Aryana Malekzadeh is an Iranian Canadian performing dance artist, choreographer and dance educator based in Toronto. She is a graduate of Dance Arts Institute (formerly The School of Toronto Dance Theatre) and holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts with Honours from York University where she was awarded merit scholarships for her excellent work ethic. Throughout her professional career Aryana has worked for renowned choreographers such as Hanna Kiel, Roshanak Jaberi, Syreeta Hector, Newton Moraes and The Wind in the Leaves Collective amongst others and has performed as a company member with Little Pear Garden Dance Company. Most recently, Malekzadeh toured across Canada with Shannon Litzenberger Contemporary Dance performing as an ensemble member in their work World After Dark. In addition, she has danced in various festivals such as Fall for Dance North, Dance Ontario DanceWeekend, The Carnival of the Arts, The Dance Made in Canada Festival and Nuit Blanche. Alongside performing, Aryana is a contract faculty member at York University, where she pursues her passion of teaching movement and shares her learnings with her students.
In her own practice, Aryana’s work explores themes of identity and cultural inheritance -examining how the body holds memory and how movement reflects the complexities of assimilation and resistance. As an artist of the Iranian diaspora, she is interested in delving into the layered experiences of migration and dual identity, investigating how heritage and history live within the body, and what it means to exist between cultures.
