Dance In Israel » Jaffa

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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Home Port Festival Lures Audiences to Jaffa Port

Deborah Friedes Galili — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 06:58:17 +0000

Choreographer Aviv Eveguy performing a solo at Home Port’s opening night. Photo by Aharela Golran.

The night before my flight to Boston, I trekked down to Jaffa one more time for a performance of Shlomit Fundaminsky and Itay Yatuv’s Metaktek (Ticking) at the Home Port Festival. As I descended to the port, a car pulled up and a couple asked for directions to hangar #2. I answered them and smiled – hangar #2 is, well, home to Home Port.

Located next to a swarm of bobbing fishing boats, this enormous hangar is not your typical destination for a dance performance. Yet the members of the Choreographers Society have lured a mix of devoted dance fans and less seasoned audience members to the Jaffa Port over the last several weeks. Though some performances were more sparsely attended, the opening marathon of solos on March 12 actually sold out! Those who were turned away at the door – and those who simply couldn’t make it that night – have a second chance to witness this extraordinary program when the festival closes on April 6.

With concerts nearly every evening and so many choreographers participating, Home Port was a fantastic opportunity for me to expand my familiarity with the Israeli dance scene. The festival introduced me to Neta Shizef’s flamenco work and to Anat Katz’s contemporary choreography. I finally got to see dances I had missed over the last season, like Aviv Eveguy’s Dimona, Yossi Berg & Oded Graf’s Heroes, Nadine Bommer’s Manimation, and the Tel Aviv Dance Company’s Tokyo Oranges. And I happily re-viewed several works, including Hillel Kogan’s Everything, Yoram Karmi’s La Famiglia, and Noa Shadur’s Hunting Rabbits in the North.

While I saw a lot of performances at the Home Port festival, I have not written about them here on Dance In Israel. This is partially due to a time crunch (spending my nights in Jaffa made preparing for my month-long trip to the U.S. and finishing Hebrew homework a challenge!).

Yet this is more a matter of my outlook and my aims. I attended Home Port – as I attend all performances – not as a critic but as a dance scholar. The concert hall (or, in this case, the hangar) is one of my laboratories; it is a site where I conduct my research. By viewing much of the programming at Home Port, I broadened and deepened my knowledge of Israel’s concert dance scene. My observations there will no doubt enable me to have more informed conversations with choreographers and enrich my writing about their work.

As the Home Port festival ends, I’m pleased to give you a bit more information about how it started. I did a telephone interview with Sigalit Gelfand, the highly dedicated head of the Choreographers Society, shortly before opening night. The write-up below was initially published in the Jerusalem Post on March 25, 2009 as “Steps in the Right Direction.”

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Asked about her excitement level before the opening of the Home Port festival, Sigalit Gelfand, the head of the Choreographers Society, laughs giddily. “I’m feeling like my child is becoming a bar mitzva,” she giggles.

Gelfand has reason to be excited. From March 12 until April 4, the 54 choreographers who comprise the Choreographers Society will have presented 33 performances at Jaffa’s port. Like a bar mitzva, this event is a major milestone in the life of the organization: It is the first time the Choreographers Society is presenting an independent festival in a space that, at least for now, it can call its own.

As the entire field of Israeli concert dance has blossomed during the past two decades, independent choreographers have swelled the ranks of the Choreographers Society and the need for more performance venues has grown. During the past year, Gelfand began to think outside of the traditional theaters which have presented dance. “I started to try to locate a place where we could establish our home port, our place where we could create and perform without any limits,” Gelfand explained.

On one of her expeditions, Gelfand visited a hangar in the Jaffa port that had previously hosted special events. Although the place was not currently available as a long-term home base, she pondered a shorter stay at the site. The management of the port was open to cooperation, and Gelfand brought a few dancers to the hangar to start brainstorming. Choreographers Yasmeen Godder, Arkadi Zaides, Itai Wizer and Nimrod Freed formed a special artistic committee to work with Gelfand on the project. Now the Home Port festival is coming to fruition.

