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International Exposure 2009: Showcasing Israeli Dance

Deborah Friedes Galili — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 10:30:17 +0000

Barak Marshall’s Rooster. Photo by Avi Avin.

As autumn turns into winter, there’s an interesting progression from one dance festival in Tel Aviv to the next. Tel Aviv Dance introduces Israeli audiences to top-notch dance from around the globe before giving way to Curtain Up, a celebration of new Israeli-made works. And then, in a few concentrated days of concerts, International Exposure attempts to introduce Israeli dance to the world by showcasing the past year’s bounty (including recently premiered Curtain Up works) to foreign arts presenters who just might invite local choreographers to perform in their home countries.

Now in its fifteenth year, International Exposure will present the work of twenty-seven Israeli choreographers to over ninety guests including theater directors, festival directors, and journalists. These visitors will witness a stellar lineup boasting Israel’s most prominent dance companies as well as many independent choreographers at various stages of their careers. Some of the works on the program have been performed many times over the course of the year; others, such as the selections from the still in progress Curtain Up festival, are in their initial performances. Together, these dances offer a valuable retrospective on the past season and paint a representative picture of Israel’s vibrant contemporary dance scene.

International Exposure 2009 runs from Wednesday, December 9 until Sunday, December 13. Many of the concerts will be held at the Suzanne Dellal Centre and are open to the public, so local audiences can catch up on shows they missed during the last year. Other performances will be held at the Israel Classical Ballet Centre, the Nachmani Theater, Clipa Theater, and the Herzliya Theater, giving visitors a peek at the larger scale of dance venues in Israel.

Below is a day-by-day virtual tour of the festival with photographs and videos of many of the dances which will be performed. Want to learn more about the choreographers, companies, works, and festivals I mention? Click on the underlined names to see related articles published on Dance In Israel.

As we say here in Israel, צפייה מהנה – tzfiya mehana, pleasant viewing!

Wednesday, December 9

Last year’s International Exposure closed with Inbal Pinto and Avshalom Pollak‘s Hydra, and now the couple’s company will kick off this year’s festival with a double bill. The first program features Rushes, which was originally made for the American company Pilobolus. The second program moves to Yerushalmi Hall for a showing of Pinto and Pollak’s Trout and a new work by company member Talia Beck.

Video: Inbal Pinto and Avshalom Pollak’s Trout

Thursday, December 10

Video: Tel Aviv Dance Company in Yaara Dolev’s BLOSSOM.

Day 2 of International Exposure 2009 starts early with the Tel Aviv Dance Company in co-artistic director Yaara Dolev’s BLOSSOM, which recently premiered in Curtain Up. Participants will then visit the Israel Classical Ballet Centre in Tel Aviv to view excerpts from the Israel Ballet’s repertory.

Video: Artour Astman and Ilana Bellahson in Artlana

A mixed bill at Suzanne Dellal will include excerpts of two works that premiered this summer in Maholohet, the center’s SummerDance festival. Artour Astman and Ilana Bellahsen perform part of their evening-length duet Artlana, while Rina Schenfeld and her company take to the stage in Angels.

Video: Maria Kong in fling

Across town at the charming Nachmani Theater, the collaborative company Maria Kong offers fling, the group’s debut work. The day’s programming also features a visit to Clipa Theater for Michal Herman’s Fellowship, based on a short story by Kafka, as well as presentations by the Acco-based group Hamama and choreographer Shlomi Frige.

Video: Vertigo Dance Company in Noa Wertheim’s Mana

Thursday closes with another recent premiere from Curtain Up. Vertigo Dance Company will perform Noa Wertheim’s Mana.

Friday, December 11

Friday’s schedule boasts works from some of Israel’s most prominent choreographers. The day begins with a trip to the Herzliya Theatre for Kibbutz Contemporary Dance Company‘s performance of Rami Be’er’s Infrared, which premiered in November.

Video: Barak Marshall’s Rooster

Back at the Suzanne Dellal Centre, we’ll take a look at Barak Marshall‘s Rooster, a co-production of Suzanne Dellal and the Opera House which premiered in this year’s Tel Aviv Dance festival. The afternoon will also include a celebration for the Suzanne Dellal Centre’s twentieth anniversary.

Iris Erez’s Numbia. Photo by Itay Merom.

In the early evening, we’ll visit Yasmeen Godder’s studio in Jaffa for a showing of Iris Erez’s Numbia and Noa Shadur’s Into the Night, both of which were unveiled recently as part of the Curtain Up festival.

Yasmeen Godder’s LOVE FIRE. Photo by Tamar Lamm.

