Reimagine Virtual Candlelight Vigil with Haleh Liza Gafori & Danusha Laméris
Reimagine has been hosting candlelight vigils throughout the pandemic in order to break down taboos and hold space for all that we've lost. Tonight's program will include a conversation between Haleh Liza Gafori and Danusha Laméris. Haleh is the groundbreaking author of Gold which features her groundbreaking translations of Rumi, the 13th century poet, sage and mystic. Danusha's books include The Moons of August and Bonfire Opera.
Guest Speakers
Haleh Liza Gafori
Haleh Liza Gafori is a translator, vocalist, poet, and educator. Born in New York City, she grew up hearing recitations of Persian poetry. Her translations of contemporary Persian poets such as Sohrab Sepehri and Omran Salahi, along with a selection of original work, earned her an Academy of American Poets Prize and the Goodman Grant for Poetry. Her book, Gold (New York Review Books Classics/Penguin Random House, 2022), offers translations of poems by Rumi, the 13th century sage and mystic. Gafori’s work has been published by Columbia University Press, Literary Hub, Hyperallergic, The Marginalian, the Marquaz Review, and Rattapallax. In current and past musical projects, including Haale and The Mast, Gafori has toured across the US and in Europe. She lives in Brooklyn, NY.
www.halehliza.com @halehliza
Danusha Laméris
Danusha Laméris is a poet and essayist. Her first book, The Moons of August (2014), was chosen by Naomi Shihab Nye as the winner of the Autumn House Press poetry prize and was a finalist for the Milt Kessler Book Award. Some of her work has been published in: The Best American Poetry, The New York Times Magazine, The American Poetry Review, The Gettysburg Review, Ploughshares, and Orion. She is the 2020 recipient of the Lucille Clifton Legacy Award. Her second book, Bonfire Opera (University of Pittsburgh Press, Pitt Poetry Series), was a finalist for the Paterson Award, and the winner of the 2021 Northern California Book Award in Poetry. She co-hosts the Poetry of Resilience webinar series and the HearthFire Writing Community with James Crews. As the 2018-2020 Poet Laureate of Santa Cruz County, California, Laméris co-founded The Hive Poetry Collective: a radio show, podcast, and event hub. She is on the faculty of Pacific University's Low-Residency MFA program.
www.danushalameris.com @danushalameris
Sasha Soreff
Sasha Soreff is a New York City-based choreographer, empathy/movement facilitator, certified transformational coach, and cancer journeyer.
As an empathy/movement facilitator, Sasha weaves somatic movement, relational neuroscience, and transformational principles together in support of healing. Through this, workshop participants experience compassionate self-connection and soulful, embodied expression. She frequently partners with Reimagine to create empathy/movement spaces to honor loss and tenderly step toward integration and evolving purpose.
As Artistic Director of Sasha Soreff Dance Theater (SSDT), she has been creating and sharing multigenerational, interactive work for two decades, including her signature piece, “The Dancer Who Wore Sneakers and Other Tales,” created in response to a chronic foot condition that reshaped her creative life. Her work has been seen on stages, sidewalks, and community spaces from the Ailey Citigroup Theater to the Queens Museum.
Sasha teaches at Gibney Dance, and The International Partner Dance Intensive, and recently guest taught at NYU Langone's Initiative for Women with Disabilities. During much of the pandemic, she has served on the Coordinating Team for Radical Movement, a weekly movement space for everybody and every body originally created by Sonya Renee Taylor (email sasha for the link! connect@sashasoreffdance.com).
A Maine native, she graduated from high school at North Carolina School of the Arts and received a BA from Barnard College.
About Reimagine
Reimagine hosts community-driven experiences that bring creativity, connection, and essential conversation to face adversity, loss, and mortality, and channel the hard parts of life into meaningful action and growth. Reimagine envisions a world where we can embrace life fully—from this moment through the end—and collectively contribute to a more just and compassionate society. Reimagine experiences encompass arts + entertainment, healthcare + social services, spirituality + religion, and Innovation + design.