The four-week stretch of the festival allows the Choreographers Society to settle into its temporary digs and marks a promising start toward acquiring a long-term artistic home. Gelfand remarks with satisfaction, “We are not guests in another house, in another theater. It’s ours. The possibility to have our place in the future is the most exciting thing we can think about right now. And the uniqueness of this event, to perform in this very special place, it’s also very exciting.”

THE STRUCTURE of the festival is indeed unique. After its opening two weeks ago that featured a special marathon of 36 solos, the Home Port festival is offering programming almost every evening except on Sunday. Some concerts feature a full-length work or a few dances by one artist, while others combine shorter works by different choreographers. On many evenings there are two events back to back, enabling viewers to sample more delights from Israel’s dance scene. During the daytime on Saturdays, the festival offers family-friendly performances.

Meanwhile, an announcement in the middle of the festival heralded a new development in the Choreographers Society’s quest for space. After years of searching for a suitable site, association members Robbie Edelman and Ofra Idel secured a hall in Jerusalem which will be used by independent choreographers. With this new home for rehearsals, workshops and showings of works-in-progress, the artists of the Choreographers Society are one step closer to their ultimate dream.

Reflecting the makeup of the Choreographers Society, the Home Port schedule showcases the spectrum of concert dance in Israel. Some choreographers draw from the Spanish tradition of flamenco, while others transport belly dance to the stage. Many participating artists come from a contemporary dance background, but they, too, display a rich diversity of approaches and styles. Collaboration, improvisation, abstract dances, and colorful characters all find a place onstage in the hangar.

Besides an enticing menu of dance shows, the Home Port festival boasts another lure to bring visitors to the Jaffa port: live music. In cooperation with the music venue Levontin 7, most programs include a musical performance. A bar and cafe inside the building further contribute to the festive atmosphere.

While the hangar may not be a permanent home for independent choreographers, this month it will be one of the best places for dance and music lovers to hang out.

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Home Port Festival: History in the Making for the Choreographers Association

Deborah Friedes Galili — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 11:27:46 +0000

Choreographers celebrating before the opening of the Home Port festival. Photo by Dorit Talpaz.

This may sound a bit extravagant, but I don’t think I am exaggerating. Last night I witnessed dance history – and I hope that the opening night of the Home Port Festival (and the festival itself) will go down in the books not as an isolated moment in time but as the recognized beginning of a new stage, figuratively and literally, for Israel’s independent choreographers.

The excitement was palpable when I arrived at the festival last night, and the energy only grew as more people streamed into the enormous hangar. While Oy Division played a rousing klezmer set, I mingled with choreographers, dancers, administrators, government officials, dance writers, and dance fans. Everyone seemed to recognize that this collective celebration of individual creation was a momentous occasion. The dream for a permanent home for the Amuta‘s artists, though still not fully realized, no longer seemed like an impossibility; indeed, the possibilities of what the dance scene would gain in the next weeks at Home Port emboldened the choreographers to dream anew.

After the enthusiastic crowd overflowed the risers, a one-of-a-kind dance marathon commenced. 39 choreographers from the Amuta presented a total of 33 solos and 3 duets, and 38 of the choreographers themselves delivered electrifying performances.

My intention was simply to watch and enjoy, but as each piece sparked snippets of ideas, I started scribbling furiously. What follows is my ode to the Amuta, a series of one-line impressions from each selection. Please read on . . .

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Group 1

Talia Paz‘s superbly articulate body

Sahar Azimi‘s commanding and sometimes comedic presence

Idan Cohen tearing across the stage to Tchaikovsky

Tamar Borer‘s fingers walking like a spider’s legs

strength and passion merging in Neta Shizef‘s body and beats

Dafi Altebab, super smooth and subtle in her Superman shirt

Aviv Eveguy as Superman, soaring through the air with tour jetés and a cape

Yasmeen Godder, emanating fierceness and thoroughly transfixing

Nimrod Freed, totally transformed with wig, mask, and finely-tuned motions

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Group 2

Ran Ben Dror‘s liquid legs and hypnotic undulations in Mimi Ratz Wiesenberg‘s work