Friday concludes at Suzanne Dellal with Yasmeen Godder‘s LOVE FIRE, which premiered in November at Curtain Up.

Saturday, December 12

Video: Niv Sheinfeld and Oren Laor’s Big Mouth

Saturday starts with new works from the Curtain Up festival. Niv Sheinfeld and Oren Laor take the stage first with Big Mouth, a collaboration with Amsterdam-based dancer Keren Levi.

Nimrod Freed’s Subtext. Photo by Gadi Dagon.

Next up is the Tami Dance Company in Nimrod Freed’s Subtext, along with Dafi Altabeb’s Under the Carpet and Anat Grigorio’s Daydream.

Yossi Berg and Oded Graf’s 4 Men, Alice, Bach and the Deer. Photo by Matyas Krotziger.

In the afternoon, Yossi Berg and Oded Graf’s 4 Men, Alice, Bach and the Deer will be performed at the Inbal Theatre in Suzanne Dellal.

Noa Dar’s Us. Photo by Tamar Lamm.

In another program from Curtain Up, Noa Dar‘s Anu (Us) shares the stage with Irad Mazliach’s Unter den Linden and Maya Brinner’s Red Ladies.

Video: Dana Ruttenberg’s NABA

Saturday includes another triple bill at the Inbal Theatre. Improvisation-based artist Ilanit Tadmor presents Happiness is Real, Dana Ruttenberg equips the audience with audio guides in NABA, and Tammy and Ronen Izhaki perform their duet This Now Is, which was shown in the Shades of Dance festival in March. After this program, we’ll move to Studio Varda for a presentation of Arkadi Zaides‘s work-in-progress, Quiet, which has a cast of both Israeli Jews and Arabs.

Video: Idan Cohen’s Swan Lake

The night ends with one more triple bill of excerpts from works which were featured in the SummerDance festival. Sally-Anne Friedland offers A Private Collection, Idan Cohen presents part of his full-length contemporary Swan Lake, and Ronit Ziv performs in her Tide.

Video: Ronit Ziv’s Tide

Sunday, December 13

After a tour of Jerusalem on Sunday, International Exposure guests will be treated to a few last performances at Suzanne Dellal.

Video: Tamar Borer and Tamara Erde’s Izaora Hun

Butoh-influenced performance artist Tamar Borer and filmmaker Tamara Erde present part of Izaora Hun in the Suzanne Dellal Centre’s Inbal Theatre.

Video: Batsheva Dance Company in Ohad Naharin’s Hora

Back in the complex’s main hall, the festival closes with Batsheva Dance Company in Ohad Naharin’s latest work, Hora.

Dana Ruttenberg’s “NABA” Features Eye-Opening Moves in the Ear

Deborah Friedes Galili — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 06:12:24 +0000

Video: Duet from Dana Ruttenberg’s NABA

Curious about the back story of this duet? On April 24th, you can head on over to the Inbal Dance Theater at Suzanne Dellal and click through NABA‘s audio guide to get some context and gain control over your viewing experience.

Before the dance premiered last month, I had a lively conversation with NABA‘s creator, Dana Ruttenberg, for a Jerusalem Post preview. The resulting article – republished below – was initially printed in the JPost as “Choose your own dance adventure” on March 27, 2009.

* * *

It was in a Madrid museum that inspiration struck choreographer Dana Ruttenberg. With the audio guides temporarily unavailable, visitors quickly angered, shouting that they would not be able to enjoy or understand the collection without this aid that describes the artwork.

Startled by the mob’s outrage, Ruttenberg realized, “People need a guiding hand, even if it’s a physical thing. They need a way to connect to art.” She began to muse about her own art form, wondering, “What if we had audio guides in dance?”

The Ramat Gan native’s latest work may be the first dance piece in the world to harness this technology. Its English title NABA, an abbreviation of the Hebrew title Na Ba’ozen (Moves in the Ear), also happens to be the name of the earpiece used by broadcasters and musicians.

Like visitors to a museum, NABA‘s audience members are outfitted with an audio guide and headphones and allowed to choose from an assortment of tracks throughout the performance. Some options feature music while others are spoken text. Signs onstage cue viewers when to make their selections.

For Ruttenberg, the audio guides are not a novelty or gimmick but instead a tool to tackle preconceived ideas about dance and viewership. She recounts, “People would tell me, ‘You know, I just don’t connect to dance.’ I would invite them to a show, and they would say, ‘I feel like I don’t know enough to understand dance, I’m too ignorant to understand dance. I need to be more intellectual, I need to be more educated.’” Still others told the choreographer that, while they enjoyed her work, they felt it too formal an environment too even laugh at a performance.

