Dance In Israel » My Reflections

Conference: Modern Jewish Experience through the Lens of Dance

Deborah Friedes Galili — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 22:48:31 +0000

Boxerman by Noa Zuk. Dancers: Maree ReMalia, Mara Penrose, and Dante Brown. Photo by Melissa Bontempo.

As my family and friends in the U.S. have updated me about snowstorm after snowstorm, I have developed an even greater appreciation for our mild Israeli winters. But in a little over a week, I will happily trade these warmer climes for the cold Midwest, lured by a conference hosted by the Melton Center at The Ohio State University (OSU). The conference, titled Modern Jewish Experience through the Lens of Dance, promises a plethora of presentations, performances, and spirited discussion – and it is all free and open to the public, so if you are in the Columbus area, come on out and join us on February 13 and 14! The participating dancers and scholars will cover a wide range of topics, spanning a spectrum from folk dance to contemporary dance, and I am happy to contribute two talks that reflect some of my research here in Israel. During the opening session on Sunday the 13th, I will give a presentation called “Beyond the Hora: Israeli Contemporary Dance,” and at one of the panels on Monday the 14th, I will give a presentation called “Questioning the ‘Israeli’ in Israeli Contemporary Dance.” As an added bonus, the audience at the opening session will be treated to OSU students’ performance of Boxerman by Noa Zuk, an Israeli choreographer and former Batsheva dancer who, along with Ohad Fishof, recently taught Gaga at OSU as a Schusterman Visiting Artist.

Read on for more details about the conference. Hope to see some of you there!

Modern Jewish Experience through the Lens of Dance

February 13-14, 2011
Sullivant Theater, Sullivant Hall, Ohio State Campus
1813 N. High Street

The conference opens with a public performance:
Jewish Dance in the 20th Century
Words, Imagery, Movement
Sunday, February 13 at 3:00 p.m.
Sullivant Theater, Sullivant Hall, Ohio State Campus
1813 N. High Street

This unique conference will include dancers and dance scholars from the U.S. and Israel to examine Jewishness in dance in the 20th and 21st centuries. This two-day international conference opens with a public performance focusing on modern Jewish dances, dancers, and choreographers, emphasizing the interrelationship between historical developments and dance. Scholarly panels and roundtable discussions will take place on Sunday evening and Monday morning.

The conference is free and open to the public. The complete conference schedule can be found on our website: www.meltoncenter.osu.edu

Supported by the Thomas and Diann Mann Distinguished Symposium on Judaism and the Herbert and Betty Schiff Fund for Jewish Studies.

Co-sponsored with The Ohio State University Department of Dance, The Ohio State University’s Center for Slavic and East European Studies, and The Lenore Schottenstein Jewish Arts Endowment and the Sara and Harry Schwartz Memorial Fund of the Columbus Jewish Foundation

Sharon Eyal’s “Bill” is Back at Batsheva Dance Company

Deborah Friedes Galili — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 08:40:09 +0000

Video: Sharon Eyal’s Bill

I have a confession to make: I saw Sharon Eyal’s Bill three nights in a row. Besides the obvious draw of seeing Batsheva Dance Company’s latest production in its first performances, I was compelled to watch the dance again and again by the kaleidoscopic complexity of Eyal’s choreography for this twenty-one member group. On each repeat viewing, I got to know Bill better, uncovering even more layers in the ensemble work and noticing the nuances in the movement. The already formidable power of the dance only grew stronger with time.

For other dance enthusiasts who might want to catch Bill again – and for new audience members who have yet to be acquainted with Bill - now is your chance! Batsheva is bringing the work to the Suzanne Dellal Center for a second run from June 13-16.

This article was originally published in the Jerusalem Post as “Meet Bill.”

* * *

Meet Bill

Sharon Eyal’s Bill. Photo by Gadi Dagon.

With a strong character, a quirky sense of humor, and a big heart, Bill makes a memorable first impression. But Bill is not a man. Bill is the Batsheva Dance Company’s latest production by house choreographer Sharon Eyal, and it had its first run in May with performances at the Suzanne Dellal Center in Tel Aviv and the Herzliya Performing Arts Center.

When Eyal first transfixed audiences 20 years ago, it was with her own magnetic stage presence as a dancer with Batsheva. But in recent years, she has also generated buzz with her choreography. From her initial compositions presented under the framework of Batsheva Dancers Create to the evening-length, large-scale Bertolina and Makarova Kabisa, Eyal developed her distinctive artistic voice. Last season, local audiences were treated to the Batsheva Ensemble’s revamped version of Eyal’s earlier Love, while foreign crowds flocked to the Norwegian troupe Carte Blanche’s performances of the choreographer’s Killer Pig.

Sharon Eyal’s Bill. Photo by Gadi Dagon.

Now with Bill, an hour-long work for Batsheva’s 21 dancers, Eyal picks up where she left off. “I feel I am in an endless process, and the creation Bill continues my latest works, Makarova Kabisa and Killer Pig,” she explains.

The throughline in her creative process is no doubt strengthened by her ongoing collaboration with several artists: co-creator Guy Bachar, musician and soundtrack designer Ori Lichtik, and lighting designer Avi Yona Bueno (Bambi).

Together, this team has fashioned a thoroughly contemporary aesthetic that permeates Eyal’s choreography. Like her other works, Bill is set to a virtually unceasing, throbbing blend of beats and melodies masterfully retooled by Lichtik on a sophisticated DJ system. Styled by Eyal and Bachar, the flesh-toned bodysuits that sheath the dancers like a second skin provide a ready canvas for the rich hues and striking geometry of Bambi’s lighting.

Sharon Eyal’s Bill. Photo by Gadi Dagon.

In Bill, the dancers’ singular look is further enhanced through piercing ice-blue contact lenses and slicked-back hair colored to match the shade of their costumes. Eyal notes, “The idea was to wear a sense of nakedness,” but adds, “Nudity is not interesting enough . . . Nudity is also obvious. On the other hand, it is important to me that they will see the body, that there will be another layer that will present the mechanical side. When everyone is dressed and appears almost the same, I feel more that the individual in each one of them breaks out.”

Though seemingly paradoxical, this is a fitting attitude for a choreographer who has frequently displayed a talent for marshaling large numbers of dancers across the stage, playing on the tensions between the individual and the group. A similar dynamic pervades Bill. Sometimes working as single unit and at other times clustered in small packs juxtaposed with one another, the dancers travel in a dizzying kaleidoscope of constantly changing formations. Occasionally soloists break through the mass’s movement, but ultimately it is a united group pulse that drives the work forward.

Sharon Eyal’s Bill. Photo by Gadi Dagon.

Eyal remarks, “I love the dancers, especially when I see them in the duplication of the entire group as one,” and her skillful arrangement of the dancers along with the identical costumes successfully produce this desired effect.

Yet part of Bill’s impact lies in the nuanced workings of each individual body. Even the most basic stepping patterns are layered with subtle isolations, while more intricate phrases display the performers’ virtuosity, capitalizing on their extreme flexibility and gravity-defying leaps. Batsheva’s dancers are just as comfortable in slinky, undulating slow motion as they are in hard-hitting, superhuman movements executed at warp speed, and they can morph from one dynamic to the next in the blink of an eye. Equipping every dancer with an intense physicality and multiplying them together, Eyal finds a winning formula for Bill.

Announcing the Gaga Intensive 2010

Deborah Friedes Galili — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 20:35:13 +0000

Gaga Intensive. Photo by Gadi Dagon

Many of you have inquired about the 2010 Gaga Intensive, a two-week summer course offered by Ohad Naharin along with dancers from Batsheva Dance Company. So, as the registration coordinator for the workshop, I’m pleased to offer you the scoop: this year’s intensive will be held from July 11-23 in Tel Aviv at the Batsheva studios in the Suzanne Dellal Center. The Gaga Intensive is geared towards dancers and dance students age 18+. Classes in Gaga, Naharin’s repertory, and Gaga methodics will run Sundays through Thursdays from 10:00 in the morning until 5:00 in the afternoon, and there will also be classes on Friday mornings. The course will cost 2000 NIS, or roughly $500.

If you have questions, please do not contact me through Dance In Israel but instead e-mail me at: gagaint@gmail.com

You can register at: www.gagapeople.com

Hope to see you in Tel Aviv this summer!

Invitation to a Lecture at Emory University on American and Israeli Dance

Deborah Friedes Galili — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 16:40:06 +0000

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!

Exploring Israeli Society through Dance at International Exposure 2009

Deborah Friedes Galili — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 11:45:06 +0000

Video: Promo for Arkadi Zaides’s new Quiet

As guest writer Brian Schaefer wrote in his article, for most visitors from abroad, International Exposure is a veritable “crash course” in Israeli contemporary dance. For me, however, International Exposure serves another purpose. Since I’m now intimately familiar with both the scene as a whole and with the artists themselves, this festival provides an unparalleled opportunity to consider developments in the field over the last year.

While Brian rightly noted that the vast majority of works in International Exposure did not overtly address the Israeli context, a few works did tackle issues in Israeli life – and as someone who has seen the vast majority of contemporary dance created in Israel since 2007, I can vouch that this is a notable shift. Out of all the dances I watched during my first two years in the country – a number which easily surpasses 100 and probably nears 200 – I can probably count the number of works which explicitly examine Israeli culture and society on less than two hands. Most of them, such as Renana Raz’s We Have Been Called to Go, were works that had premiered in previous seasons; while I saw this dance on stage, I had to seek out other works such as Yasmeen Godder’s Strawberry Cream and Gunpowder on DVD. Indeed, when I saw Hillel Kogan’s Everything at Exposure in January 2008, its focus on Israeli machismo was such a revelation because it was the only new work I had seen which openly examined an aspect of Israeli identity.

So it was absolutely astonishing for me to watch as not just one but a handful of the offerings at International Exposure unmistakably explored Israeli society. Two of these dances had premiered just weeks earlier in the Curtain Up festival, and while they both took the relationship of the individual to the surrounding Israeli society as their main theme, they approached the subject from different personal perspectives and aesthetics.