Anat Katz‘s intriguing angles and invigorating energy

Robby Edelman meandering mysteriously through the space

Ya’ara Dolev and Amit Goldenberg‘s marvelously measured, jointed movement

Noa Dar‘s swaying hips and supremely expressive face

Dina Telem‘s clever costuming and childlike exuberance

Ronit Ziv‘s pitch-perfect speech and fabulously full-bodied dance

Tomer Sharabi getting down with a loose-limbed groove

Renana Raz showing national spirit with extraordinary verve

Arkadi Zaides‘s body propelled through space as if possessed

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Group 3

each body part a surprise in Anat Shamgar‘s solo

Shlomit Fundaminsky‘s characteristic quirkiness mixed with a dash of cool

Niv Sheinfeld and Oren Laor offering a lens into their collaborative choreographic process

Ofra Idel riding guitar riffs with sultry swirls of movement

Dana Ruttenberg‘s legs transcending their flesh and bone

Sally-Anne Friedland, queenly in her lettuce headdress

Sigal Ziv‘s mesmerizing isolations and layered rhythms

Abigail Rubin, blindfolded but still bold

Nadar Rosano‘s quiet power while beating his breast and collecting himself

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Group 4

Ilanit Tadmor‘s body singing with the live vocalist

Alice Dor-Cohen, speaking with both her voice and her body

Odelia Kuperberg sneaking surreptitious glances and springing from the floor

Gilat Amotz keeping the beat in the most amazing ways

Maya Levy curving into the deepest of contractions

Michal Herman‘s sinuous long limbs and prolonged arch

Sharona Florsheim‘s subdued stances to the sounds of a mellow saxophone

Yossi Berg and Oded Graf slow dancing bare-chested before becoming fast-moving sculptures

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Kol hakavod and mazal tov to all of the choreographers and to Sigalit Gelfand, head of the Amuta.

Home Port Festival: 54 Choreographers in 33 Concerts at the Jaffa Port

Deborah Friedes Galili — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 19:48:38 +0000

The choreographers of the Amuta in Jaffa for the Home Port Festival. Photo by Dorit Talpaz.

The first hint that something big was happening in Israel’s concert dance scene was an e-mail from Yossi Berg and Oded Graf about their upcoming performance schedule. One listing mysteriously said that the duo was presenting Heroes at the Jaffa port for a choreographers festival. Choreographers festival? In Jaffa? Many dance festivals here are annual ones, and I didn’t remember anything like that from last year.

Next I started to see some Facebook events popping up, with choreographers including Hillel Kogan, Noa Dar, Shlomit Fundaminsky, and Niv Sheinfeld & Oren Laor inviting friends to attend performances at the port during March. My curiosity grew as the number of choreographers involved increased.

Finally, Yasmeen Godder pulled me over before class one day and told me I should look into a very exciting, unprecedented event: the Home Port festival. As I talked more with her and followed a few leads, I found out that this was, indeed, something big.

The Home Port festival was initiated by the Amuta (which translates as the Choreographers Association or the Choreographers Society), an umbrella organization for fifty-four independent choreographers who draw from styles as varied as contemporary dance, flamenco, and belly dance. Working outside of the country’s larger companies, these established choreographers are responsible for much of Israel’s flourishing concert dance scene – and all of them will present their creations in thirty-three different concerts over the next four weeks in a hangar at Jaffa’s port.

The Home Port festival kicks off on Thursday, March 12 with what promises to be one of the most unique performances since I’ve arrived in Israel. The organization’s choreographers have assembled a special marathon of forty-four solos to celebrate the opening of their festival, and the evening will also include a reception and two lively musical performances.

In fact, nearly every concert in this series will also feature a musical act. The association invited Levontin 7, a well-known music venue, to participate in the festival, and many of the bands or artists that perform at the club will also appear down in Jaffa.

I’ll be attending many of the performances at the Home Port festival, and I look forward to writing more about the events here on Dance In Israel. If you’re in Israel during the next month, I hope you will have a chance to check out the festival yourself!