“This notion of dance as an elite art form, that you’re not supposed to breathe around, that it’s only for some people who understand it – for a long time I’ve been waiting to find a way to break that notion,” Ruttenberg reflects.

By providing commentary, the audio guides help to alleviate such typical feelings experienced by those mystified by dance. It also offers some background information that may spark a better understanding or deeper emotional connection to the work.

NABA‘s approachable and fitting theme of communication serves to further counter the notion that dance is elite and difficult to comprehend. The cast’s four dancers explore non-verbal communication, which is, as Ruttenberg emphasizes, the very basis of the art form itself.

The use of audio guides further facilitates a greater connection to dance by challenging the usual divide between active performers and receptive audience members. Rather than sitting passively in the theater, viewers engage with the menu of audio options and consequently shape their perceptions of the action onstage.

Dancer Johanna Roggan explains, “You choose a different track and you have a different experience.” Elaborating upon the nuances of the concept, Roggan notes that the audience members who opt to hear her biography, instead, for example, of fellow performer Idan Porges (who appears in a duet with Roggan), will form a different picture of the pair’s relationship.

With a number of similar crossroads featuring multiple alternatives, viewers navigate NABA like readers of a choose-your-own-adventure novel. Relinquishing so much control over the dance is a bit scary, Ruttenberg admits. But, she believes, the trade-off that gives a strong and empowering experience to the audience members is worth it. A highly unique performance in its own right, NABA may open viewers’ eyes to the choices they make as spectators and thus transform how they watch dance in the future.

* * *

Please note that the text included in the audio guides is primarily in Hebrew. With my developing Hebrew vocabulary, I was able to follow along quite well. Those with less Hebrew will still be able to enjoy choosing different musical selections, and all viewers can interpret the communicative choreography regardless of their language skills.

Dancing Differently: New Works by Lazaro Godoy and Dana Ruttenberg

Deborah Friedes Galili — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 18:52:36 +0000

Lazaro Godoy in Zero-Z-One.

March has been a particularly rich month for dance in Tel Aviv, with both Shades of Dance (Gvanim) at Suzanne Dellal and Home Port in Jaffa. But two of this month’s more unique offerings – Lazaro Godoy’s Zero-Z-One and Dana Ruttenberg’s NABA – premiered outside of these festivals.

In background and approach, these two artists are themselves unique. Cuban-born and Juilliard-trained, Lazaro Godoy performed in Switzerland before landing in Israel last year; since his arrival, he has caught my eye in dances by Inbal Pinto and Avshalom Pollak, Sahar Azimi, and Maya Levy. Dana Ruttenberg, an Israeli native, also made her way to Manhattan. After receiving her undergraduate degree from Columbia University, she showed her choreography throughout New York before returning to her native country.

Both Lazaro and Dana cast away the conventions of dance concerts in their latest works. With Zero-Z-One, Lazaro trades the proscenium theater for an open plaza and multi-room gallery in old Jaffa, where he dances a response to visual artist Ayal Shifron’s exhibit Positioning. Meanwhile, Dana’s NABA stays on the stage but abandons a traditional sound score. Instead of piping music into the theater, Dana provides audience members with headsets and audio guides like those used in museums.

Dana Ruttenberg’s NABA. Photograph by Ascaf.

Although these artists’ aesthetics are different, the end result of their innovative choreography is similar. Audience members at Zero-Z-One and NABA do not passively watch the performers but actively experience the dances by moving through a series of choices. As Lazaro travels from space to space in his solo, spectators decide where to situate themselves; when he approaches and occasionally touches them, they can respond and affect his actions. With layered visual stimulation from the paintings and movement combined with evocative music, physical contact, and even fragrant spices, Lazaro awakens nearly all of the viewers’ senses over the course of Zero-Z-One.

While audience members stay in one place during NABA, they are no less active. Throughout the performance, viewers are asked to make choices about which audio track they want to hear. The dance onstage is set, but each attendee has a hand in directing their experience by selecting the sound; indeed, the audience members’ decisions shape their perceptions of the four performers in Dana’s choreography.

Though I have seen a lot of good dance in recent weeks, both Zero-Z-One and NABA stood out and made me reconsider performance norms anew. It’s not often that I see such adventurous work, and to have two bold challenges to traditional concert structure in one month was extraordinary.

Those of you in town have a few more chances to experience these works for yourselves. Lazaro Godoy presents Zero-Z-One at the Shifron Gallery in Jaffa on April 4th, and Dana Ruttenberg’s NABA continues at the Inbal Dance Theater in the Suzanne Dellal Center on March 28th. An excerpt from NABA will also be at the Home Port festival on April 4th. Visit the Dance In Israel Events page for more details.