Performance Lectures

SURVEY OF TRADITIONAL MIDDLE EASTERN AND NORTH AFRICAN MUSIC AND DANCE
Performer/Lecturer:  Joe Zeytoonian and Myriam Eli

Harmonic Motion’s presentation includes dance and live music from Egypt, Morocco, the Romany (Gypsy) people, Armenia and Turkey, including Ottoman classical repertoire and Turkish Sephardim (Judeo-Spanish people).  The performance includes an educational narrative with cultural, historical and geographical information.

HARMONIC MOTION (www.harmonicmotion.com) is a music and dance performance group that focuses on folkloric and ethnic idioms and cross-cultural projects.  Its core performers and teachers are musician/composer Joe Zeytoonian and dancer/percussionist Myriam Eli.  They regularly participate in workshops and performances of Middle eastern, Armenian and North African music and dance as well as collaborations with jazz, avant-garde, modern, improvisational, flamenco, Indian, Balkan, African, Afro-Cuban, Sephardic, and other forms.

JOE ZEYTOONIAN is an udist, singer, percussionist and composer who has received various Fellowship Grants and Honorable Mentions from the Florida Department of State, Broward County, and the National Endowment for the Arts, in addition to the 2000 Florida Folk Heritage Award from the Division of Historical Resources.  He has recorded various albums of traditional Middle Eastern and Armenian music, as well as pop music with Gloria Estefan and Shakira.  He is co-director of Harmonic Motion with Myriam Eli, with whom he has toured the United States, Turkey, Japan and Latin America.

MYRIAM ELI performs traditional Middle Eastern, cross-cultural, and improvisational dance, and plays a variety of Middle Eastern hand drums and percussion instruments.  She has received awards from the New York based American Academy of Middle Eastern Dance and a fellowship grant from the Florida Department of State.