On my first full day in Israel nearly two and a half years ago, I made a pilgrimage to the Suzanne Dellal Center.  Although I didn’t yet grasp the scope of the complex’s activities, I had heard that this was the epicenter of the Israeli contemporary dance scene, and that was enough to make me wander through the maze of Neve Tzedek’s streets until I finally found the right spot.

Throughout my first year of research, as I attended scores of performances and classes at Suzanne Dellal, my admiration and appreciation of the center only grew.  And now, as I visit the center daily, I am no less astonished by the activity it supports.  Classes, rehearsals, performances, and festivals keep the studios and theaters of Suzanne Dellal busy from nine in the morning to late at night, year-round.  Indeed, the numbers published by the center are remarkable: each year, the Suzanne Dellal Center boasts an astonishing 600+ performances and welcomes approximately  500,000 visitors. And since its establishment in 1989, the center has presented over 1,200 premieres – most of which are dances.

Throughout 2009, festivals and photographic exhibitions celebrated the Suzanne Dellal Center’s twentieth anniversary, calling attention to the center’s extraordinary contribution to the field of dance in Israel.  Although it’s now 2010, the celebration of the center’s activities is continuing: on February 23, Minister of Education Gideon Sa’ar announced that the Suzanne Dellal Center would be awarded the Israel Prize, one of this country’s highest honors.

Chaired by Dr. Hadassah Shani, the selection committee commended the center.  “In its 20 years of activity, the Suzanne Dellal Center has caused dance in Israel to take off,” they acknowledged. “The many and varied artistic endeavors of the center have spawned a new generation of artists, creators and performers, in the arena of artistic dance. Creative excellence on the center’s stage has broadened, and continues to broaden, the circle of dance lovers [in Israel].  The center’s activities opened the gates of the world’s most important dance to the Israeli dance scene and made it possible for Israel’s artistic dance to make its stamp in the international arena.  This is a prize for initiators and supporters of the vision that became reality.”

The Minister of Culture and Sports, Limor Livnat, added, “The Suzanne Dellal Center is one of the most fascinating and unique centers in the field of dance in the entire world. In the 20 years since its founding, the center, under the direction of Yair Vardi, has turned into a center of pilgrimage for creators and dancers from the country and from the world.  The Suzanne Dellal Center brings us much pride, and the bestowing of the Israel Prize expresses the great appreciation that we have for the center and for Yair Vardi.”

The Israel Prize will be given to the Suzanne Dellal Center by President Shimon Peres, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, Speaker of the Knesset Reuven Rivlin, President of the Supreme Court Dorit Beinisch, Mayor of Jerusalem Nir Barkat, and Minister of Education Gideon Sa’ar.  The award ceremony will be held at the Jerusalem Theatre on April 20^th, Israel’s Independence Day, and will be broadcast live on Channel 1.

Related Articles on Dance In Israel

• Interview with Yair Vardi: A View of Israeli Concert Dance from the Top
• Photodance Exhibit Celebrates 20 Years of Dance at Suzanne Dellal
• Tel Aviv’s 100th + Suzanne Dellal’s 20th = The Big Stage
• Remembering Big Performances at Suzanne Dellal’s Big Stage

Related Links

• Suzanne Dellal Center

Video: Jasmin Vardimon’s Yesterday

Jasmin Vardimon started her promising dance career right here in Israel, performing with the Kibbutz Contemporary Dance Company while venturing into choreography.  In 1995, she won the “On the Way to London” competition for young choreographers, which was sponsored by the Suzanne Dellal Center and the British Council – and shortly afterwards, she found herself headed to Europe and, indeed, on the way to London.  There, in 1997, she burst onto the British dance scene with her company, originally titled Zbang and now known as the Jasmin Vardimon Company (JVC).

By all accounts, Vardimon has achieved an extraordinary level of success.  She was an Associate Artist at The Place in 1998 and a Yorkshire Dance Partner from 1999-2005, and she is currently an Artistic Associate at Sadler’s Wells.  Over the course of her career, she has received awards for her artistry in both Israel and England, and she has also created works for a variety of dance companies internationally.

While Vardimon’s company hasn’t toured to Israel until now, the buzz about her choreography was loud enough to reach my ears from England.  And after talking to her partner, dramaturge, and set designer Guy Bar-Amotz a few weeks ago, I’m even more excited than ever to finally see Vardimon’s Yesterday when it opens at the Herzliya Performing Arts Center tonight.  Yesterday runs through Friday in Herzliya and will then travel to Haifa and Jerusalem so that audiences around the country can catch a glimpse of Vardimon’s greatness.

