WRITER
Hala is a freelance writer for Vogue Arabia. She has also written for Dance Magazine, Dance Teacher Magazine, and interned at Beliefnet.com.
PERFORMANCE ART
As a solo performer, she continues to develop a series of works blending spoken word and poetry that she began in Spring 2021 during an artist residency at Jonah Bokaer Arts Foundation’s (JBAF) Chez Bushwick.
DANCE & THEATER
In recent years, Hala performed with Jonah Bokaer Choreography (JBC), through which she appeared in the Club Monaco “What Moves You” campaign and also danced with the Company in the short film “Vesica Piscis", created by fashion designers threeASFOUR for their 2021 collections. She toured internationally with JBC, traveling to Istanbul, Turkey to perform in “Unstable Structures” at Arter Museum as part of ImpoDance Festival, and to Russia to perform “Reverse Perspective” at the Pushkin Museum in Moscow and Jaani Kirik in St. Petersburg with VitaDuo/Reformers Festival. With JBC she also performed Jehan Sadat: In Three Dimensions, a durational work in collaboration with She Who Tells A Story at the Ackland Art Museum, featuring costumes designed by Austin Scarlett.
With Ping Chong + Company (PCC) and director Jesca Prudencio, she co-created and performed in the docu-dance theater work “Calling: a dance with faith,” presented by La MaMa Moves! Dance Festival, which unpacks her experiences as a Muslim dancer.
Hala co-choreographed “NOHING a docu-dance on sexual assault” with Jesca Prudencio / People of Interest through Performance Project at University Settlement. She has also choreographed works for the Voices Transposed: Refugee Crisis Benefit Concert and LaGuardia Performing Arts Center's Beyond Sacred: Unthinking Muslim Identity program.
She joined playwright Zizi Azah and director Nana Dakin for the workshop production “I Know I Would,” featuring women of Muslim faith or family heritage, presented by Strong & Wrong Theater/Eric Wu and Yuchen Xia.
Hala has enjoyed performing in productions of From The Horse’s Mouth - honoring writer Deborah Jowitt and Egyptian ballet dancer Magda Saleh. Hala previously danced with Dana Tai Soon Burgess Dance Company and El Teatro de Danza Contemporanea, and has performed on tour in Jordan and Central America.
FILM
In Fall of 2022, Hala traveled to Germany to dance in Sameena Mitta / MeenMoves ‘Struwwelpeter Project,’ filmed outdoors in Munich, Frankfurt, and Nuremberg.
Reflecting on 9/11, 20 years later in 2021, Hala joined the cast of "Behind Blue Sky,” a film devised through NYU Steinhardt’s Drama Therapy program, that weaves personal and fictionalized narratives about 9/11 and its current social parallels.
TRAINING
Hala holds a BA in Journalism and Middle Eastern studies from NYU, and a MFA in Dance from NYU/Tisch School of the Arts. SHE began dancing in Pennsylvania at Campbelltown School of Dance with Lynne Leis, and later studied flamenco dance with José Greco and trained at the Washington School of Ballet in Washington, DC.
She studied acting with John Howard Swain and at the T. Schreiber Studio in NY.