Noa Dar in Arnica.  Photo by Tamar Lam.

(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.)

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I had spent many evenings during my Fulbright year taking contemporary dance classes with Shlomit Fundaminsky and Inbal Aloni at Noa Dar’s studio in Tel Aviv, but when I entered the building one night for a performance of Noa’s Tetris, it was as if I had walked into another world. When I viewed Arnica a month later in the more traditional environment of Tel Aviv’s Tmuna Theater, I not only saw Noa’s range as a choreographer but was struck by her powerful presence as a performer.  After screening more of her work on DVD, I knew I had to meet the woman whose name graced the space where I so frequently took class!

We set up a meeting, and at long last I met Noa in her studio for a stimulating conversation.  During our interview, Noa reflected on the development of her movement vocabulary, the evolution of her repertory, her choreographic process, and the relationship of her work to her upbringing on a kibbutz and to the larger Israeli society.  It was a really rich discussion that, for me, further illuminated her well-crafted choreography while shedding even more light on the surrounding contexts of Israeli dance and Israeli culture.   I hope it will open your eyes as well!

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Noa Dar is currently on tour with Arnica and Tetris in Frankfurt and Münster, Germany, through September 9th.  For video clips and photos of these works and more, please see below.

Video: Noa Dar’s Arnica (Dar performs the second solo)

Noa Dar.  Photo by Eldad Refaeli.

Noa Dar’s Tetris.  Photo by Tamar Lam.

Video: Noa Dar’s Tetris

Noa Dar’s In a Dark, Dark Land.  Photo by Tamar Lam.

Related Articles on Dance In Israel

• “Noa Dar’s ‘Tetris’ – Shaping the Space”

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
• Shlomit Fundaminsky: An Interview on Improvisation and Israeli Life

Related Links

• Noa Dar

*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.

Hydra by Inbal Pinto and Avshalom Pollak closed International Exposure.  Photo by Seto Hidemi.

Most visitors to this year’s International Exposure were festival directors, arts presenters, diplomats, or critics.   I, however, came as a researcher.   With this festival – as with my other research activities – I sought to discover, to interpret, to understand.  I searched for old connections and new pathways.

Featuring over 40 works, International Exposure was exactly the right place to look for the threads which tie together this country’s concert dance scene.  The festival is a like a yearbook for Israeli dance.  The offerings by each choreographer serve as the album’s individual portraits.   Mixed bills drawn from some of the country’s other festivals (Curtain Up; Machol Acher/Other Dance Project) hint at the structure of the dance community, just as club pictures reveal a school’s cliques and groups.  And with the 20+ concerts clustered together in a mere six days, it’s possible to see the trends which characterized much this year’s artistic output. (( It should be noted, though, that some choreographers were missing from this year’s International Exposure.  Some well-established artists including Nimrod Freed, Anat Danieli, and Adama’s Nir Ben-Gal and Liat Dror did not present work at the festival.  Meanwhile, younger independent choreographers are far greater in number than those represented onstage. ))

Indeed, International Exposure brought the dance scene into focus for me, clarifying and sharpening some observations I had started to form since my research began in 2007.  Israel is a small country, the size where everyone in the dance community knows each other, and this shows – not only during the mingling at receptions.  For instance, it’s worth noting just how many collaborations there are within the dance scene.  Several pairs presented work: Inbal Pinto & Avshalom Pollak, Yossi Berg & Oded Graf, Ya’ara Dolev & Amit Goldenberg, Renana Raz & Ofer Amram, and Niv Sheinfeld & Oren Laor (with the participation of choreographer Ronit Ziv, who performed).  (( Ronit Ziv wasn’t the only choreographer who performed in another artist’s work.  Ya’ara Dolev danced in Michael Getman’s duet, while Getman in turn appeared in the work Dolev co-choreographed.  Lazaro Godoy popped up in dances by Sahar Azimi, Maya Levi, and Inbal Pinto & Avshalom Pollak.  Although neither Nadar Rosano nor Iris Erez showed work this year, both choreographers danced in the festival (Rosano in Ronit Ziv’s choreography and Erez in Arkadi Zaides’s offering). ))

The fact that most choreographers are clustered in Tel Aviv probably facilitates this partnership, and it may also foster the cross-pollination of ideas in the work itself.  At International Exposure, pure, abstract dance was trumped by theatricality and props (ranging from squeezy toys to green slime, with numerous pairs of shoes and other items in between).  There was very little movement for movement’s sake, something I have noticed throughout my time here.