For more on what makes Vardimon’s work so uniquely striking, read my preview below, which was first published in the Jerusalem Post as “Mixing art, dance and life.” You can also check out my full interview with Guy Bar-Amotz here on Dance In Israel.

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Mixing Art, Dance, and Life

“I think the real art is the one that mixes all [the disciplines],” declares Guy Bar-Amotz.  This belief – and a singular talent for fusing art forms – has made the England-based Bar-Amotz a prominent figure in Israeli and international art circles.  Bar-Amotz is best known for innovative sound installations, and he has also experimented with dance performances in museums. His current project, which is scheduled for a solo show in Tel Aviv at Rothschild 69 next year, centers on three talking robots who follow a theatrical script written by Bar-Amotz.

But on this trip to Israel, Bar-Amotz is not exhibiting his own work.  Instead, he’s here as the associate director and dramaturge for the Jasmin Vardimon Company, which is bringing the dance production Yesterday to Herzliya, Jerusalem, and Haifa.

Jasmin Vardimon’s Yesterday.  Photo by Alastair Muir.

Bar-Amotz and Vardimon have been collaborating for well over a decade, since he was a student at Bezalel and she was an emerging choreographer here in Israel.  Moving abroad in the mid-1990s, Bar-Amotz studied for his Masters of Fine Art and Vardimon established her company in England in 1997.  As Vardimon honed her highly physical and deeply psychological style, she became one of the leading choreographers in England, and with Bar-Amotz by her side, she has developed one of the most visually striking, cutting-edge aesthetics in the world.

Asked about the nature of their collaboration, Bar-Amotz laughs, “Basically, we live together, so it’s naturally a mixture of everything, life mixed with art!”  Sometimes, he notes, “Jasmin is working with me, advising me or doing some movement sequences or choreography for performances that I’m doing inside my own installation.”  But when it comes to their work for the company, Bar-Amotz says it is Vardimon who comes with the vision.  “My role is basically to do the artistic advising and to do the sets and to think about things that I don’t know how to do,” he remarks.

As a dramaturge, Bar-Amotz brings his background in the fine arts to his discussions with Vardimon and other designers involved in each project. His finely trained critical eye comes in handy for observing rehearsals and offering constructive feedback that pushes the work to the next level.  “I see myself as the first audience,” Bar-Amotz explains.  “We think when you’re making art – and this is also with my own practice – I don’t want to see the viewer as less than me. I treat them as if they are me and above . . . So I’m the viewer, basically, for Jasmin. And we’re doing the work for someone like me and better than me.”

While Bar-Amotz’s constant dialogue with Vardimon may help shape her choreography, it is his extraordinary set designs that are most clearly visible in her productions.  “With the set,” he clarifies, “I’m trying to build a system, a technological and conceptual systematic arrangement, that’s not like making a decoration for the stage.  It’s more like a tool; it’s more like a machine that the choreographer can use.”

Jasmin Vardimon’s Yesterday. Photo by Alastair Muir.

In Yesterday, Vardimon uses Bar-Amotz’s inventive machine to stunning effect.  A backdrop shredded into vertical strips allows dancers to enter and exit the space and also doubles as a screen for real-time projections of the dancers, captured by cameras placed strategically onstage.

Live media and previously filmed footage abound in Yesterday, which was premiered for the company’s tenth anniversary and contains excerpts from several works in Vardimon’s rich repertory.  Both the existing movement and video art have been creatively remixed, and the result, Bar-Amotz asserts, is that Yesterday “is really becoming a new piece.”

Since this is the company’s first tour to Israel, all of the recombined material in Yesterday will be brand-new to Israeli audiences.  And while Bar-Amotz notes that Vardimon’s work is quite different from most Israeli dance, he thinks local crowds will love it.  “[When] we tour in Germany and France, we can’t leave the stage,” he marvels.  “I’m sure it will be the same with Israel.”