Noa Dar’s Anu. Photo by Tamar Lamm.

In Noa Dar’s trio Anu (Us), one dancer – perhaps dressed to look younger in pigtails and a skirt – is initiated into the group, first observing her two fellow performers and then modeling herself after them until she becomes a participating member. Though at times the context is universal, there are several scenes which bear the recognizable imprint of Israeli culture. Gathered center stage in a tight circle, the trio performs a speeded-up mishmash of Israeli folk dance steps; occasionally, one dancer breaks out of the group, causing the others to pause, but then the three immediately resume their folk dance at an even more frenetic pace. Another powerful section references the army service which is compulsory in Israel. Juxtaposing stylized miming of military actions (loading, aiming, and shooting guns; throwing grenades; scoping out a building and breaking in; strip searching a suspect) with sweetly tranquil classical music, the scene is chilling.

Niv Sheinfeld and Oren Laor’s Big Mouth. Photo by Gadi Dagon.

Whereas Anu follows the process of indoctrination into society, Niv Sheinfeld and Oren Laor’s Big Mouth considers the reverse process of an individual critically considering this group mentality. The strains of an Israeli folk song set the stage even before the curtain rises, and the tone is further established as the three dancers (Sheinfeld, Laor, and Keren Levi) begin by turning their backs on the audience and striding in unison around the perimeter of the space. Gradually, the trio’s regimented marching is punctuated by Israeli folk dance steps – a mayim here, a three-step turn there – and eventually, Levi tries to break out of this seemingly never-ending pattern with her own idiosyncratic movement. Later, to the swelling melody of an Israeli military hymn, Levi stands downstage and slowly opens her mouth wide until her face is distorted in the shape of a silent, terrible scream; this simple yet virtuosic act leaves a haunting imprint even after the booming music dies down and Levi’s face returns to its normal state. Despite the tenderness with which Sheinfeld and Laor cradle Levi during their final trio, keeping her perpetually aloft while passing her back and forth, the emotion which prompted such an agonized cry clearly lingers, prompting her to leave the group at the close of the work.

Besides Anu and Big Mouth, two other brand-new works showcased in International Exposure 2009 also seemed to be colored by the political and social dynamics within the Israeli context. Rami Be’er’s choreography has often explored Israeli life, and his Infrared, which the Kibbutz Contemporary Dance Company premiered in November, seems to follow in this pattern. Though much of the choreography itself is more abstract, the work opens with a man’s voice solemnly intoning a poem (written by Be’er) about soldiers in a garden and with one dancer slowly emerging from what appears to be a body bag. Meanwhile, Arkadi Zaides’s Quiet, which was presented in a studio showing as a work-in-progress, features a mixed cast of Jewish and Arab performers and effectively plays off the tensions between these two groups.

After two years of barely seeing any choreography explicitly grappling with the Israeli context, I couldn’t help but wonder why so many dances were now openly invoking this subject and its intense undercurrents. Could it perhaps be that, after the war in Gaza last year, some choreographers felt compelled to reexamine their surroundings? What other political and personal factors were at work?

Noa Dar’s Anu. Photo by Tamar Lamm.

In a conversation with Noa Dar prior to the premiere of Anu, she said that her latest work stemmed from her experiences as “a mother and also as a citizen” of Israel. While Dar talked about how her young children’s education was already “printing on them their future and the future as soldiers,” she also recounted her experience at a protest against the incursion into Gaza in 2008, during which not only right-wing counter-protesters but also passersby cursed the demonstrators as traitors. The choreographer further discussed the media’s one-sided account of both Gaza and the 2006 Lebanon war and brought up recent legislation curtailing the rights of Arab Israelis. “This work came out of these experiences, out of this fear that this country is getting more and more closed,” Dar acknowledged. She continued, “It’s about the uniformity that Israeli culture brings and trying to explore how to survive it, to go against it but still be inside, to be able to comment on it, to try to change it.”

Niv Sheinfeld and Oren Laor’s Big Mouth. Photo by Gadi Dagon.

While these recent developments spurred the creation of Anu, Big Mouth emerged from somewhat different roots. Niv Sheinfeld and Oren Laor choreographed the dance during a period when they were frequently away from Israel; sometimes they were on tour with previous works, and at other times they were in the Netherlands where they collaborated on the new trio with Amsterdam-based Israeli dancer Keren Levi. Sheinfeld remarked, “Somehow I think it affected this work; it made the piece somehow with reference to the Israeli culture.” Laor chimed in the conversation, noting not only the physical distance of the three collaborators from Israel during the creative process but also other events which caused the artists to consider issues of nationalism and group identity. While Big Mouth does include specific allusions to the Israeli context, Sheinfeld reflected that ultimately, “the way that we treat the subject is the personal level, is the individual, and how an individual acts in a group.”

Arkadi Zaides’s Quiet. Photo courtesy of Arkadi Zaides.

Meanwhile, in the publicity for Quiet, which premieres this weekend at Tmuna Theater in Tel Aviv, Zaides explains the backdrop for his latest work. He writes:

“Quiet arose from a real sense of emergency; in light of the growing violence and mistrust between communities in Israel, constantly subjected to states of shock which never allow the space needed for reflection, and thus never allow for change. In such an environment it felt acute to create a platform which allows for an open and honest communication; a place where it is safe to let one’s demons out and set them free; where the irrationality of response is examined and emotions are bravely explored; where a broad perspective is sought and where trust is continuously built.”

With these works’ diverse reference points and perspectives, they are welcome, thought-provoking additions to the Israeli contemporary dance scene.

What is Israeli Dance? Two Festivals Hold Some Clues

Deborah Friedes Galili — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 16:46:51 +0000

What is Israeli dance?

This is a question that I have contemplated ever since I arrived here, and as I sat in the audience at many performances during the Tel Aviv Dance 2009 festival, this query resurfaced. The vast majority of dance I have seen in the last two years has been Israeli dance – that is, by my loose definition, dance made in Israel by Israeli choreographers – but most of what I attended during this festival came from abroad.

As my eyes readjusted to fresh work from unfamiliar choreographers and, at times, unfamiliar cultures, I couldn’t help comparing the characteristics of these foreign productions to those of Israeli-made work. By watching dance that was, by virtue of its far away origin, not Israeli, could I more definitively identify characteristics of Israeli dance and the Israeli dance scene? As I sat in the darkened theater for show after show, I asked myself repeatedly, “Could an Israeli choreographer have made that work? Would an Israeli choreographer have made that work, and if so, would I have perceived it differently?”

Beijing Modern Dance Company. Photo by Wang Zhe.

This last question echoed in my mind, growing louder and louder, as I watched the Beijing Modern Dance Company’s program at the Suzanne Dellal Center. More so than in the other performances I saw, I felt that this program’s two works were rife with cultural references specific to the country in which they were created. In the fourth section of Hu Lei’s Unfettered Journey, dancers clothed in elegantly draped fabric flowed across the stage with fans in their hands. Throughout Gao Yanjinzi’s Oath, a figure wearing what appeared to be traditional Chinese dress beckoned dancers representing parts of the natural world onstage to music that at times sounded distinctively Chinese. Had an Israeli choreographer’s name been attached to either of these works, these elements would not have been allusions to his or her own culture but instead marks of appropriation (and here I do not intend to attach a negative value to that often loaded word; this simply denotes a different process and point of connection to the elements incorporated)

While these overt references to Chinese culture set my mind in motion, it was the physicality of the dancers in the Beijing Modern Dance Company which triggered even more complex thoughts about what characterizes much of Israeli contemporary dance. Throughout my conversations with Israeli choreographers, many of them asserted that there was something distinctive about the physicality of Israeli dancers; there was a certain emphasis on weight, force, and power, along with a liveliness and rawness to their energy which several people connected to the pace and nature of Israeli life.

Sometimes, immersed in this scene, it’s possible to forget that another way of moving exists. So there’s nothing like watching companies from abroad to sharpen my understanding of the physicality used in Israeli dance. Whereas Israeli dancers are often unleashed and explosive, the Chinese dancers were refined and measured. Whereas Israeli dancers often project a sense of solid strength and weighted groundedness in deep, low positions, the Chinese dancers assumed these postures with the poised agility of a martial artist. Whereas Israeli dancers may display and even revel in effort, the Chinese dancers exuded ease. “Yes,” I thought to myself as I sat in the darkened theater. “Maybe a particular physicality does characterize much of Israeli dance and distinguish it from dance from other countries.”

While these musings re-entered my mind as I watched foreign companies in Tel Aviv Dance, they’ll likely remain ever-present as I attend a very different festival later this month: Curtain Up. Every year, Curtain Up sheds light on Israeli dance by showcasing several programs worth of premieres by independent choreographers. Throughout the twenty years of its existence, the festival has not only provided a platform for numerous artists to explore new choreographic ideas but also offered them a boost to prominence, thus shaping the landscape of the larger field.

Publicity for Curtain Up 2009. Courtesy of Ora Lapidot PR.

In honor of the festival’s twentieth season, Curtain Up 2009 will offer an extraordinary opportunity to survey the scene through a special project spanning the generations of Israeli choreographers. Six well-established artists who were previously supported by the festival – Nimrod Freed, Noa Wertheim of Vertigo Dance Company, Yasmeen Godder, Yaara Dolev of Tel Aviv Dance Company, Noa Dar, and Niv Sheinfeld & Oren Laor – were chosen to create new works for this special Curtain Up. They also became curators of the festival, in turn selecting one or two emerging choreographers to premiere work.

After refreshing my eyes and my mind with Tel Aviv Dance’s international medley, I’m looking forward to re-immersing myself in the world of Israeli dance during Curtain Up. Who knows what insights will surface in the theater this time around . . .

Interview with Barak Marshall: Dancing between Israel and America (Podcast) (Part 1)

Deborah Friedes Galili — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 06:16:03 +0000

Barak Marshall in Aunt Leah. Photo courtesy of Barak Marshall.

(You can subscribe to this podcast using the iTunes software by clicking this link to the podcast feed.)