As for the movement itself, many of the dances were influenced by release technique.  Assertive fast-paced partnering also dominated, especially in the trios and quartets which filled the four Curtain Up programs.  The prevalence of contact improvisation in Israel also seems to have made its mark on how partnering is built.

Yet even as many of the works bore a similar aesthetic imprint, there were glimpses of what lies beyond the borders of contemporary dance in Israel.  Elina Pechersky put belly dance on the concert stage, Tamar Borer mined the Japanese butoh tradition, and the Israel Ballet brought another flavor to the festival.

International Exposure may be over, but my research continues!  I’m looking forward to talking with many of the choreographers I met at the festival in the months to come – and as my understanding of Israel’s concert dance scene develops, I’ll share more snapshots with you.

Snapshots from International Exposure 2008:

Top row: Barak Marshall’s Monger (photo by Gadi Dagon); Yossi Berg and Oded Graf’s Bloody Disco (photo by Gadi Dagon)
Middle row: Yasmeen Godder’s Singular Sensation (photo by Tamar Lamm); Niv Sheinfeld and Oren Laor’s Post-Martha (photo by Ascaf)
Bottom row: Noa Wertheim’s White Noise (photo by Gadi Dagon); Noa Dar’s Tetris (photo by Tamar Lamm)

Useful Links

• Dance In Israel’s International Exposure coverage – full series
• Suzanne Dellal Center

(Video: Hillel Kogan’s Everything)

It’s another jam-packed day of dance-watching!

Like Day 2 of International Exposure, Day 3 features two programs from the 2008 Curtain Up Festival.  We’ll start our day at 2:00 p.m. with Curtain Up 4:  Tomer Sharabi’s Monk, Hillel Kogan’s Everything, and Maya Stern’s Black Sea. At 5:00, Michael Getman’s Monday and Maya Levi’s Lifeline from Curtain Up 2 will complete the showings from this annual festival of premieres.

In between these two concerts, we’ll take an inside look into the Batsheva Dance Company.  We’re invited to Studio Varda for an open rehearsal of Ohad Naharin’s Project 5, a work for five women that premiered in July.

The evening is full of options for adventurous International Exposure attendees.  Across town at the Cameri Theater, Galia Fradkin’s La Mariposa is playing at 7:00 and 9:30 p.m.  At 8:00 and again at 10:00 p.m., Noa Dar’s Tetris will transform the choreographer’s central Tel Aviv studio into a most unusual performance space.  And at the Suzanne Dellal Center, Studio A will be the venue for the Acco Dance Center’s showing of Simon Rowe’s Welcome to Valhalla! at 8:30 p.m.

The Choreographers Society will host a reception at 9:00, which will no doubt be a welcome break before a 10:00 p.m. concert of four more works.  The Tel Aviv Dance Company will perform part of Ya’ara Dolev and Amit Goldenberg’s Tokyo Oranges, while the Nadine Bommer Dance Company will offer an excerpt from Bommer’s Manimation. Mami Shimazaki’s Chiki, Chiki 123 and Elina Pechersky’s Elina’s Muses round out the last program of the day.

See below for more videos and links.