Related Articles on Dance In Israel

• Guy Bar-Amotz: On Life, Art, and Collaborating with Jasmin Vardimon

Related Links

• Jasmin Vardimon Company

Video: Jasmin Vardimon Company

Although choreographer Jasmin Vardimon was born and raised in Israel, it’s only now that her England-based company, founded in 1997, is touring this country.  Yesterday, which was created to celebrate the Jasmin Vardimon Company’s 10th anniversary, will run from March 2-4 at the Herzliya Performing Arts Center before continuing to the Haifa Auditorium and the Jerusalem Theatre.

For my most recent article for the Jerusalem Post, I talked with Guy Bar-Amotz, a renowned installation artist who is also the associate artistic director of the Jasmin Vardimon Company.  Our conversation was so wonderfully wide ranging – covering his own cross-disciplinary work as well as his collaboration with Jasmin, the historical relationship of dance and art, and the gender balance in dance – that I wanted to share it with you.  Below is a write-up of our interview, slightly edited but in full.  Enjoy!

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Video: Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet performing Ohad Naharin’s Decadance

If you’re in Atlanta, Georgia – or if you know someone in Atlanta – here’s a heads up:

I’m happy to announce that I am speaking in the Emory Friends of Dance Lecture Series on Wednesday, February 24 at 7:00 p.m. (Eastern Standard Time).  My talk, Foreign Exchange: American and Israeli Dance from Martha Graham to Ohad Naharin, will precede a performance by Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet of Ohad Naharin’s Decadance.  I won’t be in Atlanta in person, but I will be speaking via Skype and have an exciting presentation prepared!

Cedar Lake performing Ohad Naharin’s Decadance.  Photo by Paul B. Goode.

Here’s the official blurb about my lecture:

Forty years ago, Israel’s premiere dance company imported works by top American choreographers.  Now cutting-edge American troupes like Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet are drawing crowds with choreography by Israeli artists.  In this lecture, dance scholar Deborah Friedes Galili explores the dynamic relationship between American and Israeli dance and traces the meteoric rise of Israeli contemporary dance.  This lecture will be presented live from Israel via webcam prior to the performance by Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet.

Cedar Lake performing Ohad Naharin’s Decadance.  Photo by Paul B. Goode.

My lecture is free and open to the public, so if you’re in Atlanta, I hope you will come listen in the Chase Lobby at the Schwartz Center for Performing Arts, 1700 N. Decatur Road.  I will speak for one half hour, and then there will be a question and answer session.  Please let others know about this event as well!

Related Articles on Dance In Israel

• Batsheva Dance Company: From Graham to Gaga
• Americans in Israel: Cedar Lake in Tel Aviv Dance 2008
• Ohad Naharin’s Deca Dance in Israel: A Cycle Completed

Related Links

• Emory Dance Program Events
• Emory Report (article about the event)
• Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet
• Batsheva Dance Company

Video: Batsheva Dance Company in Ohad Naharin’s Three

Five years after its premiere, Ohad Naharin’s Shalosh (Three) still lures audiences to the Suzanne Dellal Center – and judging by the enthusiastic curtain calls last Saturday night, the work continues to captivate crowds.  My preview of this run of Three was originally published in the Jerusalem Post as “Lucky Number ‘Three.’”

* * *

Three by Ohad Naharin.  Photo by Gadi Dagon.

Addressing a small crowd in the Batsheva Dance Company’s studios during an open rehearsal of Three, artistic director and choreographer Ohad Naharin mused that we frequently revisit books, movies, and music. So why not revisit a dance?

Naharin proposes that Tel Aviv audiences do just that when Three, an evening-length work which premiered in February 2005, returns to the Suzanne Dellal Center this weekend.

Guy Shomroni and Sharon Eyal in Three by Ohad Naharin.  Photo by Gadi Dagon.

“The showing of Three in Tel Aviv offers the viewer a renewed meeting with the work, which exists inside a constant process of development since its creation,” Naharin explained in a press release. “This process, in which the work is growing and being refined all the time, is just as meaningful in the company’s work as the process of creation before a premiere.”

At the rehearsal, Naharin elaborated why both of these processes are so vital.  “Since the premiere, the creation went through a lot of changes.  I like to think of the premiere as a birth, since it’s clear to everyone that birth is just one moment, and that afterwards many other things happen,” he reflected.  “There is no doubt that the work changed, improved, among other things because of the meeting with the dancers, who are very creative and musical themselves.  This is one of the reasons that I recommend for people to see the creation twice, at the beginning and after a year or two once it has gone through this process of ripening.”

