Video: Nimrod Freed’s Peep Dance

This article was initially published as “Close Encounters Series: Nimrod Freed” on The Winger in 2008, prior to a performance of his Peep Dance at Central Park SummerStage in New York.

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Nimrod Freed. Photo by Eyal Landesman.

Close Encounters Series: Nimrod Freed

My initial encounter with Nimrod Freed was in autumn 2007 via e-mail.  I first contacted him because he was on the faculty of the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance, my host institution here in Israel during my Fulbright grant.  We met, though, at a different college with a focus on teacher training: Seminar HaKibbutzim in northern Tel Aviv.

Not only does Nimrod teach at both of these institutions, but he also is the artistic director at Tel Aviv’s Beit Tami, a spectacularly located community center that is equipped with a few studios and a small performance space popular with independent choreographers.  There he runs the Tami Dance Company, which currently brings together one actor with several dancers in dance theater works.

As I learned about all of Nimrod’s roles during that first meeting at Seminar HaKibbutzim, I realized – in the very best way – that I had got more than I bargained for!  Speaking with him gave me a much clearer sense of the institutional map of Israeli contemporary dance.

Nimrod Freed’s Peep Dance. Photo by Anatoly Michaelo.

I also learned about Nimrod’s own career, from his beginnings in folk dance to his intensive study of concert dance, which was sparked by his involvement in an opera production of Samson and Delilah at age 16.  His interest in dance theater developed after seeing Pina Bausch’s Café Müller , and subsequently, he studied acting and directing at Tel Aviv University.  A class there with guest teacher Kei Takei proved to be a major turning point; indeed, soon afterwards, he joined her company Moving Earth in New York.

Nimrod stayed in the U.S. for just over a decade, and during this time, he also formed his own dance theater company.  It was an invitation to perform in the Israel Festival which paved the way back to his native country.  Through his teaching of improvisation and pedagogy, his choreography, and his leadership at Beit Tami, he has contributed enormously to the vibrant Israeli contemporary dance scene – but even as he maintains a home base in Tel Aviv, he continues to work internationally. Nimrod’s company has toured to Europe and Japan, where he met Min Tanaka and picked up a butoh influence.

Spectators at Nimrod Freed’s Peep Dance. Photo by Itamar Freed.

In July 2008, Nimrod returned to New York with the Tami Dance Company for a performance of Peep Dance at Central Park SummerStage. Like Israeli crowds, the American audiences clustered around colorful structures and put their eyes up to peepholes to sneak a peek at the dancers inside.

Nimrod Freed’s Subtext. Photo by Gadi Dagon.

Nimrod’s latest work, Subtext, was shown as part of Curtain Up 2009 at the Suzanne Dellal Center in Tel Aviv and the Rebecca Crown Auditorium in Jerusalem.

Related Articles on Dance in Israel

• Curtain Up 1: Nimrod Freed Hosts Anat Grigorio and Dafi Altebab

Related Links

• Nimrod Freed/Tami Dance Company

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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Related Articles on Dance In Israel

• Close Encounters Series: Yasmeen Godder
• Dancing Through the Intifada: Yasmeen Godder’s Strawberry Cream and Gunpowder

Related Links

• Yasmeen Godder’s website (including calendar with tour dates)
• Information on Yasmeen Godder’s yearlong workshop (2009-2010)
• YouTube Video of Two Playful Pink

*This post was made possible thanks to a Fulbright student grant funded by the U.S.-Israel Educational Foundation and hosted by the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance.

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!

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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.

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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!

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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.

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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.

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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!

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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

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)

Related posts on Batsheva Dance Company and Ohad Naharin 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”

Related links

• Batsheva Dance Company
• Gaga website (more to come soon!)

Want to share your Gaga Intensive experience?  Post a comment below!

Shlomit Fundaminsky in Inner Pocket. Photo by Eyal Landsman.

(This podcast was initially produced for Israel Seen in 2008, and the text is amended from my writing on The Winger.  You can subscribe to this podcast using the iTunes software by clicking this link to the podcast feed.  You can also subscribe for free at the iTunes store.)

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Whether she is performing a solo she choreographed, improvising with the Oktet, or teaching a contemporary dance class, Shlomit Fundaminsky is someone to watch.  She has drawn my eyes in all of these settings.  Onstage she fully embodies the clever characters she creates, and in the studio, she passes on her passion for movement to her many students (full disclosure – I am one of them!).

I have had the pleasure of talking with Shlomit on many occasions since first arriving in Israel, and we finally sat down to record an engaging conversation in June 2008.  Join us as we discuss her career, the connection between improvisation and life, the realities of being a dancer in Israel, and how life in Israel affects the dance that is made here.

Shlomit Fundaminsky in La Divina. Photo by Aviv Zemer.

One of Shlomit’s more recent works is La Divina, created for the program “Opera(tion)” which initially premiered in Jaffa in January 2008.  The full program, including works by choreographers Iris Erez and Maya Weinberg, will be presented as part of Maholohet (SummerDance) at Suzanne Dellal on July 31st.  This time around, fellow Oktet member Inbal Aloni will take the stage in a memorable, diva-esque performance.

