Dance In Israel

Inbal Pinto and Avshalom Pollak’s “Trout”

Deborah Friedes Galili — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 14:41:29 +0000

Video: Inbal Pinto and Avshalom Pollak’s Trout

A trail of miniature puddles leads a curious crowd of writers to Studio A at the Suzanne Dellal Center for a sneak preview. In the center of the room, a large protective tarp has been laid strategically over the marley floor. Overhead, the ceiling is awash in rippling shadows from a two centimeter-deep layer of water that, for now, calmly covers the tarp. But this water won’t lie still forever. Part of the set for Inbal Pinto and Avshalom Pollak’s Trout, it is meant to be danced upon.

Newton said that to every action there is a reaction, and in Trout, the reactions to many actions are made visible. Even the most careful steps trigger a cascade of gentle, circular waves across the surface of the water, while the dancers’ more vigorous jumps and falls shoot a spray of droplets into the air. The larger the action of the dancer, the larger the reaction of the water.

Inbal Pinto and Avshalom Pollak’s Trout. Photo by Asaf Ashkenazi.

Pinto and Pollak were invited to choreograph Trout in Stavanger, Norway, as part of the city’s celebrations during its year as the European Capital of Culture in 2008 . The couple harbored a desire to work in an alternate space, and in Stavanger they were drawn to Tou Scene, a former brewery that has been transformed into a thriving center for contemporary art. One long room in particular called to them; Pollak said it felt like a “living space.” This became the first home for Trout.

Now Pinto and Pollak are transporting Trout to Tel Aviv, where the work will take up residence at the Yaron Yerushalmi Theater in the Suzanne Dellal Center. In the black box theater, as in Tou Scene, the walls of the space do not simply bound the action but become a central part of it.

Inbal Pinto and Avshalom Pollak’s Trout. Photo by Asaf Ashkenazi.

As always, Pinto and Pollak have developed a highly distinctive, detailed movement vocabulary for this work which requires the dancers to engage their entire bodies. Yes, there are the sucked-in cheeks of fish faces and hands that alternately conjure up images of gills or fins, but some of the choreographic choices are more subtly evocative. One dancer skims across the surface of the water, first sliding her foot to one diagonal and then to the other; after a few steps, it seems as if each cell of her body is a fish in a perfectly coordinated school, zig-zagging decisively through the sea.

Inbal Pinto and Avshalom Pollak’s Trout. Photo by Asaf Ashkenazi.

Into this magical mixture of mesmerizing movement and strikingly unusual space, Pinto and Pollak have added another key ingredient: live music. The dancers are joined onstage by five members of the Kitchen Orchestra, an experimental group of musicians from Stavanger. Combined with the sounds of water splashing and metal pails clanking, the Kitchen Orchestra’s music creates an otherworldly atmosphere for Trout.

Inbal Pinto and Avshalom Pollak’s Trout. Photo by Asaf Ashkenazi.

Trout will be performed as as a guest concert in the Curtain Up festival on December 7, with additional performances from December 5-December 12. The program also features a new solo choreographed by Talia Beck, a dancer with the Inbal Pinto Dance Company.

Curtain Up 6: Niv Sheinfeld and Oren Laor Host Noa Shadur

Deborah Friedes Galili — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 11:02:13 +0000

Niv Sheinfeld and Oren Laor’s Big Mouth. Photo by Gadi Dagon.

Dance In Israel: What is your relationship to Curtain Up?
Niv Sheinfeld: We made several pieces [for the festival]. I was doing work for the Batsheva Ensemble and the Kibbutz Dance Company in the beginning, but it was part of Curtain Up. And then I did Co-Variance, Pig, and Jorona for Curtain Up, together with Oren.

Noa Shadur’s Into the Night. Photo by Jewboy.

DII: What drew you to invite Noa Shadur to be the choreographer to share the bill with you?
Oren Laor: I suggested Noa’s name, and Niv immediately said “Yes, that’s a good idea,” because we saw Noa’s work in the past, and among many Israeli independent choreographers, Noa’s sources are the ones that we feel are the best. She looks at humans; we saw it’s never just strictly movement. She’s an explorer, like we like.