(Video: Nadine Bommer’s Manimation)

(Video: Noa Dar’s Tetris)

Related Articles on Dance In Israel

• “Israel’s Curtain Up Festival: ‘Another Op’ning, Another Show’ for Contemporary Dance”
• “Noa Dar’s ‘Tetris’ – Shaping the Space”
• ” ‘Mamootot’: Challenging the Performer-Spectator Divide” (re: Batsheva)
• “Getting to Know the Batsheva Ensemble”
• “Gaga: Ohad Naharin’s Movement Language, in His Own Words”

Links to Companies and Choreographers

• Batsheva Dance Company
• Nadine Bommer
• Noa Dar
• Galia Fradkin
• Ya’ara Dolev and Amit Goldenberg
• Michael Getman
• Hillel Kogan
• Maya Levi
• Elina Pechersky
• Simon Rowe
• Mami Shimizaki
• Maya Stern and Tomer Sharabi

Other Useful Links

• Dance In Israel’s International Exposure coverage – full series
• Dance In Israel’s Links page – links to companies, choreographers, and more
• Cameri Theatre
• Choreographers Society
• Suzanne Dellal Center

(Video: The Noa Dar Dance Group in Tetris, a collaboration between Noa Dar and visual artist Nati Shamia-Opher)

I first wrote about Noa Dar’s Tetris (טטריס) in “From Studios to Stages” on my own blog and have edited an excerpt of that article for this post.

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It’s no wonder that Tetris (2006) premiered at the Acco Festival for Alternative Theater, or that it won a prize there.  This collaboration between choreographer Noa Dar and visual artist Nati Shamia-Opher shapes the performance space into the most alternative set-up that I have ever witnessed, and it left its mark on my mind when I saw it last year.

I heard about Tetris soon after arriving in Israel and eagerly looked forward to seeing a staging in Tel Aviv at the Noa Dar Studio.  I was familiar with the the chosen location because I had taken several contemporary technique classes there – but when I arrived for the performance November 10, 2007, I found the studio cleverly transformed.  Tetris‘s treatment of the spectator-performer relationship in this redesigned space is so unique that I would like to describe a bit of it below:

As Tetris begins, each audience member enters the studio individually, stepping onto a stool surrounded by a small booth and sticking his or her head through hole in the top; it is as if each person is a block about to be dropped into the classic video game called “Tetris.”  Next, spectators receive their own stools, join a line of other viewers, and then – once the line is complete – they are ushered by dancers to move their stools to a grid underneath a large wooden hut with rows of holes in the roof.  All the while, two dancers maneuver underneath and on top of the structure.  Once the entire audience is seated underneath the hut, we are instructed to stand on our stools and poke our heads through the holes.  This action is accompanied by a lot of twittering: all of a sudden we are disembodied, with our necks surrounded by the cut-out holes and our heads protected by wire domes.  It is strange indeed to look around and only see heads!

Standing in the midst of the structure, with our heads poking up into what is now the “stage,” we are the ultimate spectators even as we become the objects of other audience members’ gazes.  Our role in the event grows more complex with the entrance of the performers.  The six dancers begin slowly, prowling on top of the hut, looking intently at us, sliding across the space on their bellies, and occasionally drawing so close that their body parts are directly in our faces.  We watch, and we are watched.  With our own disembodiment – and from this perspective, with our spectating eyes mere inches above the floor – the performers’ bodies assume an extraordinary power.  To see moments of intimacy, desire, and violence from this angle is something else altogether . . .

Here’s another glimpse of Noa Dar’s Tetris, performed in Acco:

(Video: The Noa Dar Dance Group in Tetris, a collaboration between Noa Dar and visual artist Nati Shamia-Opher)

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For More Information

Visit Noa Dar’s website and learn more about Tetris.  Tetris will be performed at the Noa Dar Studio in Tel Aviv on January 20, 22, and 24.  Check details on Noa Dar’s performance calendar and Dance In Israel’s Events page.  Call  03-6954440 for tickets.

Related Posts on Dance In Israel

For more about choreography which re-frames the relationship between dancers and audience members, read “Mamootot – Challenging the Performer-Spectator Divide.”

*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.