In 2020 Fazil On Yu was invited to Harare-Zimbabwe to facilitate a dance and theatre residency and workshop organized by Mafuwe International Festival of dance, the residency was to be attended by select dance and theatre artists from Zimbabwe and minority groups for a period of ten days, Fazil’s travel was sponsored by the Prince Claus fund and British council under the in-motion grant/program.

Fazil’s focus as a facilitator was on choreography concepts, basic beginner classes, value and evolution of traditional dances, body movement observation and technique and artistic discussions on the topic of using arts for positive social change. Most of the artists Fazil worked with were emerging artists with a different dance background or orientation like hip-hop, traditional dance or specific contemporary techniques, so we had to find a way of working together and sharing the same space and energy without specifying style or technique. ‘’So we decided to work with the body through the body movement observation and technique in order to embrace a language that evolves, wonders, questions and trains artists to curiosity. And we later worked on choreography concepts. Here participants were mainly male but priority was given to females as much as possible.’’

They had to engage minority groups especially women and this meant going to rural communities and working with women arts collectives, here they worked on traditional dances and how to evolve traditional dances to contemporary ways and how to work in unusual arts spaces. And discussed the role that women play in arts and the role of arts in contemporary societies and how to use arts to advocate for positive social change.

At the end of the residency a lot was achieved and out of the networking sessions we had, future perspectives and opportunities of collaborations were discussed in terms of future production projects, exchange and future residencies between individual artists and collectives.