Noa Shadur’s Into the Night. Photo by Jewboy.

NS: I think [it was] also the fact that we had a good dialogue with her. We started seeing her work and talking to her and checking things out, and we found that the language of the dialogue was fluent, and it gave us a good base.

Niv Sheinfeld and Oren Laor’s Big Mouth. Photo by Gadi Dagon.

DII: Can you tell me a bit about how your new work Big Mouth started?
NS: The beginning was not from an idea; it was from working with Keren [Levi], because Keren is a good friend of mine for more than 25 years. We went to high school together, and I got to know the dance world from her. She was talking about coming to Israel; we said maybe we’ll make a solo for you. We started by joking about it. And then we invited her to get into the studio for two weeks in Tel Aviv, and interesting things came up for us. Then we went for Amsterdam for the second period of work.

Niv Sheinfeld and Oren Laor’s Big Mouth. Photo by Gadi Dagon.

NS: We were touring sometimes in this period, and we weren’t in Israel a lot, and somehow I think it affected this work. [Also] the fact that Keren left Israel, it made the piece somehow with reference to the Israeli culture. It’s only a reference. It’s from a very personal point of view, from our connection, this trio. This solo became a trio; of course we found ourselves drawn in.

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For listings of Curtain Up performances, please visit the Dance In Israel Calendars page.

Curtain Up 5: Noa Dar Hosts Maya Brinner and Irad Mazliah

Deborah Friedes Galili — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 08:36:16 +0000

Noa Dar’s Us. Photo by Tamar Lamm.

Dance In Israel: What is your relationship to Curtain Up?
Noa Dar: I choreographed for Curtain Up from 1996-2000, 5 years in a row. And then I was a guest artist in 2001 and again in 2004 . . . It was very important thing for me, this Curtain Up. It really was my school or my initiation program for my choreography, so I found this project very important. And I think it’s very that good this time the choreographers have a chance to express their own artistic choices and also to guide young choreographers. I’m excited about this opening of the establishment to the ideas of independent choreographers. This is important.

Maya Brinner’s Red Ladies. Photo by Tamar Lamm.

DII: What drew you to invite Maya Brinner and Irad Mazliah?
ND: These are dancers of mine. Maya is dancing with me since 2000, already nine years. And Irad is dancing with me for the last three years. I found both of them to be very creative, very interesting in their research. Both are also involved in other mediums of art; Irad came from visual art and Maya from film. We had some mutual understanding, because for years we are working together. I’m very happy to give them this opportunity.

Irad Mazliah’s Unter den linden. Photo by Tamar Lamm.

DII: Are there any links between the three works in Curtain 5?
ND: We had a lot of mutual talks and plans and trying to research what we have in common in order to build not a program of three different dances but to have an evening which has as many connections of possible . . . the three of us [are] looking at differences versus conformity, and stillness or stuck positions versus mobility and change. And each one deals completely differently [with these ideas]. So there are different tones on a common basis in these three pieces.

Maya Brinner’s Red Ladies Photo by Tamar Lamm.

ND: Maya is working with three female dancers who are [like] workers in a factory. They’re all the same, and in this sameness they’re looking for their individuality and the way they can be unique in this competitive world.

Irad Mazliah’s Unter den linden. Photo by Tamar Lamm.

ND: Irad is coming from a different place. He took three people who are very different, but he put all three of them in one world, with very distinct rules of its own.

Noa Dar’s Us. Photo by Tamar Lamm.

ND: My work is again three dancers that deals more with the Israeli common experiences that create the uniformity of the way of thinking, the way of acting, and the negative attitude towards difference. I came [to this work] with very strong experiences that I’m having in the last few years as a mother and also as a citizen.

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For listings of Curtain Up performances, please visit the Dance In Israel Calendars page.

Curtain Up 4: Tel Aviv Dance Company & Yaara Dolev Host Michael Miler

Deborah Friedes Galili — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 08:15:33 +0000

Yaara Dolev’s Blossom. Photo by Gadi Dagon.

