Performance artist/character actor Shida Pegahi is a dancer, choreographer and faculty member of the Westside Academy of Dance. She is the artistic director of her own company, Ney Nava DanceTheatre (www.neynava.com) in Los Angeles, which performs contemporary, mystical and traditional Persian dance.

Shida has appeared in several plays in her native Farsi. A board of directors member of Levantine Cultural Center, she is a frequent guest on international television talk shows, speaking on Middle Eastern cultures, feminism and dance. Banned in her native Iran since the Islamic Revolution in 1979, Shida continues to keep Persian dance alive while constantly infusing it with new ideas. Her performance piece, "Chadoor" is written by Iranian poet/multimedia artist Gita Khashabi, and in it one can see the cross-pollination of Muslim/Middle Eastern feminism, dance choreography, poetry and drama. At first "Chadoor" may strike the viewer as anti-Islamic, but Khashabi's text does not lend itself to simplistic interpretations or soundbytes. Khashabi was born in Iran and came to the United States to study visual arts. She graduated from the Visual Arts program at Cal Arts. Her recent exhibit last November was a poetry and photography montage,"Alef Ba," at Track 16 Gallery, Bergamot Station.