Yasmeen Godder’s LOVE FIRE. Photo by Tamar Lamm.
Dance In Israel: What is your relationship to Curtain Up?
Yasmeen Godder: I’ve presented many times, from 1999-2004 consecutively. I’ve experienced the festival many times, and it has had a great impact on my career in a sense that it allowed me to present a work for those six years every year . . . I would premiere something in the winter, and in the summer I would start working again towards the new creation in the winter, so it created a cycle for me that made a lot of sense during the years that I did it.
Iris Erez’s Numbia. Photo by Itay Merom.
DII: What made you choose to host Iris Erez?
YG: When we first had the meeting at the Ministry of Culture, the concept was to invite people whose work has evolved from working with us or from growing within our work. And so when I thought of who has done that, obviously Iris was a very clear choice.
Iris Erez’s Numbia. Photo by Itay Merom.
DII: Do you see strong links between your work and Iris’s work?
YG: Given that Iris has worked with me for many years, I think that her method of generating materials is influenced by the methodology which I have developed over the years and therefore [it] perhaps has similar roots, but ultimately each of our works is developed through the very personalized prism of our worlds both thematically and in the different ways of constructing them . . .
Yasmeen Godder’s LOVE FIRE. Photo by Tamar Lamm.
DII: Can you tell me a little bit about where LOVE FIRE came from?
YG: I was commissioned to make a work using three waltz pieces in October of last year. At first I found myself rejecting the idea of accepting this commission; I didn’t immediately find an interest in it. And then I decided that because it presents a challenge for me, because the music that was sent to me was not necessarily music that I knew what I wanted to do with [it], that this was interesting and this was an opportunity to do something differently.
Yasmeen Godder’s LOVE FIRE. Photo by Tamar Lamm.
YG: I was fascinated by this idea that I received this CD with classical waltzes to my Jaffa mailbox. I tried to keep this tension of this music that doesn’t relate to here, and how do we approach it; how can we relate to it. And that was the beginning.
Yasmeen Godder’s LOVE FIRE. Photo by Tamar Lamm.
YG: Then I collaborated with Yochai Matos, the visual artist. For many years he approached me about doing [something], and we’ve talked with each other about our work. Ultimately, we decided that what would be interesting would be that he would create a response – not a collaboration with me, but rather a response to my work. So that’s what’s happening on my stage . . . It’s a performative installation-based response, because he’s actually a visual artist; he’s not a performance artist, but there’s an aspect of what he does that can be seen as performance.
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For listings of Curtain Up performances, please visit the Dance In Israel Calendars page.
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- Curtain Up 2009: Celebrating 20 Years of Israeli Premieres
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