Dance In Israel: Can you tell me about the relationship you and Amit Goldenberg have had with Curtain Up?
Yaara Dolev: The first work we did with Haramat Masach [Curtain Up] was a collaboration between us and plastic artists in 2001. It was in the space between the theater and the Batsheva offices. The whole place was covered with these mobile statues and we danced with [them], and it was a very nice project. In 2002, we did another piece for Haramat Masach. It was a very political piece; the name of it was Ivrim, about fascism . . . And in 2003, we did a piece called Machine. It was a whole evening. And that’s it. That was when we decided that we want to create outside of this festival, to be more independent when we create.

Yaara Dolev’s Blossom. Photo by Gadi Dagon.

YD: This 20 year [anniversary of] Haramat Masach is a great opportunity to come back to this and to do it in an independent way. It’s really unique and wonderful that they gave this option for the six creators to really do [the festival] without interference, without questioning, just to give this freedom to create.

Michael Miler’s Number 6. Photo by Gadi Dagon.

DII: What drew you to select Michael Miler to join you on the bill?
YD: Of course when we knew that had to select someone, we tried to see as much as possible . . . I think it’s a good collaboration because there’s something about his creation that is more [about] the pure, clean movement in space, and less [about] theater. And [there’s] something about it that we believe in . . .

Michael Miler’s Number 6. Photo by Gadi Dagon.

YD: I think Michael is very talented. I think he’s very interesting. He’s coming from math; in university, he studied engineering and mathematics. You can see it in his compositions, and it’s very interesting for me. I think it’s very clear what he wants, and you can see he’s very mature about his creation.

Yaara Dolev’s Blossom. Photo by Gadi Dagon.

DII: Can you tell me a little bit about the work that you’re premiering, Blossom? Where did it come from?
YD: Actually, it started by chance. I took a DVD from the Third Ear [a DVD store in Tel Aviv], and it was a Sean Penn movie, Into the Wild. It’s a wonderful film, and when I finished the film, immediately I knew what I want to do in this work. And what we’re doing now is pretty much the same vision that I had when I finished [seeing] this movie . . . it was the first pulse for me for the creation. Also, I thought because it’s the first creation I [am doing] without Amit, it’s really my blossom.

Yaara Dolev’s Blossom. Photo by Gadi Dagon.

YD: I was really with myself in this creation. I feel like I could really put my dream on the dancers onstage. There’s my truth there, so it feels good.

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For listings of Curtain Up performances, please visit the Dance In Israel Calendars page.

Curtain Up 3: Yasmeen Godder Hosts Iris Erez

Deborah Friedes Galili — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 08:04:26 +0000

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.

Curtain Up 2: Vertigo Dance Company and Noa Wertheim Host Elad Shechter

Deborah Friedes Galili — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 08:53:53 +0000

When I called Adi Sha’al and Noa Wertheim, who direct the Vertigo Dance Company, they had just landed in Israel after an appearance at the General Assembly of The Jewish Federations of North America in Washington D.C. There they had presented an excerpt from Wertheim’s Mana, which will be officially premiered in Curtain 2 along with Elad Shechter’s Roni. I chatted with the couple about their U.S. trip and their experience with Curtain Up.

Noa Wertheim’s Mana. Photo by Gadi Dagon.

Dance In Israel: How was your time at the General Assembly?
Adi Sha’al: People were very moved by Vertigo’s performance, and people came [up to us] afterwards, after they were clapping hands for a long time and standing up – some people even with tears. We also talked about our social vision of the company and the Eco-Art Village . . . And we also did workshops and created connections with dance companies in D.C.

Noa Wertheim’s Mana. Photo by Gadi Dagon.

DII: What is your relationship to Curtain Up?
AS: It’s been a good relationship. Vertigo [Dance Company] has been around for 17 years now, and all of our first shows were under this title, under Curtain Up. We owe a lot to this institute.

Elad Shechter’s Roni. Photo by Gadi Dagon.

DII: What drew you and Noa to select Elad Shechter to be the choreographer for this program?
AS: Elad used to be a dancer in our company, so we’ve known him for several years now. Once Nilly Cohen [director of the dance department in the Culture and Arts Administration] and the people at Haramat Masach came with the idea of coaching, we said basically the only one that we can really coach and we can say that it will be real for us is somebody that we know, somebody that we have a dialogue with.

