When I called Adi Sha’al and Noa Wertheim, who direct the Vertigo Dance Company, they had just landed in Israel after an appearance at the General Assembly of The Jewish Federations of North America in Washington D.C.  There they had presented an excerpt from Wertheim’s Mana, which will be officially premiered in Curtain 2 along with Elad Shechter’s Roni.  I chatted with the couple about their U.S. trip and their experience with Curtain Up.

Noa Wertheim’s Mana.  Photo by Gadi Dagon.

Dance In Israel: How was your time at the General Assembly?
Adi Sha’al: People were very moved by Vertigo’s performance, and people came [up to us] afterwards, after they were clapping hands for a long time and standing up – some people even with tears.  We also talked about our social vision of the company and the Eco-Art Village . . . And we also did workshops and created connections with dance companies in D.C.

Noa Wertheim’s Mana.  Photo by Gadi Dagon.

DII: What is your relationship to Curtain Up?
AS: It’s been a good relationship.  Vertigo [Dance Company] has been around for 17 years now, and all of our first shows were under this title, under Curtain Up.  We owe a lot to this institute.

Elad Shechter’s Roni.  Photo by Gadi Dagon.

DII: What drew you and Noa to select Elad Shechter to be the choreographer for this program?
AS:  Elad used to be a dancer in our company, so we’ve known him for several years now.  Once Nilly Cohen [director of the dance department in the Culture and Arts Administration] and the people at Haramat Masach came with the idea of coaching, we said basically the only one that we can really coach and we can say that it will be real for us is somebody that we know, somebody that we have a dialogue with.

Elad Shechter’s Roni.  Photo by Gadi Dagon.

AS: In a way, we are marking here two companies.  One is the main company which Noa is doing a piece for, and the other one is the young company, the Vertigo Ensemble, which Elad is doing a work for, and it’s [all] happening in Vertigo’s studios under the umbrella of Vertigo’s production.  And we [work with] the same co-artists.  Ran Bagno is making the music for both pieces; he’s a musician we’ve been working with together many years now.  Danny Fishof, he’s our lighting designer; he is doing the lighting design for both pieces, Mana and Roni.  And the costume designer is Rakefet Levy; she’s doing both pieces.  So we feel like it’s a production house called Vertigo, and it’s very exciting for us to do these two things together side-by-side in the same evening.

Noa Wertheim’s Mana.  Photo by Gadi Dagon.

DII: Noa, can you tell me a bit about where Mana came from?
Noa Wertheim: I like to work from the movement, and I never have a clear idea, but I do have a certain attraction to something.  This time, the line and the circle came straight away.  After I was dealing with Ra’ash Lavan [Noa's previous work, White Noise], where gravity was so important, it was different to work with the shapes.

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For listings of Curtain Up performances, please visit the Dance In Israel Calendars page.

Related Articles on Dance In Israel

• Israeli Dance: What’s Happening in November
• What is Israeli Dance? Two Festivals Hold Some Clues
• Curtain Up 2009: Celebrating 20 Years of Israeli Premieres
• Curtain Up 1: Nimrod Freed Hosts Anat Grigorio and Dafi Altebab
• Curtain Up 3: Yasmeen Godder Hosts Iris Erez
• Curtain Up 4: Tel Aviv Dance Company and Yaara Dolev Host Michael Miler
• Curtain Up 5: Noa Dar Hosts Maya Brinner and Irad Mazliah
• Curtain Up 6: Niv Sheinfeld and Oren Laor Host Noa Shadur

Related Links

• Suzanne Dellal Centre
• Jerusalem Theatre
• Vertigo Dance Company

Video: Then: Ronit Ziv’s Rose Can’t Wait, from the 1999 Shades of Dance Festival

On my way home from “Then and Now,” a special opening program of the Shades of Dance (Gvanim) festival, J.S. Bach’s Air on the G String played on my iPod.  Immediately, images from a black-and-white film of choreographer Doris Humphrey’s Air for the G String flashed through my mind. Humphrey’s dance has not only been immortalized on film but stayed alive in reconstructions from Labanotation score; it’s a powerful reminder that choreography doesn’t need to be shelved a few years or even many decades after its premiere.

This was an appropriate vision after a concert which not only celebrated the new but paid tribute to the old.  Opening a festival devoted to emerging choreographers, “Then and Now” featured excerpts of four dances which, in the days when the festival doubled as a competition, won the coveted first prize.  Selections from Nir Ben Gal and Liat Dror’s Two-Room Apartment (1987), Noa Wertheim and Adi Sha’al’s Vertigo (1992), Barak Marshall’s Aunt Leah (1995), and Ronit Ziv’s Rose Can’t Wait (1999) shared the stage with excerpts from the choreographers’ latest dances.

These works were met with an extremely warm reception, and I’m sure that the choreographers’ own performances contributed to the excitement.  The prolonged unison and matter-of-fact manners of Nir Ben Gal and Liat Dror, the high-speed actions and reactions of Noa Wertheim and Adi Sha’al, and the daring physicality of Ronit Ziv and fellow dancer Noa Rosenthal were riveting to watch – especially because, in the case of Nir & Liat and Noa & Adi, these choreographers no longer perform on a regular basis. (( Barak Marshall, who is now based part-time in L.A., was not in Israel for this performance. ))

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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.

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A sign pointing towards Vertigo Dance Company’s studio on Kibbutz Netiv HaLamed-Hey.

With a wealth of theaters and studios, Tel Aviv and its surroundings serve as the logical home to most of Israel’s choreographers and dance companies.  Perhaps unsurprisingly, Jerusalem is a distant but growing second center.  But it’s not only Israel’s urban areas that attract dancers.  Scattered across the country’s more rural landscape, three unique dance communities are thriving: the Kibbutz Contemporary Dance Company and Galilee Dance Village in the north, Adama in the desert south, and the more centrally located Vertigo Dance Company.

I ventured out of Tel Aviv to visit each of these company/communities during my initial survey of Israeli contemporary dance, and I will share the sights from my journeys with photo journals.  This week we’ll start with my trip to Vertigo Dance Company’s Eco-Art Village on Kibbutz Netiv HaLamed-Hey.  I first published this photo journal of my trip to the Eco-Art Village on The Winger on May 23, 2008.

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(Improvisation at the Ramat Aviv Mall – Hila Carmel’s video of Lior Ophir’s performance in public spaces class during the 2007 contact festival)

In a mere two months of writing this blog, I have already posted about three festivals (Tel Aviv Dance, Machol Shalem, and Curtain Up). On December 16th, yet another festival will begin: the Israeli Contact Festival.

Whereas the other festivals focus on performances, this three-week festival centers on participation, with people gathering from around the country – and the world – to take part in contact improvisation classes, workshops, and jams. Last year I went to both the opening and closing jams, and I wrote about them for my own blog on December 4, 2007.  Below is my report from the field and another video from the 2006 Greenhouse, so read on . . . Continue Reading