Barbara Miller and Soraya Leila Emery
Foto: Jason Ashwood
Director Barbara Miller (1970), hailing from Zurich, has a Master's degree in law and a foundation course in film studies and philosophy from the University of Zurich under her belt. Together with Christian Frei, she realised Oscar-nominated cinema documentary WAR PHOTOGRAPHER. Since 2001, she has directed over twenty socio-critical documentaries for the "DOK" programme and the big screen. Her cinema documentary FORBIDDEN VOICES has been screened at over 70 international film festivals, while her multi-award-winning work #FEMALE PLEASURE was the most successful cinema documentary in Switzerland in 2018 and the most successful Swiss documentary worldwide in 2019. Furthermore, in directing WISDOM OF HAPPINESS, she once again managed to break attendance records. Barbara Miller has been President of the Swiss Screenwriting and Directing Association (Verband Drehbuch und Regie Schweiz, or ARF/FDS) and a member of the Swiss and European Film Academies since 2017.
Foto: A. Peyer
Soraya Leila Emery (*1993) is a Swiss-Moroccan choreographer and dancer based in Zurich. She graduated in contemporary dance from CFPArts Geneva in 2014, then from SEAD Salzburg in 2017, and obtained a Master’s degree in Choreography from the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK) in June 2024. Her work focuses on the theme of female pleasure, seeking to define what pleasure is and to translate it into a choreographic score in order to reshape the narrative around female sexuality, bodily autonomy, and empowerment. Approaching pleasure from a feminist perspective, her research also questions the preservation and transmission of cultural identity, as well as the representation of the Arab female body. In 2023/2024, she was an associated artist with TanzPlan Ost, where she created TURN ON. In 2025/2026, she is an associated artist at Tanzhaus Zurich, where she will premiere the solo Coming Soon in March 2026. From 2026 to 2028, she continues her association with Tanzhaus Zurich, developing the third chapter of her trilogy on pleasure. www.sorayaleilaemery.com
Project
Kan Ya Makan (Once Upon A Time) completes a trilogy around female pleasure and continues the journey from Coming Soon, going from a personal perspective to a more collective approach on pleasure. The project brings together the stories, biographies and intimate experiences of SWANA women from different generations and life stages. It explores how stories are shared, transformed, reinvented, or sometimes slip into fantasy and self-fiction. By combining storytelling and choreography, I am interested in creating a space where intimate narratives, memory, sensuality and collective experience can coexist on stage.
Through the mentoring with Barbara Miller, which will be the research and starting point of my choreographic work, I would like to deepen my approach to interviews and learn how to conduct conversations around intimate subjects with care and sensitivity. I am interested in understanding how trust can be created when collecting personal narratives, how to develop an ethical and sensitive overall discourse around the work, and how these stories can eventually be transformed into physical and choreographic material. I am curious to explore how documentary material can become a starting point for my choreographic language and how looking at my work through Barbara Miller’s expertise could open new perspectives within my artistic process.