Video: Jasmin Vardimon’s Yesterday

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

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

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

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

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Mixing Art, Dance, and Life

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

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

Jasmin Vardimon’s Yesterday.  Photo by Alastair Muir.

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

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

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

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

Jasmin Vardimon’s Yesterday. Photo by Alastair Muir.

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

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

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

Related Links

• Jasmin Vardimon Company

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

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

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

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

Here’s the official blurb about my lecture:

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

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

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

Related Articles on Dance In Israel

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

Related Links

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

Video: Batsheva Dance Company in Ohad Naharin’s Three

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

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Three by Ohad Naharin.  Photo by Gadi Dagon.

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

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

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

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

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

Three by Ohad Naharin.  Photo by Gadi Dagon.

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

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

Three by Ohad Naharin.  Photo by Gadi Dagon.

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

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

Three by Ohad Naharin.  Photo by Gadi Dagon.

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

Related Articles on Dance In Israel

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

Related posts on Gaga on Dance In Israel

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

Related Links

• Batsheva Dance Company
• Suzanne Dellal Center

Video: Barak Marshall’s Rooster

Another guest at International Exposure 2009, Talia Baruch, covers the San Francisco-area dance scene for her blog GoSee– Dance. She wrote some reviews of dances she saw here in Israel in December for her website and is generously sharing them here on Dance In Israel.

Talia’s third article is about Barak Marshall’s Rooster, which was a hit at both Tel Aviv Dance 2009 and International Exposure 2009.  Read below to learn more rich background about Rooster and to hear Talia’s take on the work.

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International Exposure 2009 — Suzanne Dellal Center | Barak Marshall

By Talia Baruch

ROOSTER

Co-production of Israeli Opera and the Suzanne Dellal Center

Choreography: Barak Marshall | Costume Design: Maor Zabar | Set Design: Sergey Berezin | Lighting Design: Felice Ross | Photography: Avi Avin & Kfir Bolotin | Guest Artist: Margalit Oved | Soprano: Lilia Gretsova | Review & Copywriting: Talia Baruch

This dance-theater piece is based on I.L. Peretz’s Bontsha the Silent, Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot and on stories from the Bible and Yemenite folklore.

“Here on earth the death of Bontsha the Silent made no impression at all. Ask anyone: Who was Bontsha, how did he live, and how did he die? Did his strength slowly fade, did his heart slowly give out, or did the very marrow of his bones melt under the weight of his burdens? Who knows?

Bontsha was a human being; he lived unknown, in silence, and in silence he died. He passed through our world like a shadow. When Bontsha was born no one took a drink of wine; there was no sound of glasses clinking. When he was confirmed he made no speech of celebration. He existed like a grain of sand at the rim of a vast ocean, amid millions of other grains of sand exactly similar, and when the wind at last lifted him up and carried him across to the other shore of that ocean, no one noticed, no one at all.”

I.L. Peretz, from Bontsha the Silent

After watching a bounty of dance performances back-to-back at the 2009 International Exposure Dance Festival/Suzanne Dellal Center, it was Rooster that hit home and made me go see the show a second time the following week.

Barak Marshall’s Rooster. Photo by Avi Avin.

Rooster opens with the night chirps of grasshoppers and ends with the twitter of morning birds.  The events unfold in & out one night.  One night that digests interactions in a Kafkan sequence, that throws in the mix Theater of the Absurd, Vaudeville and Greek Mythology, that reels in Balkan, Gypsy, Middle-Eastern and American-Yiddish tunes, all mashed up into one burning stew.

The show reveals a man’s subconscious stream of thoughts under the spell of a dream.  And trailing through this flow of feverish thoughts is the vivid image of the Rooster, which also means Gever (“man”) in Hebrew.  The allusion to the story of I.L. Peretz’ Bontsha the Silent, implies Barak’s appeal for self-assertion: “trust your desires and act on them.”

The Rooster, with its flamboyant erected cockscomb and fluttering feathers — pecking, idling, roosting, kakadoodledooing — mirrors the villagers: their rapacious jealousy, pestering gossip, vaunting vanity.

And in all that chaos of color and cruelty and caring, of plucked feathers, warm embraces and longing to our womb roots, there lays the connection between hen and human. Being chicken — fearful; plucking feathers — slaughter; Tarnegol Kaparot — sacrifice (the Jewish ritual of sacrificing a rooster for atonement); and the forever existential loop: Which came first, chicken or egg?

Barak Marshall’s Rooster. Photo by Kfir Bolotin.

Barak Marshall was born in Los Angeles to a Yemenite Israeli performer — Margalit Oved — founder of the Inbal Theater Dance Company. Barak, a true auteur, nursed on the rich brew of his cultural diversity. In his creative work, he draws themes, flavors and voices from the exotic ingredients that nourish his roots. He peppers his staged art with implied Jewish heritage, Yemenite folklore and biblical text, like the excerpt noting the twelve tribes (this piece is written for twelve dancers).

Barak created Rooster for the 2009 Tel Aviv Dance Festival, after the great success of his former piece — Monger — featured at the 2008 Tel Aviv Dance Festival.

