Tehran, Iran
Aisan Hoss is a dancer and choreographer from Tehran, Iran. She started studying and performing Iranian dances at the age of twelve and teaching at the age of eighteen. While doing her BS in Business Management from Azad University in Tehran, Aisan attended a study-abroad English language program in London where she first encountered contemporary dance. She became drawn to the form’s unlimited possibilities for individual self expression and for experimentation of form and content. After graduating, she moved to London to pursue contemporary dance as her career. At the Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Contemporary Dance in London, Aisan completed a one-year diploma in dance followed by a BA in Dance Theatre. At Trinity Laban, she found her passion in choreography and dance pedagogy, which inspired her to spend one year teaching contemporary dance in Iran and to then pursue her MFA in Dance and Choreography at Mills College in Oakland, California. While at Mills, she received an Innovator Award sponsored by E.L. Wiegand Foundation. For Aisan, her passion in dance and choreography has been a means for gaining insight into her identity as an Iranian living outside of her home country. Specifically, several of her choreographies have explored the ways in which having physical distance from her home country provides a deeper sense of intimacy with its cultural essence. Aisan uses movement as a tool to find beauty in her history and identity. Inspired by modern Iranian culture, she aims to give voice to the quietest elements of her culture through choreography.
After her residency at Ballet Afsaneh as the company's Assistant Artistic Director, choreographer , and dancer, Aisan founded her own dance company, Aisan Hoss and Dancers.
Choreography credits ( select)
2017 The Pleasant Pain
San Francisco,CA
2016
San Francisco,CA
Shedding Skin (dance film)
Staying in one’s identity - feeling ourselves in our own skin - can feel safe, comfortable. In Shedding Skin what may appear to be the “veil” is actually about “skin” - one doesn’t want to leave identity (shed their skin) but eventually has to let it go as they move into the new context. A place of (dis)placement is not about better or worse, free or unfree; it is bittersweet, involving acceptance, coming to peace, independence, shedding attachment, and letting go.
2016
SAFEhouse art
San Francisco, CA
Identity Theft
2015
Lisser Theater
Oakland, CA
Yiel (D)isinherit
Yiel (D)isinherit premiered in Lisser Theatre at Mills College, Oakland in April 2015. This piece includes 4 choir singers, one santur (Iranian hammered dulcimer) player and five dancers. Always there are thoughts and dreams that cannot be shared with others, so they stay with us and they get old until you recreate them into a different voice. You never lose any of your old dreams until you gain a stronger dream. Losing is gaining and that is how I can survive and be happy. Losing makes me stronger in order to gain my dreams. I appreciate all of those who abandoned my dreams because recreation of the dreams is even more valuable.