When we sat down to talk in January 2009, I discovered that a conversation with Barak Marshall is very similar to his choreography: fast-paced, peppered with diverse cultural references, and chock-full of attention-grabbing details. These qualities had captured my eye when I saw the premiere of Monger, and when I saw a rare restaging of Barak’s first work, Aunt Leah, I realized these were hallmarks of his craft since the day he stepped into the studio.

As we cafe-hopped in bustling central Tel Aviv during a Friday afternoon, Barak and I delved into a deep, lively discussion covering both his own choreography and the larger context of contemporary dance. Join us for the first part of our interview as Barak talks about his background, his connection to Inbal Dance Theater and Yemenite dance, and the trajectory of his early career from the making of Aunt Leah to his appointment as the house choreographer for Batsheva Dance Company in 1999. Barak, who splits his time between Tel Aviv and Los Angeles, also reflects on the development of Israeli contemporary dance and differences between the dance scenes in Israel and the U.S.

Barak Marshall’s Emma Goldman’s Wedding. Photo courtesy of Barak Marshall.

From left: Margalit Oved in Barak Marshall’s The Land of Sad Oranges (photo courtesy of Barak Marshall); Margalit Oved in Barak Marshall’s Rooster (photo by Adi Mazan)

In our interview, Barak explained that his mother, Inbal Dance Theater star Margalit Oved, often served as a Greek chorus in his works. Now Margalit is reprising this role in Barak’s new Rooster, which premieres on November 12-13 as part of Tel Aviv Dance 2009. Check out the excerpt below and head over to Tel Aviv’s Opera House to see the full work!

Video: Barak Marshall’s Rooster

Other Podcasts on Dance In Israel

A New Design (and Some Statistics) for a New Year

Deborah Friedes Galili — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 11:17:19 +0000

In honor of our website’s first anniversary, we’ve rolled out a new magazine-style design! If you’re reading this in your e-mail inbox or RSS feed reader, please visit us online and explore the new features we’ve unveiled (featured content, easier navigation, a better featured video system, an advanced search box, and more).

In the next few weeks, aside from our usual articles, we will publish some posts talking about the new features and also asking you about the direction we will take in the upcoming year.

A lot has happened since we established Dance In Israel one year ago today. We’ve published over 90 articles, including 8 podcasts. 26,000 visitors from 137 countries around the world have explored our site, looking at 2 pages on average. 120 people subscribe to us via e-mail, and approximately 40 have our content delivered to their RSS feed readers. We have 312 fans on Facebook (and counting). We’ve hit Google page rank 5, a sign of our strength on the web. And to boot, we – Deborah, who writes the posts, and Tal, who builds the blog – got married!

Thank you for following us as we developed over the past year, and please stay with us – there’s lots more to come!

Experiencing Yasmeen Godder’s Repertory Workshop

Deborah Friedes Galili — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 12:04:39 +0000

Yasmeen Godder and Iris Erez in Godder’s Two Playful Pink. Photo by Tamar Lamm.

More than a year ago, I had the opportunity to take a week-long repertory workshop at Yasmeen Godder’s studio. I found the intensive enriching both as a dancer and as a dance researcher, and I recounted my experience on The Winger on April 4, 2008; that article is posted below.

Now another batch of advanced dancers will have the chance to sink their teeth into Godder’s meaty material during a brand-new, year-long intensive. Hosted by ActSearch and held at Godder’s studio in Jaffa, this program will build participants’ physical and expressive skills through a mix of technique classes, repertory workshops, and sessions with dramaturge Itzik Giuli.

Besides preparing for this exciting endeavor, Godder has been touring one of her latest works, Singular Sensation. Want to watch some of her work and see what’s in store for her new students? There are lots of upcoming performances in several locations. After one more performance of Singular Sensation at Suzanne Dellal on October 1, the production is traveling to Prague and Bern in October before touring Germany and Belgium in November. For more information on the intensive workshop and the tour, check out the links at the end of this article.

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Yasmeen Godder’s Repertory Worskhop (April 2008)

It’s been more than seven months since I have learned new repertory, and while I’m loving my dance classes and improvisational projects, I do miss the process of absorbing and living in a piece of choreography. So even though my body feels a bit tired now, my spirit is extremely happy after tasting a bit of Yasmeen Godder’s work!

I just finished a five-day workshop at her studio in Jaffa (at the south of Tel Aviv – technically, the city is Tel Aviv-Yafo). Yasmeen is currently on tour in Europe with her production Sudden Birds, so two of her dancers led the intensive. Each day began with Eran Shanny’s technique class, which was very similar to Yasmeen’s with its influences of release technique, yoga, Feldenkrais, and more.

After Eran helped us absorb the principles of Yasmeen’s movement style, Iris Erez took over for the repertory segment of the workshop. We did improvisational exercises like those Yasmeen uses in her creative process, and we learned solo and duet material from Two Playful Pink. Yasmeen’s choreography is meaty, both in its movement vocabulary and its emotional content, and Two Playful Pink – a piece originally performed in 2003 by Yasmeen and Iris – is no exception. The dance concerns attitudes towards femininity and the body, and the movement often shifts a conventional expression of sexuality into more unfamiliar (or unaccepted?) territory: a hand seductively placed on the upper thigh soon insistently clutches the crotch; the slow fixing of messy hair is paired with a sudden spank-like slap to the hip; a smile is distorted by tucking in the upper lip or tugging the cheek into a sneer.

Yasmeen Godder and Iris Erez in Godder’s Two Playful Pink. Photo by Tamar Lamm.

There’s so much I could say about what I gained through this experience – in fact, my stream of consciousness free-write in my notes file was enough to make Word send me a few error messages last night – but I’ll try to keep my post here manageable . . . If you haven’t noticed yet, I tend to be a bit wordy!

I’ve found myself explaining recently that yes, I am both a dancer and a researcher, so I’ll write a bit about how these two activities are complementary. Quite wonderfully, this workshop reinforced my belief in the value of physical research. My experience in technique classes this year has provided me with important information about the physicality used in Israeli contemporary dance. Yet with repertory, there’s another level of experience and analysis to be found; instead of simply dealing with the raw material of technique – some of the building blocks of a finished dance – learning choreography allows me to explore issues of composition and content along with the movement itself.

This week I got a physical sense of Yasmeen’s partnering work, which epitomizes an intricate, aggressive style employed by many young Israeli choreographers. Actually attempting to dance excerpts of this duet gave me a deeper appreciation of what I had admired from afar because I myself got to experience (or, well, try to experience) the speed, precision, and trust involved in this kind of partnering. I was also reminded that in the hands of the right choreographer (and ultimately in the bodies of the right dancers), movement can be wonderfully loaded with meaning. In the duet excerpts from Two Playful Pink, each tug, shove, jerk, drop, fall, and look is a challenge from one woman to the other, a chance to manipulate, dominate, taunt, display . . .

Yasmeen Godder and Iris Erez in Godder’s Two Playful Pink. Photo by Tamar Lamm.

Learning repertory also provides an extraordinary opportunity for me to recognize and question the assumptions I make as a spectator of choreography. As I realized this week, what you perceive when you are an audience member does not always get at the truth of the matter from the performer’s perspective.

What I often see in Israeli contemporary dance is power – but it’s not always a controlled power or a power composed of force. In my experience with Yasmeen’s choreography (and specifically thanks to the feedback Iris gave me), I understood that this power is at times a matter of energy unleashed by giving into momentum and gravity. Having trained primarily in ballet and older modern dance forms such as Cunningham technique and Graham, Taylor, and Limón-influenced styles, I find working in this released-influenced mode quite challenging – but also quite necessary for my growth as a dancer. You can bet I’ll be back in Yasmeen’s classes after she returns from her tour!

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Photodance Exhibit Celebrates 20 Years of Dance at Suzanne Dellal

Deborah Friedes Galili — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 06:26:30 +0000

Yasmeen Godder’s I’m Mean I Am. Photo by Tamar Lamm.

Suzanne Dellal’s next show boasts quite an impressive roster of choreographers and performers. It’s not every day that you find these names on the same bill: Ohad Naharin, Sharon Eyal, Rami Be’er, Inbal Pinto & Avshalom Pollak, Ido Tadmor, Yasmeen Godder, Nir Ben Gal & Liat Dror, Emanuel Gat, Noa Wertheim, Rina Schenfeld, Renana Raz, Sahar Azimi, Arkadi Zaides, Idan Cohen, Tamar Borer, Talia Paz, Michael Gatman, Michael Miler, Sally-Anne Friedland, Dana Ruttenberg, Amit Goldenberg & Ya’ara Dolev, Saar Harari, Iris Erez, Silvia Duran, Elina Pechersky, Doron Raz, Luc Jacobs, Ron Amit & Mor Shani, Shani Garfinkel, and Mami Shimizaki.

But while audiences are used to watching these choreographers’ creations onstage, this show transports their dances to a new territory: the walls. The show is Photodance, an exhibit of photography celebrating the many productions presented during the Suzanne Dellal Center’s twenty-year history.

Luc Jacobs’ Oole Boole. Photo by Ascaf.

For Photodance, curator Hadas Maor has assembled an array of striking photographs capturing moments in performance, in rehearsal, and in staged photo shoots. Contributing photographers include Gadi Dagon, Michal Hayman, Li Yanor, Vardi Cahana, Tamar Lamm, Eyal Landsman, Pnina Even-Tal, Emmanuel Ogdan, Ascaf, Amit Berlovich, Kfir Bolotin, Ran Biran, Adi Mazan, Itay Marom, Avi Nathan, Daniel Chechik, and Ron Kedmi.

Silvia Duran. Photo by Deddy Lifshitz.

As part of Suzanne Dellal’s 20th anniversary celebrations, Photodance fittingly displays the variety and wealth of Israeli dance which has been nurtured at the center. Contemporary dance – the hallmark of Israel’s growing dance scene – is highlighted, but other forms including flamenco and Middle Eastern dance are also represented in the photographs. Large, established companies like the Batsheva Dance Company and the Kibbutz Contemporary Dance Company are showcased alongside budding independent choreographers such as Michael Miler, Iris Erez, and Dana Ruttenberg. And notably, some of the dances featured in Photodance were created for the Suzanne Dellal Center’s beloved festivals, including Curtain Up and Shades of Dance.