Schedule of Home Port Festival in Jaffa

Most of the information online about the Home Port Festival is in Hebrew, so I have roughly translated the choreographers’ names and some titles of works along with the performance times below. Please note that I have only included the choreographers and not the rotating roster of (wonderful, diverse, talented) musicians who will perform at the concerts.

Thursday 3/12 @ 7:00 pm – Opening Night Celebration – Marathon of 44 Solos
Friday 3/13 @ 9:30 pm – Oded Graf & Yossi Berg’s Heroes; Noa Shadur’s Hunting Rabbits in the North
Saturday 3/14 @ 9:00 pm – Aviv Eveguy’s Animus and Dimona
Tuesday 3/17 @ 9:00 pm – Yasmeen Godder’s Singular Sensation
Thursday 3/19 @ 8:00 pm – works by Ilanit Tadmor, Abigail Rubin, and Noa Rosenthal
Thursday 3/19 @ 9:15 pm – works by Mimi Ratz Wiesenberg, Silvia Duran, and Tomer Sharabi
Friday 3/20 @ 9:30 pm – Noa Dar’s The Sweetest Embrace and Arnica
Saturday 3/21 @ 11:00 am – family-friendly performance by choreographer Dina Telem
Saturday 3/21 @ 8:00 pm – Tel Aviv Dance Company in Tokyo Oranges
Saturday 3/21 @ 9:15 pm – works by Yoram Karmi/Fresco Dance Company, Neta Shizef, and Tami & Ronen Yitzhaki
(Cancelled due to rain) Monday 3/23 @ 8:00 pm – Idan Cohen’s Joy Ride, My Sweet Fur, and The Year of the Fish
(Cancelled due to rain) Monday 3/23 @ 9:15 pm – Nadine Bommer’s Manimation
Tuesday 3/24 @ 8:00 pm – Niv Sheinfeld and Oren Laor’s Post-Martha
Tuesday 3/24 @ 9:15 pm – works by Sharona Florsheim and Nadar Rosano
Wednesday 3/25 @ 8:00 pm – Arkadi Zaides’s Meeting Brian Wash
Wednesday 3/25 @ 9:15 pm – works by Hillel Kogan, Talia Paz, and Anat Shamgar
Thursday 3/26 @ 7:30 pm – work by Smadar Emor
Thursday 3/26 @ 9:15 pm – works by Michal Herman, Anat Katz, and Oren Nachum & Or Narin
Friday 3/27 @ 12:00 pm – work by Sally-Ann Friedland & Galit Lis
Friday 3/27 @ 9:30 pm – Nimrod Freed’s Flies in Peepdance
Saturday 3/28 @ 10:30 am – family-friendly performance by choreographer Nima Yacoby (Voyage Box)
Saturday 3/28 @ 12:30 pm – family-friendly performance by choreographer Nima Yacoby (Cinderella’s Dance)
Saturday 3/28 @ 8:00 pm – Elina Pechersky
Saturday 3/28 @ 9:15 pm – Ronit Ziv’s La Femme 1, La Femme 2
**NEW DATE** Sunday 3/29 @ 8:00 pm – Idan Cohen’s Joy Ride, My Sweet Fur, and The Year of the Fish
**NEW DATE** Sunday 3/29 @ 9:15 pm – Nadine Bommer’s Manimation
Monday 3/30 @ 9:00 pm – Shlomit Fundaminsky & Itay Yatuv’s TICKING/Improformance
Tuesday 3/31 @ 9:00 pm – work by Ofra Idel & Robby Edelman
Wednesday 4/1 @ 8:00 pm – Renana Raz’s Motel
Wednesday 4/1 @ 9:15 pm – works by Maya Levy, Odelia Kuperberg, and Sally-Ann Friedland
Thursday 4/2 @ 8:00 pm – Rikudnetto Dance Group’s Conversations
Friday 4/3 @ 9:30 pm – Alice Dor-Cohen’s A Little After the Middle
Saturday 4/4 @ 11:00 am – family-friendly performance by choreographer Anat Danieli (The Four Seasons)
Saturday 4/4 @ 8:00 pm – works by Ilanit Tadmor, Gilat Amotz, and Dafi Altebab
Saturday 4/4 @ 9:15 pm – works by Maya Stern, Dana Ruttenberg, and Tamar Borer & Tamara Arda

Visit the Dance In Israel Events page for listings of each concert along with a Google map of the location at the Jaffa port (Nemal Yafo 2, Tel Aviv-Yafo). To get to the hangar, descend from HaMigdalor Street to the port. There is parking in the area, and several buses have stops on Yefet Street, relatively near the site. You’re advised to wear layers since the hangar can be a bit chilly. Want a little something to drink? The hangar is outfitted with a bar and cafe. Enjoy!