Video: Excerpts of some of Shlomit Fundaminsky’s works.

Video: The Oktet in an improvisation. Shlomit Fundaminsky is in a red sweater.

Other Podcasts on Dance In Israel

• Inbal Pinto and Avshalom Pollak: An Interview on Imagination
• Niv Sheinfeld and Oren Laor: An Interview with Dramatic Dancemakers
• Interview with Yair Vardi: A View from the Top
• Renana Raz: Choreographing Israeli Culture and Beyond
• Sahar Azimi Speaks about Choreography and Contemporary Dance

Related Links

• Shlomit Fundaminsky’s YouTube channel
• Shlomit Fundaminsky’s bio on the Amuta website
• Suzanne Dellal Center

*This post was made possible thanks to a Fulbright student grant funded by the U.S.-Israel Educational Foundation and hosted by the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance.

(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 . . .

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(Photo: Vertigo’s studio, the site of the opening contact jam)

Most of my dancing and concert-going has remained within the city limits of Tel Aviv-Yafo, but on Friday November 23, I traveled to Kibbutz Netiv HaLamed-Hey near the town of Bet Shemesh for an evening of dance. Vertigo Dance Company recently opened a beautiful studio as part of the Eco-Art Village there, and their second company performed excerpts from Birth of the Phoenix at the opening the three-week International Contact Improvisation Festival. There was a wonderful communal energy in the open space, with visitors from around the world sharing in a vegetarian spread, enjoying the youthful energy of the Vertigo 2 dancers, joining in physical mixers led by Vertigo’s co-director Adi Sha’al, and jamming until the wee hours when some of us returned to Tel Aviv and others curled up into sleeping bags at the back of the space.

Participants in the contact festival traveled around Israel for a week before settling into Tel Aviv last Thursday for a round of workshops, master classes, and evening jams. Monday night (December 3, 2007) was the final jam in the city, and I joined a large crowd – maybe 200 people? – for this event, held in a large gym in the Kiryat Shalom neighborhood of Tel Aviv. A set of witty improvised performances kicked off the evening around 8:30 p.m., and after a massive group warm-up, we jammed to live music that was at times mellow and at times energizing. The crowd thinned by the time I left at 1:00 a.m., but there were still duets spread out through the space with no sign of stopping.

* * *

Some participants moved to the Galilee after their week in Tel Aviv to live and dance together for the “Greenhouse” portion of the festival.  While I did not make it there myself, you can get a feel for the festival’s special spirit by watching Fernando Feder’s video from the 2006 Greenhouse below.

(Fernando Feder’s video from the Greenhouse during the 2006 contact festival)

Read “Making Contact: Contact Improvisation in Israel” for more about this topic.

(Batsheva Dance Company in Ohad Naharin's "Three" - photo by Gadi Dagon)

A year after beginning my study of Gaga, the movement language developed by Ohad Naharin, it seems hard to believe that I once lived without it.  Gaga is profoundly influencing my artistry, widening my range of movement and fostering a greater confidence in my ability to improvise.  It is also now a major focus of my research and writing.

I wrote “Going Gaga” in November 2007 for my first blog and edited it for Dance In Israel.  To see a listing of Gaga classes, please check Dance In Israel’s Events page.  I’ll leave you to your reading – right now I’m off to Ohad’s monthly class!

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After making my initial rounds of the Tel Aviv studios to sample modern and contemporary dance classes, I decided it was time to immerse myself in the training method that is most unique to Israel: Gaga (גאגא).  Gaga was developed by the Batsheva Dance Company’s artistic director, Ohad Naharin, and it evolved not only through his work with professional dancers but through experimentation with non-dancers; indeed, when a non-dancing employee of Batsheva expressed a desire to dance in the late 1990s, Naharin began biweekly classes for her and several other employees. The Batsheva company now trains daily in Gaga, and since 2001, members of the general public have been able to practice Gaga in open classes.

Gaga Dance Classes: The Logistics

Currently, there are hour-long classes six days a week at the Suzanne Dellal Center taught by dancers who have worked with Naharin; on some days, there are two or three classes.  Most people who attend these classes are not aspiring dancers with previous training.  Instead, they are members of the general public who found out about Gaga through word-of-mouth.

People interested in practicing Gaga must commit to an introductory month. For a very reasonable fee – 220 shekels (roughly $60, depending on the exchange rate) – beginners can take as many classes as they would like, and they also gain free admission into the special monthly class offered by Ohad Naharin himself.  This month-long trial period allows novices like me to absorb the philosophy of Gaga, receiving information from the rotating roster of teachers and observing the changes in our bodies and movement over time.  After the first month, practitioners can decide to take one class per week (220 shekels for a month) or unlimited classes (330 shekels for a month).

What is Gaga?