Ron Amit and Mor Shani’s Lu Carmela. Photo by Kfir Bolotin.

Choreography by Sahar Azimi. Photo by Eyal Landesman.

Choreography by Amit Goldenberg and Ya’ara Dolev. Photo by Adi Mazan.

Information about the Exhibit

Photodance opens to the public on Thursday, September 3rd at 6:00 p.m. and will remain open for several hours each day through September 7th. For the exhibit’s exact hours, please check the Events calendar. On September 8th, Simon de Pury of the Phillips de Pury & Company auction house will conduct an auction of the photographs; all proceeds will support Israeli dance.

Renana Raz in Amit Goldenberg and Ya’ara Dolev’s Dede Dance Company. Photo by Adi Mazan.

Addendum (September 3rd)

This morning I attended a preview of the exhibit which was open for journalists, and happily, I was able to bring along my parents and cousins who are visiting Israel. As we walked through the two dance studios which have been artfully transformed into gallery spaces, I had the pleasure of seeing Photodance through two distinctly different lenses: my own and that of my family.

For me, having spent so much time researching the development of Israeli contemporary dance, it was incredible to see a collection of photographs which documented several landmark works and captured the central players in the field. While looking at photographs from the late 1980s and early 1990s, I marveled at the younger images of choreographers whom I have interviewed – such as Liat Dror and Nir Ben Gal – and I caught glimpses of how their aesthetic has transformed.

For my family, who is new to the scene, the exhibit was like a magical kaleidescope revealing the many colors of Israeli concert dance in one quick turn of the studios. It was fascinating to see which photographs caught their eye, and it was fun to see them make connections between very different photographs of the same artists.

This retrospective represents just a small slice of all the activity at Suzanne Dellal over the last 20 years. It’s incredible to think how the field of dance has blossomed since the opening of the center – and I can’t help but wonder what will come in the next 20 years.

Reflections on the Gaga Intensive 2009

Deborah Friedes Galili — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 15:21:42 +0000

Ohad Naharin leads class at the Gaga Intensive 2009. Photo by Gadi Dagon.

Last year, I only made it to two days of the Gaga Intensive because I was heading back to the U.S. for the summer. But this year, I enjoyed two glorious weeks of dancing with 120 participants from around the world. During our breaks, I talked to many of the dancers about why they came to the workshop, what they enjoyed most, and what they got out of the experience. I’ll be posting more of my writing about the Gaga Intensive later, but first I wanted to bring you some inspiring voices from these dancers.

If you want to share your experience from the Gaga Intensive, you can write a comment at the bottom of this post!

* * *

Allison Shir

- United States, via Amsterdam

I came to the Gaga workshop to expand my vocabulary in a new way. Sometimes if you keep going to the same classes and do the same styles, your artistry can get stale. I think this [intensive] is a lot about how your artistry can feed your physicality and technique rather than the other way around. I think that makes for a much richer and satisfying workshop, and you can take away a lot for your career and your life. It’s not just about dancing with your body but with your life, and about the interconnectedness of everything – there are dynamic possibilities within everything here.

* * *

Victoria Hoyland

– England

I was dancing with Hofesh Shechter as an apprentice and one of the dancers told me about it. Everyone in the Hofesh company just raves about Batsheva and Gaga, so I just had to go!

I just think the information, the way they use the imagery and make your body do things it doesn’t normally do, it’s as if they find the creative strand; they pull it out, somehow. I’ve had it a bit the last year, since Hofesh was here with Batsheva; it’s some of the same ideas of the Gaga technique, but it’s different.

Here there don’t seem to be any boundaries. They’re specific but they leave it open to interpretation, so you don’t need to try to look like something or be like something. That’s what I’ll take home and apply. It makes improvisation less scary; it makes it like a fun challenge, and I used to hate improvisation!

* * *

Hannah Nieh

– United States

One of my best friends did a Gaga workshop last summer, and I saw such a shift in her artistry . . .

I’ve always loved Ohad’s choreography. I’ve seen Nederlans Dans Theatre and Hubbard Street, and this year I saw Batsheva at BAM. I was moved – I saw something very unique, an energy, a special quality that I hadn’t seen for a while. I’m used to seeing really great technicians in New York, but I saw something even more honest in Batsheva.

I had taken a master class with Ohad and knew I wanted to delve into a deeper understanding of what Gaga was, especially after seeing [Batsheva] perform. There’s a feeling of humanity that’s so strong which you don’t see as often as you’d hope in something that is so human.

The workshop challenges you on every level: spiritually, mentally, and of course, physically. I love how [Ohad] talks about being available, which makes me think about the limitless potential we all hold. It feels like Buddhism for your body. My body has explored so much uncharted territory and knows that there’s the potential for more. You can explode, be soft, turn in, turn out – it’s all there. You’re sensing that even if you’re not doing that.

* * *

Evelyn Klöti

– Switzerland

I was here [at the workshop] last year already. It gives you a lot of energy! You have the freedom to move – there are structures, but inside them you have freedom, pleasure, humor . . . But it’s also very intellectual because I think the images are coming from different fields, and that’s also challenging to really sense what the intention of the image is.

* * *

Abbe Ouziel

– United States

I worked with someone from the [Batsheva] company in the States and saw the company perform a few times. They came to New York for a while when they were working with Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet, and I took Gaga classes there. I had always wanted to keep working in this way, so when I heard there was a workshop, I signed up. I wanted to have a good amount of time to work like this instead of doing just a class here and a class there.

What has been the best thing? I guess connecting Gaga technique with the repertory they have been teaching. It’s a good way to test your body and see if you can incorporate all the information that you’ve been getting into the set forms that they’re teaching. And it’s a totally different way of moving. It’s like every movement can be an empty movement, but what we’ve been learning has been filling these movements up. It’s a more challenging and interesting way of dancing.

I think I’m getting a much more efficient and fuller way of working. I’m making sure that I’m putting all that I have into the way that I move and don’t just have empty forms in space. Also, I’m listening to my body more. Just seeing the way that the dancers here work is something to take away because they really put all of themselves into each little movement that they do. And they all do it in a different way, which is really cool!

* * *

Aviv Asulin

– Israel

In the first day, it was amazing! I went out, and it was like, “Wow!” I hadn’t danced in two weeks, but it was really great. All my body opened up and I felt really happy; I talked to my mom and smiled at everyone on the street.

The classes are really professional. The teachers are amazing; they do Gaga very well, and the transference of the information is great. I like the repertoire. Kamuyot and the solos were especially amazing.

* * *

Sarah Goldstone

– United States

My training at Juilliard was very traditional, but we got the chance to work with Ohad on excerpts from MAX and excerpts from Three. To do something that was more modern, contemporary, and current, it was the most fulfilling and exciting experience in my whole Juilliard career. And at Juilliard you rehearse so much that it can die a little in the process – things become stale, and they’re always telling you to do things like the person in the video did. And to not do that was like, Oh . . . it wasn’t a free for all, but you got to experience it for yourself. Even though we rehearsed in the Juilliard fashion, Ohad’s work was always, constantly fresh. I felt like a kid again!

Being here at the intensive, I feel curious again. It’s not like, “Do a tondue and look like this person.” I do a tondue and experience it for myself. It’s what the dance world needs, I think.

The curiosity for dance and for experiencing new ways of moving is back. I had been a little bit jaded by all this traditional technique, and even though I feel like I’m just scratching the surface of all the tasks of Gaga, I want to keep investing. Ohad talks about multi-layer tasks, and you see that in the dancers, in the teachers. I feel like if I keep doing this I can finally grab hold and get to what he’s talking about.

And the repertory feels very human, it doesn’t feel presentational. We keep getting this correction from the teachers, that it doesn’t have to be presentational. To have that, it’s so new; it feels good to just be. I feel this has been a great outlet for that.

* * *

An intense moment at the Gaga Intensive. Photo by Gadi Dagon.

Birgitte Lundtoft

– Denmark

I’ve seen the Batsheva Company in all their performances in Copenhagen, and I’m so moved by it – it really has a bite somehow. It captures me. The dynamics and the fleshiness of it, the bodies . . .

I did Gaga for a couple of weeks in Denmark; I tried it there first. I can’t exactly say what it is, but I think there’s just this feeling that there’s something I want here, something I want to do.

Here at the workshop, I’m in the middle of it; I see all the dancers, and it’s very intensive. So you go much deeper into it. I actually feel that you get addicted to it – after the day off yesterday, my body wanted to do it again! It wanted more.

I really love the method classes the most, because at the end of the day, when we’ve had the Gaga class and the repertory, I don’t know if I have any more in me, but a whole new kind of energy comes. I like that very much.

* * *

Hallie Dalsimer

– United States, based in Tel Aviv

Gaga is about embodied sensation. You have to engage the mind to embrace the concept, but then there’s a point when you have to let go of the conscious and be with the sensation. When it happens, it’s really magical, it’s satisfying. There’s another thing: it’s about this honest experience and sensation and not what it looks like.

In the repertory, there’s a unison of intention without the unison of form. The fact that everyone has this same impetus gives it this juiciness.

It’s an expansive way to work, to break out of habits and habitual ways of doing a task. And it can really enrich your experience of other forms; it allows more possibility.

Gaga is empowering for people because it allows you to connect to yourself in a way that is powerful and liberating. It’s really transformed my interests in movement. It’s been a really amazing thing to have access to.

* * *

Anna Roethlisberger

– Switzerland

It’s interesting because I did a lot of performance, dance, and Feldenkrais, and I got a grant to come here. Some people recommended it to me, and I thought, “Okay, let’s have a look at it.” And I was a bit skeptical but open at the same time, and wondering how Ohad would make the translation and transition from warming up and oppositional things to dancing – the bridge between functional research to real movement and improvisation.

I think it’s a very good thing. For dancers who are at the beginning of a career and non-dancers, they have an enormous potential and chance to really integrate something. They can get a really nice base and have an impulse to go further. They can start to have more inspiration afterwards.