Dance In Israel Articles about Members of the Amuta

Many members of the Amuta are mentioned in my articles about the Curtain Up and International Exposure festivals. I will also be publishing more articles about members of this organization in the future, so please keep following the website!

Making Contact: Contact Improvisation in Israel

Deborah Friedes Galili — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 09:00:21 +0000

(A contact jam at HaKvutza BeYafo; photo by Eliana Ben David)

It took me 20 years of dancing – and a move around the world – to get to my first contact improvisation jam. After this initial experience, though, I had many opportunities to attend jams in Israel; the CI scene is thriving here, with regular jams held at several locations, classes in contact improvisation, and an annual three-week festival in the winter. In conjunction with the monthly jam at HaKvutza BeYafo, which takes place on the first Saturday of every month, I am re-posting my reflection on my first visit to this event. “Making Contact” was initially published on my own website on October 7, 2007.

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After 2.5 weeks in the country, I finally made physical contact with the dance world in Israel – literally. I donned dance clothes for the first time here to attend a contact improvisation jam in Jaffa. For readers unfamiliar with this form, here’s a very brief, basic explanation:

Contact improvisation (also known as “contact” or “CI”) started in America in the early 1970s. After Steve Paxton’s initial experimentations with a group of students at Oberlin College, CI – which, with its emphasis on cooperation and egalitarianism, reflected the era’s idealism – spread throughout the country and continued to evolve in the subsequent decades. CI is primarily a duet form of dancing in which partners explore weight sharing and counterbalancing, finding points of contact and support throughout the body rather than relying purely on the usage of hands and arms. There is not an emphasis on looking pretty, posing, or performing; instead, CI it is a much more fluid form in which process trumps product. Devotees of CI assemble at jams where they may improvise for hours, switching partners as they like.

Prior to landing in Israel, I had no clue that there was a significant CI scene here. With my preparatory archival research centered squarely on Batsheva and my early internet searches limited to English-language lists of performances and Israeli companies, CI did not register on my radar. Nor did I actively seek venues to learn or practice CI once I expanded my web search to classes. My own experience with CI is limited to the academic; while some of my physical training involved brief CI-type partnering exercises and I have read the basic literature on the form, I never attended a jam in the U.S. So I never would have guessed that my first venture into an Israeli dance studio would be for a contact improvisation jam!

How, then, did this happen?

On my second night in Tel Aviv, my cousin introduced me to a friend who, though not a dancer by profession, had spent some time in the CI scene. He pointed me to an upcoming jam down in Jaffa at הקבוצה ביפו (HaKvutza BeYafo, which translates to The Group in Jaffa). Given both my crazy move-in schedule and the country’s holiday schedule, this simply happened to be the first studio-based event that I could attend. So encouraged by my new friend and reassured by the knowledge that the jam would begin with a warm-up led by an experienced contact teacher, Philip Smith, I commenced my physical examination of Israeli dance in very unfamiliar technical territory.

(A contact jam at HaKvutza BeYafo; photo by Eliana Ben David)

I’ll spare you the details of my participation and cut right to my observation: at its peak, the 4-hour long event probably boasted 50-60 attendees. I made a point to talk with all of my partners and several other attendees, and I learned that while some of these CI aficionados were involved in other segments of the modern/contemporary dance scene, most did not come from a broader dance base and were only involved with CI. Some had traveled a meandering path through other physical practices to CI; others were introduced by a friend and got hooked. A lot mentioned that CI became a starting point for reflection and had influenced their outlook on life and relationships. Powerful stuff!

