Born in
Iran in 1985, Alireza Keymanesh is an artist adventuring in the world of cinema, contemporary dance, theater, and performing arts, as a filmmaker, choreographer, actor, writer and coach.
In 2009,
he graduated in Acting from Tehran University of Arts before undertaking a one-year practical dance-theater research at ArtEZ University of Arts in the Netherlands in 2013. Aside from his project at ArtEZ, he also participated in dance, choreography, and DAI (Dutch Art Institute) classes throughout the whole year. As of 2022 he has been studying at York University’s Film M.F.A program in Toronto, Canada where his aim is to integrate features of contemporary dance and theater with the characteristics of experimental and nonlinear narrative cinema, in order to develop a personal cinematic style. As a filmmaker, Keymanesh has won several awards for his co-directed experimental dance film "Flatland" from various festivals including: "Brussels Independent Film Festival", "Sydney World Film Festival", "European Film Festival Mainstream & Underground" in Moscow, "Master of Art Film Festival" in Bulgaria, "Calcutta Cult Film Festival" in India, and "Feel the Reel Festival" in England. He was also awarded the Golden Filmmaking award of the Greensboro Dance Film Festival in North Carolina, United States, in 2021 for his other experimental dance film, "My Lovely Home."
In his early career as an actor,
Keymaneh was a main member of the "84 theater group," where he appeared in the works of playwrights such as Samuel Beckett, Slawomir Merozek, Jean Genet, and David Mamet. His interest in the critical, experimental yet academic, and minimal approach of "84 Theater Group" kept him in a constant collaboration with them for ten years. Besides his proactive activities as an actor, his enthusiasm for learning through sharing led him to the teaching and coaching world since 2009. Later on he shaped the classes in a school format under the name of 33School. In fact, 33School is a decentralized underground theater and dance space in Iran. His approach was against the official institutions, academies, and universities in Iran, which placed the teacher at the center of the teaching process and treated him as an all-knowing figure. Instead, he developed his methodology by portraying the teacher as an ignorant person who is trying to level himself with students and to learn from them simultaneously, as he teaches them. “I do not teach, I perform. Each day of a class is a performance for me. I make myself open to new explorations and I improvise while I am performing.” Keymanesh says,
Following his return to Iran in 2014,
he increased his teaching, choreography, and dance activities, focusing primarily on body-mind techniques he had previously studied in the Netherlands with Eva Karczag, with whom he has continued to enrich his psychophysical explorations up to now. As a result, he introduced and developed the Ideokinesis method in Iran, not only through workshops and lectures, but by translating its books written by André Bernard, Wolfgang Steinmuller, and Ursula Stricker into Persian. Furthermore, he co-founded 33Projects, an underground art organization based in Tehran from 2017 to 2021. Ever since Pandemic, Keymanesh has been developing his psychophysical journeys based on eastern somatic practices through constant virtual sessions with Eva Karczag.
In each of my art works,
I attempt to discover something that I have never experienced before. Something that is new is alive to me. This does not mean that I do not try out things that other artists have done before. There is nothing new in life, everything has already been experienced in the past. The draw for me is that this magnet between the present, the past, and the future causes a lot of questions in my head, making me yearn for experiences that are fresh and juicy, just for myself, and perhaps for some others. I'm also aware that my fresh idea can be rotten for you and your rotten idea might seem fresh to me