Ohad transmitted it very beautifully. When a method is developed by somebody, he is like the body of the method, so I like taking classes from Ohad because he’s really the pool of information. He is the body which can transport the message. And I think sometimes it’s very difficult to learn a method from someone; you really have to understand as a teacher what he meant – really study your own body and not just copy the thing. And I think Ohad has this gift to inspire people because he developed it. He is the pool, the source. I like to be with the source, and have the freedom to create around. I got a good inspiration for movement and it gives me feedback and courage to go to improvisation and choreography. It is a good base from which to go much further.

I really think he reaches people on a different level.

* * *

Shai Faran

– Israel

I have been doing training for Gaga teachers for the last year, so [doing the workshop] was a natural progression. I’m doing lots of Gaga, also with the [Batsheva] company and with the people, so this is an extra for me.

I think the methodics classes are really good, especially for me since I’m trying to learn Gaga from the base. It’s also good that they have the repertory between the two classes so you can actually use what you’re learning when you do the material. It’s amazing because you can learn how they use Gaga; the imagery that [the teachers] use in the class they also use in the repertoire. I think that’s what makes the difference in Batsheva: the small details, the qualities, all this stuff that Ohad puts in the material.

* * *

Cindy Yu

– United States

I had taken a break from dancing and I thought this would be a good workshop; I knew someone who had done it to work out a back injury. So I thought this would be a good way to get back into it, to get my body moving again.

I had previously done Gaga at Peridance in a few classes that were offered there and also at Dance New Amsterdam. I also wanted to travel to a different country, so that helped me decide to come.

I’ve been to workshops before where you learn repertory, and there I just feel like I’m learning a dance. But here I feel like you can apply what you’re learning in the classes to the dance. That’s not always the case in workshops.

I feel like Gaga is a different way to get to that place. And what is that place? Why we dance . . . it’s to feel that connectedness in our bodies, in other people, in the universe. It’s great to find another path to get to that level of awareness. I feel like it’s more effective. Sometimes it’s difficult, but it makes sense to me.

* * *

Christina Robinson

– England

I just wanted to try somewhere new, since I’ve not been out of England to dance yet. I had seen clips of the Israeli companies and they’re very bold, with a lot of great movement, and that sort of appealed to me. That was the sort of thing I’d like to do but don’t over in England. So a friend told me about this, and I said I’d go for it and see what it’s like.

What do I like about the workshop? The whole freedom thing. I’ve always felt a bit of pressure, but here you don’t know anyone so it’s just you, and you can really just be yourself and use their information to find something new in yourself and explore that. I think it’s very free. Everyone’s doing their own thing, and there’s no right or wrong as well.

The imagery helps a lot. I’ve been taking notes and remembering the things that really work for me. You kind of hear [the teachers'] voices with things you know you should work with, like finding every place in the body and maybe moving a bit more intelligently instead of just doing the movement. You’re finding different ways to do it, which can bring something new to the dance.

* * *

Melinda Wilson

– United States

I’ve gained further understanding of the body and the brain, and how they coexist for movement that can be honest and sincere. This is the difference between last year and this year (aside from some scheduling differences). The more time you spend with it, the more it becomes part of you. You stop looking at other people for direction, you stop needing the confidence because you trust your organs, and you trust your body for where the movement comes from.

What made me come back? Obviously the learning process of Gaga itself, and the relationship to the people, whether it’s the dancers or people from Israel who are non-dancers. And of course working with Ohad, who is the creator of the movement language – you rarely get to do that.

It’s broadened my horizons.

* * *

Many thanks to the dancers who participated in this post and to the generosity of the Gaga Intensive’s staff and teachers!

A Closer Look at Liat Dror and Nir Ben-Gal’s Adama

Deborah Friedes Galili — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 06:36:16 +0000

Video: An excerpt from Airfield, Liat Dror and Nir Ben-Gal’s latest creation

Nir Ben-Gal and Liat Dror first burst onto the stage with Two Room Apartment in 1987, and they continued to create a stir with their choreography throughout the 1990s. But when I got to Tel Aviv last year, the couple was nowhere to be found.

It’s not that Nir and Liat disappeared from the country’s dance scene. They just carved out a non-traditional space for themselves in Mizpe Ramon, a small desert town a few hours southeast from Tel Aviv. There, in a place they call Adama (“earth”), they live, teach, and create.

Occasionally the pair still brings their company to Tel Aviv for performances. After months of hearing a bit about Nir and Liat, I finally got to see their Prince Charming in November 2007 at Tmuna Theater. But to find out more about Adama, I decided to venture into the desert for a visit in January 2008. And then again in April 2008. And, well, again in June 2008.

I first wrote the article below for The Winger after my second stay at Adama.

* * *

My Visit to Adama (April 2008)

One of the spectacular views in Mizpe Ramon, in Israel’s Negev Desert.

The entrance to Adama, an old industrial hangar in Mizpe Ramon which has been converted into a dance center.

The grounds at Adama, complete with a garden tended by the dancers.

Indoor tepees for sleeping at Adama.

The lounge area near the large studio at Adama.

The dance jam session on Saturday night in the large studio at Adama.

I just returned from a brief trip to a magical place in the middle of the Negev desert. Situated in the town of Mizpe Ramon, the site of an enormous and beautiful crater, Adama (which means “earth” in Hebrew) is hands down the most unique dance center I have ever visited. Acclaimed choreographers Liat Dror and Nir Ben Gal left Tel Aviv in 1999 to forge a new path in the south of Israel, where they renovated an abandoned industrial hangar. Today, Adama has beautiful studios, welcoming lounges, communal sleeping spaces as well as more private indoor tepees and rooms made of mud, a vegetarian kitchen, a garden, and more . . .

Besides transforming the physical space around them, Liat and Nir have developed an approach to dancing which, coming from inside, is potentially healing for the body. When I took class from them on Sunday and Monday, I spent a lot of time with my eyes closed, tuning into my breath and weight. Liat prefaced a lot of her directions with “Very gently . . .,” while Nir frequently reminded us to move without effort and instructed us to walk softly, using the image of placing our heart in our feet. Although I was quite sore and tight at the end of last week, I have to say, I feel great now!

Like other visitors – the center often attracts individuals who drop in throughout the year as well as groups who come for special workshops – I was able to participate fully in the Adama school’s activities, which run from Sunday to Tuesday. Classes range from contemporary technique, yoga, flamenco, African dance, and aerial dance to reflexology and basket weaving (I got to watch a class on my first visit in January!). Sunday evenings always include an open dance jam, while Monday evenings often feature showings and discussions.

Before classes begin in the morning, everyone works on a variety of projects in the garden and on the grounds (this morning I lashed branches to a wooden structure to create some shade). Company dancers are also in residence on these days, taking and teaching classes as well as rehearsing for new productions. There’s a wonderful exchange of information and energy among all the people in this community – and indeed, with group meals, many inviting communal areas, and cozy on-site sleeping spaces, Adama feels very much like a community despite the ever-shifting makeup of its inhabitants.

I could go on and on about this marvelous place and my experience there, but I’ll stop for now. On this trip, I interviewed Liat and Nir for my podcast series, and soon I’ll post the audio here so you can hear them reflect about Adama themselves.

Many thanks to Liat, Nir, Reut, Etty, and everyone else at Adama for an unforgettable start to my week!

* * *

Upcoming Events at Adama

Adama is holding both a summer workshop (July 13-17) and a teachers’ course (July 26-30). Read more about these events at Adama’s website.

The Batsheva Ensemble on Tour at Home and Abroad

Deborah Friedes Galili — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 10:24:46 +0000

Video: The Batsheva Ensemble in Ohad Naharin’s Seder.

Last year I had the privilege and the pleasure of accompanying the Batsheva Ensemble on a trip to the town of Kiryat Shmona for two school shows of Ohad Naharin’s Seder. My photo journal and account of the day – originally titled “A Day in the Life: The Batsheva Ensemble in Kiryat Shmona” – was initially published on The Winger on May 18, 2008. I’m re-posting it here so that you can get a behind-the-scenes peak into the company’s workings.

But before you read about the company’s activities last year, here’s some fresh news: the Batsheva Ensemble will be touring this month to Rwanda. They’ll be performing and doing workshops with children – and, to give something a little more tangible, they plan to donate sneakers.

Help the Batsheva Ensemble Help Teenagers in Rwanda

If you’re in Israel, you can help by donating sneakers (used but in good condition), sizes 37-45. The sneakers will go to teenaged orphans whose parents died in the genocide. Visit the Facebook page for this event to learn more, and drop off your old sneakers now through June 16th at Batsheva’s offices in the Suzanne Dellal Center.

* * *

Now read on to learn more about the Batsheva Ensemble!

A Day in the Life: The Batsheva Ensemble in Kiryat Shmona

The costume trunk for Seder. As a work which lays bare its compositional structure through explicit verbal explanations, repeated visual cues (like the dancers counting to four on their fingers before breaking into four counts of full-bodied movement), and combined aural and visual information (such as a series of movement accumulations performed to similarly accumulating counts), the dance’s title is appropriate: “seder” is Hebrew for “order.”

It’s been a while since I’ve traveled around and performed for school audiences (I did my fair share of Nutcracker school shows with the American Repertory Ballet in the 1990s, from a tiny soldier to Snow and Flowers corps with a lot in between). But I’ve been able to live vicariously through the Batsheva Ensemble this year thanks to Eldad Mannheim, the company’s manager, who invited me to tag along with the group on a few outings. In January 2008, I joined the Batsheva Ensemble on their trip to Be’ersheva for two morning shows of Ohad Naharin’s Zachacha, and on Monday May 5th (2008), I again accompanied the group as they trekked to Kiryat Shmona for two performances of Naharin’s Seder.

5:55 a.m. Meet the Batsheva Ensemble at the corner of Kaplan and Ibn Gvirol in Tel Aviv. Most of the company members are already snoozing on the bus, and I quickly fall asleep too.

8:30 a.m. Arrive at the theater in Kiryat Shmona in northern Israel. Because of it’s proximity to Lebanon, Kiryat Shmona has been hit by rockets during many clashes with the PLO and Hezbollah, and the town suffered many attacks during the war in the summer of 2006. These performances were sponsored by IDB as a treat for the community’s children, who were no doubt affected by the conflict.

