This year’s curated season explores the body as a site of artistic inquiry, moving between participation and observation, and between intimate reflection and collective experience.

The programme features 16 performances, including eight world premieres and seven regional premieres, staged at venues across Sharjah throughout the season.

Exploring the body and movement

Among the featured works is Every-Body-Knows-What-Tomorrow-Brings-And-We-All-Know-What-Happened-Yesterday by Mohamed Toukabri, which draws on influences from the street and stage, blending movement traditions to explore inherited hierarchies and the possibilities of reimagining them.

Making its GCC premiere, Nathan Ellis’s work.txt is performed entirely by the audience, who collectively seek to answer the play’s central question: why has the protagonist stopped working?

In Do you know this song?, Mallika Taneja uses storytelling and song to trace a forgotten voice, while Sofiane Chalal’s XXL centres on ‘non-standard’ bodies and explores themes of acceptance and recognition.

Sebastian Mayer’s participatory projects, Hannibaby and Zarafa, invite families to play and imagine while contributing to living, evolving artworks.

Collective histories and shared experiences

The programme also explores collective histories through Sim Chi Yin’s multimedia performance and installation, Longings, Returns, which addresses mass deportations in British-ruled Malaya.

Maria Hassabi’s Us transforms the act of looking into a shared experience for performers and audiences. Following its premiere at Kunstenfestivaldesarts 2026 in Brussels, the work is co-presented in Sharjah by Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels.

Site-specific works

Returning this season, Perhaps Here presents a series of newly commissioned, site-specific works over three days.

Featuring emerging and established artists, the programme explores contemporary imagination through short, intimate presentations.

The full Perform Sharjah 2026 programme is available via the Sharjah Art Foundation.