Talia Baruch is a writer and translator covering the dance/theater scene in San Francisco, where she has been living for the past 11 years. She is the founder of Copyous, providing creative copywriting and Localization Strategies. The ingredients that shaped her life are the explosive dance scene in urban Tel Aviv, where she grew up, the pea-green English country side, where she inhaled a handsome amount of fresh-manure & horseback-countered through endless woods, and the 24/7 Localization/Internationalization business bustle, that put perspective to it all. www.copyous.com

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Related Articles on Dance In Israel

• Interview with Barak Marshall: Dancing Between Israel and America
• Tel Aviv Dance 2009 Mixes Global and Local Dance
• Remembering Big Performances at Suzanne Dellal’s Big Stage
• Tel Aviv Dance 2008

Related Links

• Barak Marshall
• Copyous (Talia Baruch’s website)

Video: Vertigo in Noa Wertheim’s Mana

Another guest at International Exposure 2009, Talia Baruch, covers the San Francisco-area dance scene for her blog GoSee– Dance. She wrote some reviews of dances she saw here in Israel in December for her website and is generously sharing them here on Dance In Israel.

Talia’s second guest article is about Noa Wertheim’s Mana, which premiered as part of Curtain Up’s 20th anniversary and was a hit with the audience at International Exposure.  Read on to hear Talia’s take on this captivating work.

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International Exposure 2009—Suzanne Dellal Dance Center | Vertigo Dance Company

By Talia Baruch

MANA
Vessel of Light

Choreography & Artistic Director: Noa Wertheim | Co-Artistic Director: Adi Sha’al | Music: Ran Bagno | Percussion: Dani Makov | Stage & Costume Design: Rakefet Levy | Lighting Design: Dani Fishof | Still photography: Gadi Dagon | Review & Copywriting: Talia Baruch

Mana dances the tension between container and contained, exterior and interior, whole and hollow.

And what is installed first, vessel or light?
Does the Sun rise to fill in the absence of Moonlight, or rather is it the lack of Moonlight that creates the inspiration of its vessel, container of light?
(Based on the Zohar)

Noa Wertheim’s Mana. Photo by Gadi Dagon.

Noa Wertheim’s Mana. Photo by Gadi Dagon.

This timeless tale follows the flow in black and white, with few specks of ruddy-warm.  The bewitching-dark night stands in still, mystical contrast to the milky-white house, symmetrically centered in its simple stable form on stage.

Geometric shapes will now act out the dialogue between feminine and masculine, draw the drama between the forces of life that forever struggle to compliment each other:

Feminine: circular, soft black balloon, hanging like a full moon, up above the house

Masculine: pointy, sharp angular triangular roof, edgy rectangular door, protruding

Feminine: curve and crave in sensual, spiral hip-stirred movements

Masculine: stride, high-strung, across the stage in “connect-the-dot”-like linear routes

Noa Wertheim’s Mana. Photo by Gadi Dagon.

Both forces aspire to escape the hollow and reach the whole in this quest to be holistically contained and content. The visual image interlaced throughout the show is of a black balloon attached to a dancer, pulling her up, tall, stretching out for perfection, her white legs long and strong, trotting like a royal horse in a parade.

Noa Wertheim’s Mana. Photo by Gadi Dagon.

At first glance, the fully dressed, almost orthodox, costumes communicate a puritan, reserved modesty.  But quite quickly, a bare foot peeking under heavy garment, an escaping white shoulder, a curving contour, a tight waistline, a hip, lend to a sensual, lustful, communication.  The free-fall back bends and suicidal leaps shatter the quiet, restrained recital.

Noa Wertheim’s Mana. Photo by Gadi Dagon.

The music drapes the dancers like a fitted gown, in sync, in tune. I play the soundtrack CD over and over and give in to the lyric mood quietly setting in.  Ran Bagno, who has been working hand in hand with Vertigo’s mom and pap (Noa and Adi), wrote the score and played all the instruments, except for percussion, tapped by Dani Makov.  I sit with Bagno over cappuccino on a sunny winter day in down town Tel Aviv and ask him about the creative process of piecing music for this show. “Unlike some other dances, Mana isn’t a collage of fragmented scenes,” he says, “rather, it’s composed as a single, comprehensive piece. When Noa came out with the idea of a ‘vessel holding light’ I struggled to find just the right musical instrument to fit in…until I stumbled over my kid’s old, abandoned guitar. Something about its virgin, broken, acoustic sound was perfect for infusing the muse.”

Noa Wertheim’s Mana. Photo by Gadi Dagon.

Watching the fluid flow of movement on stage, I’m reminded of Alexander Calder’s art — capturing compound sketches in one single line stroke.  The expression captured in Mana carries the visual aesthetics of calligraphy: fine brush, dipped in black ink, forms a black blotch over snow white paper.  Then, in a single skilled hand, it drifts, pulling up tall, lying low, and spiraling all the way through.

Noa Wertheim’s Mana. Photo by Gadi Dagon.

Vertigo Dance Company founded the pea-green Eco Art Village, where they live and create in a little utopian planet of clean air and fresh manure: http://www.eco-artvillage.org/index_eng.asp. This might explain why their work is genuinely untainted, raw and earthly.

Talia Baruch is a writer and translator covering the dance/theater scene in San Francisco, where she has been living for the past 11 years. She is the founder of Copyous, providing creative copywriting and Localization Strategies. The ingredients that shaped her life are the explosive dance scene in urban Tel Aviv, where she grew up, the pea-green English country side, where she inhaled a handsome amount of fresh-manure & horseback-countered through endless woods, and the 24/7 Localization/Internationalization business bustle, that put perspective to it all. www.copyous.com

Related Articles on Dance In Israel

• International Exposure 2009: Showcasing Israeli Dance (Preview)
• International Exposure 2009: A Perspective from Abroad
• Exploring Israeli Society through Dance at International Exposure 2009
• Vertigo Dance Company: Art, Environment, Community
• Curtain Up 2: Vertigo Dance Company and Noa Wertheim Host Elad Shechter

Related Links

• Vertigo Dance Company
• Copyous (Talia Baruch’s website)