8:35 a.m. Breakfast! There is a long day ahead, so dancers and crew members fill up on fresh bread, veggies, cheese, tehina, coffee, and tea.

9:00 a.m. Hillel Kogan, one of the Batsheva Ensemble’s rehearsal directors, leads a spacing session onstage. Ohad Naharin created Seder for the Ensemble, and the work – which features material from MAX, Shalosh (Three in English), and Furo – debuted in July 2007. The dance can be adapted for anywhere between 12 and 17 dancers; today, 12 Ensemble members are in Kiryat Shmona to perform. Since the dancers know multiple parts and the cast constantly changes, Hillel clarifies who will be dancing each role for these two shows.

9:45 a.m. Gaga onstage, led by Hillel. As with class before Zachacha, this class includes plenty of time for the dancers to stretch and incorporates more familiar technical terminology – plié, relevé, passé, rond de jambe, etc. – than is typically included in the lessons open to the general public. I didn’t dance at all while I was away on a week-long trip to Tunisia, so I’m happy to get to move. I’m also inspired to be surrounded by such amazing dancers!

10:45 a.m. Local schoolchildren and their teachers arrive at the theater. The noise level grows . . .

10:50 a.m. Last minute notes by the dressing rooms. The dancers wear simple gray and black costumes in Seder, but there’s a twist that the audience can’t see: headphones. Part way through the work, one dancer explains (on a pre-recorded audio track) that the performers can move in unison with such precision even when the audience doesn’t hear music because they are listening to counts, beats, music, and other cues via their ear buds. Prior to the performance, the group does a sound check to make sure they are working.

11:00 a.m. (-ish – you know how school shows are . . . ) First performance of the day. Eldad gives a pre-show announcement, and the teachers try to quiet the students as the performance begins.

11:30 a.m. (-ish) The audience gets involved thanks to instructions from a dancer whose head appears on a television screen: put a hand on your heart, put a hand on the back of your neck . . . It’s not a game of Simon Says constructed especially for young audiences – these children are challenged by the same material that adult audience members would see at an evening performance. How’s that for arts education!

12:00 p.m. (-ish) The first show is over, and the crowd goes wild!

12:20 p.m. Hillel gives notes to the Ensemble backstage while the next group of youngsters fills the auditorium.

12:30 p.m. – 1:30 p.m. Second performance of Seder for a slightly older crowd.

1:40 p.m. The crew starts to strike the set. They’ve had a long day – at 1:00 a.m. they gathered all their equipment from Tel Aviv and made their way to the theater in Kiryat Shmona by 4:00 a.m. to lay down the white marley, put up the set’s panels, and take care of all the lighting and sound work.

1:45 p.m. Lunch and time for some fresh air, sunshine, and beautiful mountain views. From Kiryat Shmona, you can see Lebanon as well as the Golan Heights.

2:00 p.m. Back on the bus to return to Tel Aviv. Many people take well-deserved naps, but I speak with Hillel and a few of the dancers. Two-and-a-half hours is a long trip by Israeli standards, and the traffic as we near Tel Aviv makes the ride a little longer.

4:55 p.m. 11 hours later, I’m home! Almost immediately, I sit down at my computer to upload my photographs and start writing. Another day’s work . . .

Many thanks to Eldad, Hillel, the Batsheva Ensemble dancers, and the crew!

Dance in the Desert: Shavuot at Adama

Deborah Friedes Galili — Fri, 22 May 2009 06:59:22 +0000

Photo: At Adama’s Shavuot festival in 2008, dancers gathered around for an aerial dance workshop.

While some dancers and movers will gather at Vertigo Dance Company’s Eco-Art Village for the Hagiga festival during Shavuot, others will journey into the Negev desert for a different event: Adama’s Hagiga Levana (White Festival or White Celebration).

Adama is a unique dance center run by choreographers Nir Ben-Gal and Liat Dror (more on them and the center soon, I promise!). Last year, their Shavuot festival was called Dance in the Desert and was a collaboration with the Amuta or Choreographers Society. I attended the festival and made a photo journal called “Dance in the Desert” for The Winger; you can check it out below.

This year’s Hagiga Levana will be a smaller and more intimate festival than Dance in the Desert, but it should be no less warm and celebratory. Attendees can participate in workshops as well as find time for themselves to reflect in the peace of the desert. They’ll also enjoy a performance of the Adama company’s latest work. You can visit Adama’s website for more information on this Shavuot event, which will run from May 28-30.

* * *

Dance in the Desert (2008)

Here’s my view of Machol Bamidbar 2008, a collaboration between Adama and the Amuta:

After catching one of two buses chartered from Tel Aviv at 7 a.m. on Friday morning, we were met with this sign welcoming us to the Machol Bamidbar festival.

I think I have a sense of what heaven (or at least dance heaven) looks like.

From Friday through Sunday, I joined a few hundred wonderful people for Machol Bamidbar (Dance in the Desert) at Adama’s incredible space in Mizpe Ramon. Coordinated by the Amuta (Choreographers Society), the festival brought together many of Israel’s independent choreographers who work outside of the long-established troupes like Batsheva and the Kibbutz Contemporary Dance Company. Over 3 days, these choreographers presented 17 concerts featuring over 40 dances and improvisational works. The festival was also filled with more than 50 classes ranging from contemporary technique, improvisation, and repertory to Afro-Cuban dance, Gaga, flamenco, aerial dance, acrobalance, tai chi, yoga, Pilates, Feldenkrais, juggling, and special children’s classes. After the last performance of each evening, open dance jams stretched late into the night. It was definitely a weekend to remember!

Here’s a taste of what the festival looked like:

To camping! Signs were everywhere at Adama, directing attendees to studios, sleeping spaces, and makeshift cafes.

While some people came only for a day or returned to their homes each night, many people stayed at Adama for the entire festival. Some people brought their own tents and set up outside, while others slept in sleeping bags on mattresses spread out inside Adama’s hangar. It felt like an instant village!

Relaxing from the desert heat and sun. In between workshops and performances, we lounged here and ate yummy vegetarian fare. People caught up with old friends and made new ones.

Along with Adama’s usual arty decor, a dance photography exhibit lined the building’s hallways.

Dancers in one of many workshops. I myself took several classes: Liat Dror’s morning class; repertory classes with choreographers Niv Sheinfeld and Sahar Azimi; and a rep class with material by Liat Dror and Nir Ben-Gal, taught by dancer extraordinaire Ran Ben-Dror. Since there were 7 classes in each workshop slot, it was often hard to choose which one to attend – they all looked great!

Aerial dance students in action!

A crowd starts to gather before one of many performances. Besides the main stage, a more intimate space in the hangar next door hosted additional performances (again making it hard to choose . . .), and there were also showings of video dance. Before each concert, a pair of acrobats raced through the hangar, playfully announcing what would be happening in each concert space.

Dancing with a visiting troupe of drummers and dancers from Africa on Saturday night. One of the dancers was celebrating a birthday, and the company and crowd surprised her with a rousing rendition of “Happy Birthday” after their first dance. Besides this group from Ghana, a company of dancers from Japan (KAYM) was invited by Israeli choreographer Nimrod Freed, and they performed on Sunday.

It does seem like a taste of heaven, doesn’t it?

CityDance in Jerusalem: Exploring the Gaps Between American and Israeli Dance

Deborah Friedes Galili — Fri, 08 May 2009 16:45:50 +0000

Video: CityDance Ensemble

You would have thought that to meet Paul Gordon Emerson, the director of the Washington D.C. based CityDance Ensemble, I would have taken a train from New Jersey (my home state) to the capital of the U.S. while I was still living there. But instead I grabbed a bus to Jerusalem a few nights ago.

Let’s backtrack: Paul’s interest in reviving older modern dance masterpieces and my research on these works first brought us together online nearly six years ago. We’ve kept up our correspondence over the years, reconnecting this fall when CityDance staged Sophie Maslow’s Folksay from Labanotation score (this was doubly exciting for me: my undergraduate thesis on Jewish-American choreographers highlighted Maslow’s career, and I studied Labanotation intensively in graduate school). Yet we never met face to face – until now.

CityDance is currently touring the Middle East, and as part of the Ramallah Contemporary Dance Festival – which features companies from around the world performing both in the West Bank and in Israel – the company had concerts in Jerusalem and Nazareth this week. Since the Tel Aviv is only an hour away from Jerusalem, I jumped at the chance to see the company and hopped on a bus.

After years of corresponding with Paul, it was fantastic to talk with him in person (and we could have continued for much more time). I also saw firsthand that CityDance lives up to the promise delivered in its slogan, “Power. Passion. Purpose.” The talented dancers threw themselves body and soul into their performance, and the choreography had something to say; indeed, the program’s closing work – Christopher K. Morgan’s Thirst – tackled environmental issues effectively and movingly.

But my trip came with an added benefit: the chance to reflect on some structural differences between concert dance in America and Israel. Some of my thoughts below came up in a post-show conversation with Paul and Christopher, while others struck me later.

CityDance was, in a sense, the perfect troupe to shed light on a few of these contrasts. For one, it is a repertory company. Rather than showcasing work by only one choreographer, CityDance’s program in Jerusalem featured work by Christopher and Paul himself along with Ludovic Jolivet and Kate Weare. While some other American troupes are based on this repertory model, few Israeli companies operate in this fashion. Here, nearly every group is devoted to the work of one or two choreographers.

This wasn’t always the case. The Batsheva Dance Company, the Kibbutz Contemporary Dance Company, and the now defunct Bat-Dor Dance Company were all repertory companies at the start. Indeed, from the 1960s until the 1990s, the repertory structure was the model of a dance company in Israel. But as more Israeli choreographers found their artistic voices in the 1990s and 2000s, they started their own groups to present their work. At the same time, both Batsheva and KCDC found artistic directors whose own choreographic visions could guide those companies to international success. Thus the repertory model not only lost its dominance but nearly disappeared from the landscape of Israeli contemporary dance.