Elad Shechter’s Roni. Photo by Gadi Dagon.

AS: In a way, we are marking here two companies. One is the main company which Noa is doing a piece for, and the other one is the young company, the Vertigo Ensemble, which Elad is doing a work for, and it’s [all] happening in Vertigo’s studios under the umbrella of Vertigo’s production. And we [work with] the same co-artists. Ran Bagno is making the music for both pieces; he’s a musician we’ve been working with together many years now. Danny Fishof, he’s our lighting designer; he is doing the lighting design for both pieces, Mana and Roni. And the costume designer is Rakefet Levy; she’s doing both pieces. So we feel like it’s a production house called Vertigo, and it’s very exciting for us to do these two things together side-by-side in the same evening.

Noa Wertheim’s Mana. Photo by Gadi Dagon.

DII: Noa, can you tell me a bit about where Mana came from?
Noa Wertheim: I like to work from the movement, and I never have a clear idea, but I do have a certain attraction to something. This time, the line and the circle came straight away. After I was dealing with Ra’ash Lavan [Noa's previous work, White Noise], where gravity was so important, it was different to work with the shapes.

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For listings of Curtain Up performances, please visit the Dance In Israel Calendars page.

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

Deborah Friedes Galili — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 08:01:38 +0000

Nimrod Freed’s Subtext. Photo by Gadi Dagon.

Dance In Israel: What is your relationship to Curtain Up?
Nimrod Freed: I was produced in Haramat Masach [Curtain Up] about four times. At a certain moment I felt that I had to move on, and now it’s a very good way to come for a visit.
DII: On this visit, what drew you to invite both Anat and Dafi to join you in Curtain 1?
NF: I’ve known Anat and Dafi for many years.

Anat Grigorio’s Daydream. Photo by Gadi Dagon.

NF: I met Anat as a dancer; she came to dance in my Tami Dance Company. I need to work with very creative people, and from that very moment, I saw her creativity. As a matter of fact, while she was a dancer in my company, I was already producing her as a young creator.

Dafi Altebab’s Under the Rug. Photo by Gadi Dagon.

NF: I met Dafi when I did the project “On the Edge” in Beit Tami, so I produced her work. And I think both Anat and Dafi are very authentic and passionate and creative in an unusual way.

DII: Do you see any links between the work that you made for this program and the works that Dafi and Anat made?
NF: There is a common ground which happened by chance. I didn’t strive for that . . . it happened. The three of us are dealing with the hidden sides of life.

Dafi Altebab’s Under the Rug. Photo by Gadi Dagon.

NF: Dafi is trying to reveal, to open up stuff that she pushed under the carpet.

Anat Grigorio’s Daydream. Photo by Gadi Dagon.

NF: Anat is dealing with this moment of waking up. You know, in the morning, when we open up the eyes, trying to wake up; those moments that we don’t know exactly where we are . . . For her, you know, it’s a very intriguing time; many things are happening in this time, and she’s trying to dance it and understand it. I guess she’s meeting her unconsciousness in those moments.

Nimrod Freed’s Subtext. Photo by Gadi Dagon.

NF: And I’m dealing with subtext.

Nimrod Freed’s Subtext. Photo by Gadi Dagon.

DII: Can you tell me a little bit more about your piece, Subtext?
NF: I am interested more in what is under the words, what is under our life. I’m more interested in energy, in what people don’t say. And I’m trying to dance it . . . Whenever we talk subtext, right away there is a new subtext. And then we reveal it, we discover it, and right away there is a new layer, a new subtext. When we dance, we find ourselves not dancing, not moving, and still there is a new subtext . . . For me it becomes more and more interesting, the world which is beneath, under, [rather] than the politically correct world. And I wish we could talk subtext. Maybe it wouldn’t be very polite, but it looks closer to truth.

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For listings of Curtain Up performances, please visit the Dance In Israel Calendars page.

Curtain Up 2009: Celebrating 20 Years of Israeli Premieres

Deborah Friedes Galili — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 10:25:03 +0000

The Curtain Up 2009 poster. Courtesy of Ora Lapidot PR.