Three by Ohad Naharin.  Photo by Gadi Dagon.

In the case of Three, the work has enjoyed five years of ripening while remaining in Batsheva’s active repertory.  Consequently, original cast members who have stayed with the company as well as newer additions to the troupe have had ample opportunity to develop their interpretation of the dance, calibrating their embodiment of the choreography with previously elusive nuances and subtleties.

Nowhere is this maturation more important and beneficial than in a work such as Three, which in the absence of complex stagecraft and elaborate visual design reveals the movement and the dancers’ performance of it as the main subject.  Lit plainly but effectively by Avi Yona Bueno (Bambi) and clothed in Rakefet Levy’s basic, solid-colored tops and closely fitting cropped pants, the dancers approach Three’s sophisticated, multi-layered movement with a confident straightforwardness.

Three by Ohad Naharin.  Photo by Gadi Dagon.

As the title suggests, Three contains three discrete sections, and Naharin’s compositional and musical choices provide each part with a distinctive feel.  In “Bellus,” set to Glenn Gould’s celebrated recording of J.S. Bach’s Goldberg Variations, a simple purity reflective of the music pervades both the dancers’ finely wrought solos and the more pared down, precise group work.  Brian Eno’s spare, evocative Neroli provides the soundscape for “Humus,” which features a flock of the company’s women methodically repositioning their bodies and shifting their spatial formation in an entrancing unison.

“Secus,” the final section, boasts a musical collage that stretches from the offbeat electronic stylings of AGF to the alluring Indian melodies of Kaho Naa Pyar Hai to the resonant harmonies of the Beach Boys.  This adventurously eclectic mix serves as a fitting backdrop for the audaciously quirky choreography.  From total stillness, the dancers burst into flurries of activity, creating a sense of organized chaos both in the space and within their bodies.  Their novel movement often defies description, but it constantly commands attention and inspires awe.

Three by Ohad Naharin.  Photo by Gadi Dagon.

Three’s extraordinarily rich physical texture can be attributed at least partly to the evolution of Naharin’s movement language, Gaga, in the early 2000s.  Naharin noted that just a few years prior to Three’s premiere, “Gaga became the heart of the daily practice of the company,” and he added, “this common language [Gaga] held the keys to the process” of making Three.  Indeed, the marvelous movement invention and robust embodiment which characterize Three are closely linked to the practice of Gaga, which expands the dancers’ ability to research movement possibilities and awakens their sensitivity to physical sensations.  Five years later, Batsheva’s dancers bring a deepened understanding of Gaga to their performance of this work.  And that’s reason enough to revisit Three for a second or even a third time.

Related Articles on Dance In Israel

• “Getting to Know the Batsheva Ensemble”
• “MAX – Connecting to Ohad Naharin’s Choreography”
• “Mamootot – Challenging the Performer-Spectator Divide”
• “Ohad Naharin’s Deca Dance in Israel: A Cycle Completed”
• “Ohad Naharin to Receive 2009 Scripps/ADF Award”
• “Ohad Naharin in America: Out of Focus Documentary”
• “Batsheva Dance Company Premieres Ohad Naharin’s Hora“
• “The Batsheva Ensemble on Tour at Home and Abroad”
• “Batsheva Dance Company: From Graham to Gaga”
• “Phaza Morgana 2009: Batsheva Dance Company in the Desert”
• “Ohad Naharin Receives a 2009 Dance Magazine Award”
• “Batsheva Dance Company: Ohad Naharin’s Project 5“

Related posts on Gaga on Dance In Israel

• “Going Gaga: My Introduction to Gaga Dance Classes” (my overview of Gaga dance classes)
• “Gaga: Ohad Naharin’s Movement Language, in His Own Words” (featuring a quote by Ohad Naharin about Gaga)
• “Gaga: A Foreigner Explores Ohad Naharin’s Movement Language” (a reflection on my experience in Ohad Naharin’s Gaga classes)
• “Ohad Naharin on Gaga (Video)” (with a video of Ohad Naharin discussing some concepts from Gaga)
• “A Glimpse into the Gaga Workshop (2008)” (including a video from last year’s workshop)
• “Reflections on the Gaga Intensive 2009″ (dancers share their memories from this year’s workshop)
• “Gaga for Dancers: From the Gaga Intensive to New Open Classes”

Related Links

• Batsheva Dance Company
• Suzanne Dellal Center