Sara-Maya Kaba
My Life Through Art: My Artist Portfolio
Inspiration
My artistic journey, both as a person and an educator, has been inspired by the following excerpt of a speech of His Highness the Aga Khan IV:
“It seems to me to be the responsibility of educators everywhere to help develop ‘ethically literate’ people who can reason morally whenever they analyze and resolve problems, who see the world through the lens of ethics, who can articulate their moral reasoning clearly – even in a world of cultural and religious diversity – and have the courage to make tough choices."
Art continues to teach me ethics, values, empathy and cultural literacy, and I hope that my journey as an educator allows me to do the same for others through art.
My Art
I was born and raised in Canada, but my Pakistani heritage and my privilege to have travelled in worked across the globe have always left me fitting only partially into the boxes that society has established for me. Neither fully Canadian nor fully Pakistani, neither completely comfortable in jeans and a top, nor in a dupatta covering my head, never speaking one language without fragments of another, and never understanding exactly where my place lies.
But, never having been able to confine myself to one form of being means I've never been able to confine myself to one form of expression. I have trained, experimented, performed and engaged in a variety of practices. My work includes dance pieces, mixing together styles from South and Central Asia with North and Latin American forms of dance, English spoken word poetry laced with lines of Urdu and Arabic, singing and recitation of Gujarati and Persian devotional literature, stage-managing multiple incredibly diverse dance shows, recreating Arabic Islamic calligraphy, photography in over 10 different countries - and lots of creative writing!
My passion lies at the intersection of the arts, culture and development, and my portfolio will attempt to provide a snapshot of my journey of learning and being through these mediums.
This is a Bollywood piece, choreographed by the three of us in this video. Bollywood is a style that I enjoy and have taught, and am currently expanding my formal training in. I am with the curled hair on the right at the beginning.
I choreographed this piece for a Diwali celebration in 2019. This mixes Bharatnatyam dance with Hindi Rap music, styles that traditionally are not paired together. I start the piece at the front of the line.
Dance
Mixing my hockey skates and my ghunghroos (ankle bells), I tried to create an improv piece that mixed my South Asian and Canadian identities. This was difficult because the music could not be heard during skating due to the wind.
Performed at the Isabel in Kingston, this was a self-choreographed devotional piece that mixed aspects of Kathak, Bharatnatayum and contemporary dance - combining Hindu temple dance with the Islamic mystic practice of whirling.
This piece mixes Hip Hop and Bharatnatyum and was an experiment with a friend to see if both styles could 'hit' the same beats. This was performed in Calgary for a large New Year's Eve event.
This dance was choreographed and performed by myself and my friend Anmol. The performance was at the Isabel, in Kingston.
Creative Writing & Performance
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Photography