Now you have some background, but what exactly is Gaga?   At my first class, I was given a double-sided paper with more detailed information.  Here is an excerpt from the English translation:

“Gaga is a new way of gaining knowledge and self awareness through your body.  Gaga is a new way for learning and strengthening your body, adding flexibility, stamina and agility while lightening the senses and imagination.  Gaga raises awareness of physical weaknesses, awakens numb areas, exposes physical fixations and offers ways for their elimination.  Gaga elevates instinctive motion, links conscious and subconscious movement.  Gaga is an experience of freedom and pleasure. In a simple way, a pleasant place, comfortable close, accompanied by music, every person with himself and others.” (Ohad Naharin, Gaga introduction sheet)

The second side of the handout provides elaborations on the following instructions: listen to the body, be aware of others in the room, work barefoot and silently, and arrive promptly.  Another key instruction is below:

“Never stop:  The class is one session, no pauses or exercises, but a continuity of instructions one on top of the other.  Each instruction does not cancel the previous one, but is added to it, layer upon layer.  It is, therefore, important not to stop in the middle of the session.  If you get tired or want to work at another pace, you can always lower the volume, work 30%, 20%, float, rest but without losing sensations that already awakened.  Do not return to the state your body was in, before we started.” (Ohad Naharin, Gaga introduction sheet)

My First Experiences with Gaga

Reading this introduction sheet piqued my curiosity even more in the final minutes before my first class, and I found that the excerpt above gave an accurate sense of the class. In Gaga, verbal instructions (primarily in Hebrew but with some English kindly thrown in for me and others) draw students’ attention to particular body parts, actions, dynamics, and spatial relationships.

There are some common terms and images in these instructions, such as:

• float
• shake
• draw circles with different body parts
• imagine the floor is getting very hot
• become a string of spaghetti in a pot of boiling water
• connect to pleasure

Here is a small sampling of other prompts which recur with variations:

• feel like you are kneading dough with your hands
  
• imagine little explosions going off inside your body
  
• imagine a point within your chin (or other body part); where can you put that point?
  
• sense and explore the space behind your neck (or other body part)
  
• quake as if there is an earthquake beneath you
  
• move as if your flesh has melted off and you are just bones

Unlike many of the modern and contemporary classes I have attended, the Gaga classes begin standing.  Usually we start by simply shifting our weight side to side, slowly allowing the movement to travel through our bodies and layering our motion in accordance with verbal instructions like those above.  In a typical class, we gradually build up to level changes and locomotion through space.

At times we use our voice in Gaga, counting down as we bring a certain action to its peak for 10 more seconds or allowing our movement to elicit noise.  We also engage our focus and are encouraged to look around at our fellow classmates as we conduct our “research.”   On some occasions we work with partners.  We fill in the negative space around them, call attention to particular body parts through touch, or riff on their personal groove.

I had the unique experience of taking Gaga one day with my classmates from a seminar on classic Jewish texts and contemporary Israeli culture held at Alma Hebrew College. Yossi Naharin, who is command central for Gaga classes (and who also happens to be Ohad’s brother), gave us a tour of Batsheva’s facilities and debriefed us after our Gaga class with Arkadi Zaides.  Not wanting to influence the language or reactions of my classmates, I sat back and listened to their comments before speaking myself.

A couple of people who had been apprehensive about dancing were pleasantly surprised at how much they enjoyed Gaga.  Others commented on how wonderful it was to move without a sense of judgment or competition – and without the usually present and frequently scary wall-length mirror (the mirror is purposefully covered in all Gaga classes, and as Yossi pointed out, there are no mirrors in the studios that Batsheva uses).

As our discussion moved to questions about typical dance training, I finally talked about what I experienced in my first two weeks of Gaga.  Many of my early reflections, made after 8 sessions, still hold true after months of regular classes.

Much to my delight, Gaga enables me to find movements that I would never choose if simply instructed to “dance” or “improvise.”  Usually I slip into ballet or mainstream modern dance-influenced movements when given the license to improvise, but this framework encourages what is for me an exceptionally honest investigation of how my body can move, freed from my previous training and stylistic preferences.  Gaga also allows me to tap into actions such as shaking which I previously shied away from because I worried they would aggravate old injuries; moreover, it empowers me to perform these movements for a sustained period of time with remarkable ease.

At the time I first wrote, I was also struck by how my experience in Gaga dovetailed with my exposure to Qi Gong and energy work.  There are moments in Gaga class where I am able to simply allow the energy to flow through and guide my body without me exerting either conscious choice or physical force.  In November 2007, I wrote, “I am looking forward to continuing these explorations, observations, and (hopefully) transformations throughout the coming months . . .”   Transformations did indeed occur, and I am excited to realize that my experience with Gaga will be a ongoing journey for years to come.

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Related Articles on Dance In Israel

• “Gaga: Ohad Naharin’s Movement Language, in His Own Words” (Featuring a beautiful quote from Ohad Naharin)
  
• “Gaga: A Foreigner Explores Ohad Naharin’s Movement Language” (Musings on my experience from April 2008)
  
• “Ohad Naharin on Gaga (Video)” (Ohad Naharin talks about Gaga and explains some concepts in a video)
• “A Glimpse into the Gaga Workshop” (a look into the Gaga intensive held by Batsheva in the summer)

*This post was made possible thanks to a Fulbright student grant funded by the U.S.-Israel Educational Foundation and hosted by the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance.