For this year’s Eastern Tunes festival on 6.7.2019 we are preparing a performance of Uyghur dancer MUKADDAS MIJIT. Don’t miss her graceful performance!
Biography
Mukaddas Mijit
is a Uyghur film director, musician, dancer and ethnomusicologist. She was born in 1982 in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, or the Uyghur Autonomous Region, in northwest China.
In young years, she studied dance and classical piano at the Urumqi Institute of Arts in Xinjiang. In 2003, she came to Paris to continue her musical studies. As Uyghur culture was completely unknown in France, Mukaddas Mijit decided to study ethnomusicology at the University of Paris-Ouest Nanterre. Her studies allowed her to broaden her knowledge of music and dance, especially Uyghur Sufism.
Sometimes I stop… to remember moments, places, or people…
In 2015 she defended her thesis entitled “Scenic Representation of Uyghur Cultural Heritage: the Creation of Scenic Identity”.
In 2011 she collaborated with Frank Scheffer on the documentary film “Tiger Eyes”, which was dedicated to the 30th anniversary of the International Film Festival in Rotterdam (The Netherlands). She has also made several films with ethnomusicological themes, such as “Zikr, a Sufi Rite”. The subject of her first documentary film in 2013, “Qetig, Rock’n Urumchi”, was the incredible story of a rock band from Urumchi, now famous in China. The film was nominated for the 2014 Aljazeera International Documentary Film Festival and the Jean Rouch Ethnographic Film Festival.
Since 2005, Mukaddas Mijit has performed as a musician, dancer and choreographer with prominent Uyghur artists at various festivals around the world. She has also been conducting Uyghur dance seminars for several years to introduce this graceful Central Asian dance to the general public. Mukaddas Mijit is fluent in Uyghur, Chinese, French, English, Turkish, Uzbek, Kazakh and Kyrgyz.
Performances:
- Maison des cultures du Monde (Paris)
- Théâtre de la Ville (Paris)
- Morgenland Festival (Osnabrück)
- Ateliers d’ethnomusicologie (Geneva)
- Watermill Centre NY (New York)
- Grand Performance Los Angeles
- Festival de Fes (Marocco)