Connected to this contrast in company structure is a difference between dance concerts in the U.S. and in Israel. Like most modern dance concerts I attended or performed in stateside, CityDance’s program was a mixed bill. I have seen plenty of mixed bills here in Israel, but usually they are evenings shared by several independent choreographers and often they are within the context of a festival. Typically, established Israeli dance companies present concerts composed of one full-length work. Sometimes the same set-up is true for concerts by independent choreographers. I’m not sure why full-length work seems so much more predominant in Israel than in America; perhaps a combination of artistic and economic factors contribute to this tendency.

Finally, while the particular concert I saw included more recently made works, CityDance’s inclusion of older pieces in its repertory also sets it apart from Israel’s dance companies. Though it is a particularly strong proponent of reconstructions, CityDance is by no means the only American company which presents older choreography. Some modern dance companies in the U.S., like the Martha Graham Dance Company, are completely dedicated to performing existing repertory; others such as the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and the Limón Dance Company keep the older works of their founders alive while commissioning new dances.

In contrast, Israel’s contemporary dance companies rarely include restagings of decades-old choreography in their seasons. Earlier this year I wrote about a few revivals which took place at a special opening performance of the Shades of Dance Festival, but other than that unique concert, it’s hard to see even the most significant works in Israeli dance history onstage here. The emphasis is on the new to the extent that the old is barely visible.

Certainly this situation is related to the relative youth of homegrown Israeli contemporary dance. None of Israel’s existing dance companies were in operation fifty years ago, and few of the country’s choreographers were creating work twenty years ago. The new-ness of the field is partly what makes it so exciting and vibrant, but I wonder if the scene will preserve its treasures as it ages. Dances made prior to the formation of Batsheva have already been lost, and I worry that the same fate awaits comparatively more recent choreography.

This is just the start of a comparison, but I’ll save more thoughts for another post! Many thanks to Paul and CityDance for both a wonderful concert and a point of departure for this reflection.

From Writing to Talking about Dance

Deborah Friedes Galili — Mon, 04 May 2009 10:40:07 +0000

DTW’s artistic director, Carla Peterson, talks about Deganit Shemy’s work

Now that the jetlag is wearing off and I’m more or less settled back in to Tel Aviv, I’m ready to tell the tales of a dance blogger on vacation in the U.S.

What does a dance blogger do on vacation?

Well, besides seeing family and friends, this blogger did a bit of work and went from writing about dance to talking about dance.

Lecturing on Dance in Israel

I started my trip with two lectures about dance in Israel. Many thanks to all of my readers who sent me suggestions and voiced their interest when I posted my “Call for Help,” and a special thanks to Kathy Hassinger at Emerson College and Jodi Falk at Pioneer Valley Performing Arts Charter School for inviting me to talk to their classes.

After months of staring at my computer screen while typing posts – and then desperately hoping to get some feedback, no matter how delayed, in the form of comments or e-mails – the immediate responses of the Emerson and PVPA students was a welcome change. When I talked about the history of concert dance in Israel and the flowering of Israeli contemporary dance, curious students peppered me with questions; when I showed video excerpts of choreography, the rooms buzzed with students’ excited murmurs. I loved sharing my insights and hearing their reactions – and I hope that I will have many more chances in the future to talk about dance in Israel.

Seeing Deganit Shemy’s Arena and Meeting Dance Bloggers

With my lectures in Massachusetts over, I turned my attention to the New York leg of my trip. As I perused the performance listings, I saw that Deganit Shemy, a New York-based choreographer from Israel, was scheduled for a performance at Dance Theater Workshop (DTW) on April 16th. Adding to the lure was a pre-performance talk moderated by Eva Yaa Asantewaa, who runs the Infinite Body blog and Body and Soul podcast. I decided to make a day of it and scheduled a meet-up at DTW for dance bloggers before the event.

Since entering the blogging world last year, I’ve discovered that there are many other people writing about dance online. I’ve followed many of them on their blogs and on Twitter, and now I finally got to meet several of them in person. Tonya Plank (Swan Lake Samba Girl), Marc Kirschner (TenduTV), Taylor Gordon (a fellow Winger and writer of Off Center), Doug Fox (Great Dance), and DJ McDonald (City of Glass) met up with my partner Tal and I for some lively discussion about dancing, blogging, and life in general. We still had several threads of conversation open by the time the pre-performance talk started, and hopefully these will continue online.

Nearly all of us stayed for “Coffee and Conversation” with Eva and Deganit, and the discussion proved enlightening. Although she started dancing late, Deganit Shemy won accolades here in Israel with her early work, even garnering the Gvanim Bemachol (Shades of Dance) prize in 2003. We heard of her training in visual art and in Eshkol-Wachman Movement Notation, which Deganit studied at the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance. This background was evident later that evening in the premiere of the choreographer’s latest work, Arena. Deganit’s repeated use of prolonged, posed stillness lent the dance a sculptural quality, and when the dancers burst into action, they did so with great precision.

Before the conversation concluded, Deganit also talked about her choice to use female dancers, the connection of memory to her work, and Arena‘s theme of competition. The discussion enriched my viewing of Arena, and I was pleased to learn even more about the dance in a post-show talk which included the dancers and the sound designer.

Reflections on Talking about Dance

After spending so much time talking about dance, I started thinking more about how, when, and where we have dialogue about this non-verbal art form. In some theaters, studios, and universities, there are conversations about dance – but not enough. I discussed this problem with many New Yorkers during my vacation there, and back here in Tel Aviv, I feel the lack of discourse even more sorely. While the plethora of college dance departments in the U.S. cultivates some conversation, there is no similar framework of dance in higher education in Israel. Furthermore, the occasional pre- or post-performance talks with choreographers or other knowledgeable dance professionals which occasionally take place in the United States are nearly nonexistent here.

I would love to see – and participate in – more discussions about dance, and I’m curious to know what you think about this issue. How can we increase the number of conversations about dance and make this dialogue more accessible and inviting?

Behind the Scenes at Gvanim: Shades of Dance Festival

Deborah Friedes Galili — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 13:18:05 +0000

Michael Miler’s The Speed of Light will be performed in program 1 of Shades of Dance. Photograph by Eyal Landesman.

Last Saturday night was chilly and wet, but despite the discouraging weather conditions, I bundled up and trekked down to the Suzanne Dellal Center. Choreographer Micheal Miler of Haifa’s Sigma Ensemble had invited me to a rehearsal for the Shades of Dance festival (called Gvanim in Hebrew). Shades of Dance is mounted biennially, and since last year was an off year, I had effectively been waiting to attend the festival for over a year and a half. A little rain wasn’t about to stop me from this special sneak peak.

Since its inception in 1984, Shades of Dance has showcased artists who are relatively fresh to the field of choreography. It has helped launch the careers of some of Israel’s best-known choreographers including Yasmeen Godder, Inbal Pinto, Emanuel Gat, Ronit Ziv, Barak Marshall, Renana Raz, Shlomi Bitton, Anat Danieli, Itzhik Galili, Sally-Anne Friedland, Yossi Yungman, Tamar Borer, Liat Dror and Nir Ben-Gal of Adama, Noa Wertheim and Adi Sha’al of Vertigo Dance Company, and Yoram Karmi of Fresco Dance Group.

Perhaps this is why my anticipation of this festival feels different: I can’t help but wonder what new choreographic voices will be revealed this year. A mind-boggling 80 dances were submitted to the festival’s selection committee, composed of artistic director Hanoch Ben Dror with Ya’ara Dolev, Sally-Anne Friedland, Renana Raz, and Niv Sheinfeld. I’m looking forward to seeing what sets the 10 chosen works apart from their competition when the 15th Shades of Dance festival opens this week.

Left to right: Shaked Dagan’s We are going back is in program 3; Anat Va’adiya’s Ashetish is in program 1. Photographs by Eyal Landesman.

If the rehearsal I saw was any indication, this year’s festival has a batch of promising choreographers with very diverse aesthetics. Michael Miler’s The Speed of Light is one of the most abstract works I have seen since moving to Israel, and it is thoroughly absorbing. Clad in dark skinny jeans and colorful athletic jackets, Miler and seven other talented dancers maneuver skillfully through a sophisticated movement vocabulary. As they swiftly skate across the floor and slide to the ground, they appear to be constantly gauging the changing formations of their fellow performers.

The relationship between dancers Adam Ben Zvi and Idan Porges in Shaked Dagan’s We are going back is equally engaging. At times the well-matched men create a stop-frame effect with their cleverly-timed partnering; at other times they move hypnotically in slow motion.

The other two pieces I saw at Saturday’s rehearsal were worlds apart from each other in their tone. While choreographer/dancer Anat Va’adiya established an unsettling mood for her solo, Dafi Altebab used text and motions from a flight safety presentation to humorous effect in her trio’s quirky scenario.

Dafi Altebab’s new work is in program 3. Photo by Eyal Landesman.

While I wish I could have stayed for the remainder of the rehearsal, I left early to attend another performance at the Home Port festival. I suppose that after waiting a year and half to attend Shades of Dance, another few days is bearable! The festival opens on Wednesday, March 18 with with excerpts of old and recent works by former Shades of Dance participants Nir Ben Gal & Liat Dror, Noa Wertheim & Adi Sha’al, Ronit Ziv, and Barak Marshall. Then three programs shown back-to-back on Thursday night and Friday afternoon will present the new works from this year’s harvest.

Here are a few more sneak peaks of what will be onstage in the three programs of Shades of Dance 2009:

Anat Meirav’s is in program 2. Photographs by Eyal Landesman.

From left: Galit Hazor’s Blind Spot is in program 3; Tami and Ron Yitzhaki’s work is in program 2. Photograph by Eyal Landesman.

Shir Medvetsky’s solo is in program 3. Photograph by Eyal Landesman.

From left: Ron Amit and Mor Shani’s Lu Carmela; Or Marin’s vanishing point. Photographs by Eyal Landesman.

Call for Help: Speaking about Dance in Israel in the U.S.

Deborah Friedes Galili — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 17:02:28 +0000

Speaking about dance in Israel to a group of tourists, March 2008. Photo by Marilyn Friedes.