Many of the people I spoke with excitedly told me about the upcoming International Contact Festival (November 23 – December 10, 2007), a three-week long extravaganza of workshops, classes, jams, and performances. First participants practice CI as they travel throughout Israel; next, they settle in Tel Aviv for a week of classes and jams; and finally, in the “Greenhouse,” they immerse themselves in contact and live together as a community in the Galilee region. The festival started in 2002, and it draws participants and teachers not only from Israel but from abroad. I may try to go to some of the festival’s classes and jams in Tel Aviv, and hopefully I’ll return to the monthly jam in Jaffa as well. It is a really lively scene here, so if you are a contact improvisation enthusiast who likes to travel, check out www.contactil.org!

Many, many thanks to everyone I interacted with at the jam in Jaffa!

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This year’s Israeli Contact Festival will be held from December 16, 2008 until January 3, 2009; Week 1 will be the tour, Week 2 will be the Greenhouse, and Week 3 will be in Tel Aviv. You can visit the festival’s website for more information, see Dance In Israel’s Events calendar for a basic listing, and read my new post about the festival.

*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.

Close Encounters Series: Yasmeen Godder

Deborah Friedes Galili — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 06:30:46 +0000

Yasmeen Godder’s Singular Sensation will be performed in New Haven, CT as part of Yale University’s World Performance Project Festival on November 11-12. Photo by Tamar Lamm. See our Events page for the listing.

Throughout my time in Israel, I have had the privilege of speaking with a number of choreographers and dancers about their art. Here on Dance In Israel, I will be sharing these conversations with you in a series of “Close Encounters” articles and in a series of podcasted audio interviews. This “Close Encounters” article on Yasmeen Godder was first published on The Winger in June of 2008.

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Yasmeen Godder. Photo by Natan Dvir.

If you’re part of the New York dance scene, you’ve probably stepped through some of the same doors as Yasmeen Godder. Born in Israel and raised in Jerusalem until age 11, Yasmeen moved to the U.S. with her family, attended the High School of the Performing Arts in New York City, studied at Movement Research and the Klein School, and received her undergraduate degree from NYU’s Tisch School. The Kitchen, DTW, and Dancing in the Streets have all commissioned work from her, and she was awarded a Bessie in 2001 for I Feel Funny Today.

If you’re part of the Israeli dance scene, you’ve undoubtedly felt Yasmeen’s influence and quite possibly crossed paths with her. I had heard of Yasmeen prior to arriving in Israel because of her activities in the U.S. and the acclaim which has greeted her works both in the states and Europe, and as soon as I arrived in Israel, I began to realize the impact she has made in her home country. Her name frequently came up in conversations about both choreographers and teachers, and many people urged me to see her work and take her class. So it was that I ventured down to Yafo (Jaffa) to take technique at her studio, attended a performance there of Sudden Birds (see the video above), and went to a performance of I’m Mean, I Am at the Suzanne Dellal Center.

Months later, I’m not surprised that I heard so much buzz about Yasmeen. I found Yasmeen’s classes to be quite challenging and enormously helpful in their specificity, especially as I attempt to widen my body’s range and move with less muscular effort. She welcomes students’ reflections in class and presents her own ideas with clarity and details that enable me to adjust my mindset and body to a more unfamiliar technical framework.

I also found Yasmeen’s choreography to be as challenging as her classes, and refreshingly so. Since my earliest research on the socially conscious New Dance Group, I have always been attracted to choreographers who examine social issues, but while many choreographers try to touch such subject matter, it is all too easy for their investigations to remain superficial and cursory. Not so with Yasmeen. She doesn’t shy away from difficult topics, and regardless of the subject at hand, she isn’t afraid to display even the most disturbing findings from her creative process onstage.

It’s a tribute to Yasmeen’s artistic integrity that at the second performance of Singular Sensation at Suzanne Dellal on Friday, the packed audience was peppered with dancers, choreographers, artists in other disciplines, and committed dance enthusiasts who were eager to see her latest work. The five dancers’ exploration of sensation was surreal at times – with green slime oozing down dancers’ bodies and a nightmarish section in which four dancers covered the fifth performer’s head in pantyhose and saran wrap, shoved oranges into his hands for squeezing, and pulled him into splits over a jello mold – but the applause filling the theater at the work’s conclusion was very, very real.

