a shared land-based creative practice, co-founding Gloaming Project to support process-driven, interdisciplinary performance through residencies and workshops in the Western Catskills.
She continues to develop new projects, engage in creative exchange, and pursue a practice grounded in exploration, emotional presence, and the spaces in between.