As you know by now, I have a passion for writing about dance in Israel. I also have a passion for speaking about dance in Israel, and as I plan a trip to the U.S. in April, I’m hoping to give a few lectures on the subject. If you’re interested in hearing a lecture or can recommend a place to give a lecture, please read more.

Recommend a place:

Do you know of an organization, community center, university, or other venue that might be interested in hosting a lecture on dance in Israel?

Maybe you’re part of an organization in the dance world which would love to host a talk about the developments here in Israel. Or perhaps you’re part of an organization in the Jewish community which would like to have a different window into contemporary Israeli culture. Or maybe you simply have ideas about which organizations might be interested in inviting me to speak.

If you have any connections or ideas about where I could lecture in the New Jersey, New York City, and Boston areas during April, please contact me. You can also e-mail me directly: deborahfriedes@gmail.com

Show your interest:

If you live in these areas and would like to attend a lecture, if you don’t live in these areas but are interested in a lecture, or if your organization can’t host a lecture right now but might in the future – in all of these cases and more – I would love to be in contact with you. Please fill out the form below to let me know who you are, where you are, what you’re about, and how to contact you.

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Dancing Through the Intifada: Yasmeen Godder’s “Strawberry Cream and Gunpowder”

Deborah Friedes Galili — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 08:29:58 +0000

Yasmeen Godder’s Stawberry Cream and Gunpowder. Photo by Tamar Lamm.

The cameras in this region frequently capture pictures of destruction and death, of terror and torture, of bombing scenes and blood, of gore and grief.

Working in a different medium, the choreographers in Israel do not often turn their gaze in this direction. But in 2004, Yasmeen Godder focused her artistic lens squarely on the conflict in her country – and specifically on the tragic images flooding the media – in Strawberry Cream and Gunpowder. Transforming real photographs into surreal scenes, Godder and her Bloody Bench Players exposed the complexities of the situation to the audience and cast its horrors in sharp relief.

I watched Strawberry Cream and Gunpowder on DVD in autumn 2007, and after collecting myself – it’s not an easy work to watch – I spent much of the night writing about this haunting dance. The result, “Dancing Through the Intifada,” first appeared on my own blog on November 13, 2007.

* * *

I just returned home from watching a DVD of Yasmeen Godder’s haunting Strawberry Cream and Gunpowder (2004), and it’s impossible for me to think of anything else at the moment. Created a few years into the second intifada, Strawberry Cream and Gunpowder is the first work I have seen which tackles the situation directly, with imagery drawn from media reports of the violence.

If my mind was fresher, perhaps I could write a rich, fuller description of the dance’s action, for indeed there is much that is worthy of comment: prolonged stillnesses which force the viewer to register the horror of these televised, photographed images; the way bodies skilled in release technique, with their loose and reactive limbs, all too believably portray bodies responding to the force of gunshots and physical manipulation; how a context of terror transforms typically normal and even joyous positions and actions; the dressing of the space, with unfixed patches of grass scattered across the stage and an automated gate on stage right; the combination of an original score with the dancers’ piercing emotional cries and occasional bursts of singing; the progression of energy and time, with all hell breaking loose at the end; the curtain call, with two dancers still fully in character during and after the audience applause, finishing moments later as if to emphasize that this is not a fictional scenario limited to the stage time or to the theater’s interior.

Right now, however, my mind is caught up with more philosophical musings and questions.

Yasmeen Godder’s Stawberry Cream and Gunpowder. Photo by Tamar Lamm.

Looking through my historical lens, Godder’s raw, powerful treatment of the intifada makes her heir to American choreographers Anna Sokolow and Danny Grossman. Indeed, as I watched this DVD, images from Sokolow’s Dreams – which dealt with the Holocaust – and Grossman’s anti-war Endangered Species flashed through my mind. Godder’s project, though, is distinguished from that of her predecessors in that she and her dancers were living through this horror as they created and performed Strawberry Cream and Gunpowder.

I started to wonder: how has the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (and mandatory military service) marked these dancers’ bodies (and the creative mind)? What is it like to be in process with a work like this while the trauma is continuing in your environment? What is it like to view a work like this when the trauma is continuing around you?

Strawberry Cream and Gunpowder is also distinct from the aforementioned works by Sokolow and Grossman in its depiction of the ambiguity between right and wrong, innocence and guilt in the current conflict. Whereas the figures in Grossman’s Endangered Species are clearly victims (the innocent father, mother, and child) or perpetrators (the general and the monkey/soldiers – though arguably the troops can also be seen as somewhat victimized by their tyrannical leader), the dancers in Strawberry Cream and Gunpowder alternate back and forth between these two roles. One moment they are prone on the floor or despairingly hunched over the corpse of a beloved, and the next they are aggressively wielding guns or triumphantly dragging limp bodies through the space. Real life in the Middle East is not always black or white, and Godder’s theatrical frame chillingly reveals the gray area.

Viewing an Israeli Vision with Diasporic Eyes: A Look at Renana Raz’s “We Have Been Called to Go”

Deborah Friedes Galili — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 14:39:23 +0000

Renana Raz in We Have Been Called to Go. Photo by Eyal Landesman.

After months of avid concert-going, Renana Raz’s evening of work titled Avodah Ivrit (Hebrew Labor) proved to be more than just another enjoyable evening at the Suzanne Dellal Center. The experience of viewing this concert was so significant that I immediately poured my musings into an essay.

Avodah Ivrit contained two dances, and it was the second – We Have Been Called to Go – which stirred my excitement and sparked my writing. Out of the many dances I had viewed up until this point in March 2008, We Have Been Called to Go contained the most overt onstage treatment of Israeli society. As the work employed and played with cultural symbols, and as the audience reacted audibly, I became aware that I was watching this not as an Israeli but as a transplanted Diaspora Jew. I was fascinated not only by the subject matter but also by the perceptions of viewers from different backgrounds.

Nearly a year later, my understanding of Israeli culture has deepened as I have integrated further into this society as an olah hadasha, a new immigrant. By now I have discovered other works which tackle the issues of Israeli identity and cultural codes. Yet We Have Been Called to Go remains one of the most compelling dances to shed light on Israeli society – and to illuminate my own evolving knowledge and spectatorship of Israeli culture.

Below is my initial reflection on Renana Raz’s We Have Been Called to Go. I first published “Viewing an Israeli Vision with Diasporic Eyes” on March 17, 2008 in my own blog.

* * *

It’s after midnight, and I just opened my Israeli folk dance mix on iTunes to listen to track number 5, the hora that opened Renana Raz’s We Have Been Called to Go. My body is nearly jumping out of my desk chair, searching for the right pattern of mayims as the familiar drums quicken, while my mind is picturing the smaller motions of the four performers in tonight’s concert.

The bodily sensation I am having right now is the same bodily sensation I experienced in the darkened theater. Here’s the amazing thing, though: because Israelis were brought up on folk dance, nearly everyone in that theater had access to the same kinesthetic response.

We dancers and dance scholars talk a lot about kinesthetic response, the physical reaction that audience members may have while watching a dance. But rarely (if ever) have I been at a formal concert where the majority of audience members may be having the same, relatively concrete kinesthetic response – where the majority of audience members have done the same steps to the same music in previous contexts, can recollect those experiences, and perhaps even feel the urge to get up and do the dance.

For me, the power of this first moment in We Have Been Called to Go is sustained throughout the entire work, and I imagine that if I was an Israeli, it might have been an even more powerful viewing experience. As a Diaspora Jew born and raised in the United States, my knowledge of Israeli cultural symbols is still elementary. I know enough about the sabra – the prickly cactus-like plant which with its spiny exterior and sweet interior is supposed to represent the Israeli character – to understand why one performer holds the plant throughout the evening. I know that in the springtime, a siren will bring the entire nation to a halt as Israelis remember those who have sacrificed their lives for the country, and so I understand why a piercing alarm mid-dance arrests the action onstage. I know that “Hatikva” is the national anthem, and so I recognize the Hebrew lyrics on the projection screen before the curtain falls at the end of the work. Because my identities as a dancer and a Jew merged for a time through Israeli folk dance, I know both this first folk dance as well as another one, “Eretz Yisrael Yafa.”

Even with this knowledge, though, I was acutely aware throughout this concert of my identity as a Diaspora Jew. I laughed along with the audience at the outdated instructional folk dance video, but my giggles were not chuckles of nostalgic recognition. I couldn’t tell you why other moments elicited more sounds of amusement or exactly why the performers were wearing certain costumes.

A few discussions immediately after the performance shed more light on the different viewing experiences of Diaspora Jews and Israelis. My friend Ben, a fellow American spending the year in Israel, felt less connected to the work because he was not familiar with all the cultural symbols. Ben recognized several references, including the seeds which one performer (Raz’s father) noshed midway through the performance, but he did not have the benefit of the folk dance connection which made this work so compelling for me and, I suspect, for the members of the audience who grew up with that tradition.

Meanwhile, Hila, an Israeli who takes contemporary dance classes and ushered at the performance, gushed with insights about parts of the choreography that, while intriguing to me, had gone over my head because I was not raised with the same cultural markers. For instance, Hila explained that when one dancer earnestly proclaimed her name and parentage at the start of an otherwise gibberish-filled announcement, she was mimicking the speeches that Israeli students make several times a year at school ceremonies.

Out of the many concerts that I have seen in Israel, only a handful have contained references besides Israeli music or spoken Hebrew that are legible to me as Israeli. How many cultural cues have I missed? I readily admit that I may have overlooked the treatment of Israeli culture in some choreographic works because I am not fluent in either Israeli symbols or the Hebrew language. But I’m also quite aware that for the most part, Israeli choreographers are not explicitly tackling material that is either specifically Israeli or particularly Jewish. This concert gave me the opportunity to test my vision as a Diaspora Jew studying Israeli culture, to see what I have learned and recognize my blind spots as I continue in my research – and to realize just how rare such an open exploration of Israeli society is in this country’s contemporary dance.

Todah rabah to Ben and Hila for allowing me to cite their reactions to this work.

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