Back in April, Yasmeen sat down with me after a rehearsal so that we could chat a bit about her work. As in most of these conversations, we started at the beginning, talking about Yasmeen’s pathway from ballet and Graham technique through to her investigations of Klein technique, more broadly labeled release classes, improvisation, and yoga.

Yasmeen had prefaced some of her classes with a disclaimer that she did not teach a particular technique, and so we talked at length about the various influences on her approach to movement. Klein features prominently in this array of influences, with its emphasis on releasing the exterior muscles and finding the bones; from Yasmeen’s exposure to this and other classes in the release spectrum, she also developed her strong connection to the floor, deep trust in space, and ability to use less effort. Yet Yasmeen also incorporates approaches that are, in some ways, at odds with the typical release practice and aesthetic. She can be shape-based at times, and through both her own process of questioning and her collaboration with a dramaturge, she ventures into a world which is more emotional and (for lack of a better word – this is admittedly inexact) theatrical.

Yasmeen also discussed yoga’s impact on her training, which is evident in her use of particular sequences and stretches in the classes she teaches, and she further noted that the combination of physical, mental, and emotional aspects within yoga meshes with her own creative process and development of movement for choreographic works.

Godder’s Strawberry Cream and Gunpowder. Photo by Tamar Lamm.

Speaking of choreographic works, we spent some time discussing one of Yasmeen’s dances which had a particularly powerful impact on me. Strawberry Cream and Gunpowder was made during the second intifada, and when I screened it on DVD in the autumn, it kept me up all night thinking and writing. I had wondered if I would see any dances here which tackled the Israeli-Arab conflict head-on, and I have found remarkably few either on stage this season or on video from previous years. Thus Strawberry Cream and Gunpowder stood out for me not only because of the strength of the choreography and its performance but also because of the subject matter.

Surrounded by images in the news media in 2004, Yasmeen felt that she simply had to deal with what was happening in her country, and she assembled a series of photographs – a “catalog” of images – as a starting point. Dancers were instructed to “be” the photograph, without political or emotional comment, and each artist worked with a few photographs so that they switched roles: male, female, young, old, wounded, able, civilian, soldier. In this way, the boundaries between “victim” and “perpetrator” become blurred, just as these roles aren’t always clear or constant in the actual events of the situation here. I had recognized this particular blurring upon watching the piece, but listening to Yasmeen recount the choreographic process, my mind reached beyond the dancers’ appearances – their genders and ages – and I realized even more how complex and intense this exploration must have been.

Yasmeen continued to talk about images of war and images of heroes, raising questions both about how these subjects are photographed and how people look at and identify with these pictures; Susan Sontag’s Regarding the Pain of Others, she said, delved into many of the issues which were at the heart of Strawberry Cream and Gunpowder. We also discussed the response of audiences, which varied based on geographical location (Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and cities abroad) as well as performance space (more intimate settings versus traditional proscenium stages which create a stronger division between the action onstage and the spectators in the house).

Some Israelis didn’t perceive Strawberry Cream and Gunpowder as being about the situation here, whereas outside of the country – of course billed as a work by an Israeli choreographer – the dance was almost uniformly viewed as a piece concerning the Israeli-Palestinian situation. While audience members in any country are subject to the flood of war images these days, though, the Israeli crowds contained people who were directly connected to the dance’s source material including survivors of suicide bombings. As Yasmeen recounted one Israeli woman’s emotional response to the work, I couldn’t help thinking of how a woman mourning her young son tearfully approached Martha Graham after a performance of her signature solo, Lamentation. Like Graham before her, Yasmeen Godder knows that she may move members of the audience with her dances – and in my experience, she moves many viewers with her honest, probing work.

* * *

Want to see some of Yasmeen’s choreography, but can’t make it to Yale next week? Here is a clip of her work Sudden Birds:

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*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.

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*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.