The annual Curtain Up festival has figured prominently in my understanding and appreciation of Israeli contemporary dance. Every autumn, this festival presents a fresh harvest of premieres by some of the field’s most promising choreographers. I have now attended Curtain Up twice, and both seasons introduced me to some new faces and showcased the latest creations by choreographers whom I was already following.

As the buzz about this year’s 20th anniversary celebration grew, I wanted to find out more about the history of Curtain Up. I talked with each of the six headlining presenters in this year’s festival, veteran choreographers who received support from the festival earlier in their careers. They related their own personal pasts with Curtain Up, but wanting even more of an overview, I decided to go straight to the founder of the festival: Nilly Cohen, who directs the dance division of the Ministry of Culture.

Nilly’s retelling of Curtain Up’s history traces the rise of the Israeli contemporary dance scene. “20 years ago, there were not so many choreographers in Israel,” she remembers. “There were only three dance companies, and all the young choreographers, all the fringe simply didn’t exist. And this was the main target for my initiative. I [wanted] to build the next generation of choreographers in Israel. That was the aim 20 years ago. And now we can see that this aim succeeded. Now we have many choreographers and many dance companies.”

Nilly continued, “I [initiated] Curtain Up 20 years ago because of the bad conditions for the choreographers. They didn’t have the money to make their creations, to do the performances, to do the public relations, the marketing, and so on. It takes [a lot of] money to do this, and they were very young; they were beginners in this profession. And it was very difficult. So I initiated this stage to give the young choreographers all the conditions to make their art.”

Then as now, Nilly explained, the government stepped in to help independent choreographers. “We give them the money for the creation: for the costumes, for the dancers, for the lighting, for the design,” she elaborated. “Besides this, we give them free the [concert] halls, Suzanne Dellal in Tel Aviv and the Jerusalem Theatre in Jerusalem . . . We do the public relations for them. And we also give them the income.”

This generous public support spurred the flowering of Israeli dance, fostering its growth from a small pool of struggling choreographers to a vibrant scene featuring both an array of full-fledged companies and a seemingly multiplying set of individual artists. Nilly recounted with pride, “I began [Curtain Up] 20 years ago, and then many creators were born on this stage and developed. They developed to be dance companies like Vertigo Dance Company, like Inbal Pinto and Avshalom Pollak’s company, like Noa Dar’s dance company, like Yasmeen Godder and many others.”

As this significant anniversary of Curtain Up approached, Nilly said, “I thought that the best thing to celebrate 20 [years] is to show what is the fruit of this stage. And the fruits are all of these dance companies, so I invited them to perform on this stage this year.” She added that she also was pleased to offer these now mature choreographers the chance to curate the festival by selecting emerging choreographers to join them on their respective programs.

Below is my preview of Curtain Up 2009, which was originally published in the Jerusalem Post as “Celebrating Creative Choreography.” My next few articles on Dance In Israel will zoom in on each individual program, with excerpts from my interviews with the choreographers and photographs of the new works.

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Celebrating Creative Choreography

Participating in the annual Curtain Up festival, the country’s major platform for new works, is a rite of passage for Israeli choreographers. Reflecting on her history with the festival, choreographer Noa Dar explains, “It really was my school and my initiation program for my choreography.” Now Dar and other veteran choreographers are returning to Curtain Up for a special 20th anniversary season and they are initiating a new generation of dancemakers into the circle of Curtain Up participants.

As in past years, Curtain Up 2009 boasts several programs of hot-off-the press choreography. Yet this year, there is a twist. Each of the six concerts is headlined by an established choreographer who in turn selected one or two emerging choreographers to join the bill. The result is a sumptuous spread of Israeli contemporary dance featuring both the field’s most acclaimed artists and some of its freshest rising stars.

Nimrod Freed’s Subtext. Photo by Gadi Dagon.

Nimrod Freed of the Tami Dance Company chose both Anat Grigorio and Dafi Altebab to join him in Curtain 1 because they are “authentic, passionate and creative in an unusual way.” Freed’s Subtext, Grigorio’s Daydream, and Altbeb’s Under the Rug all imaginatively uncover and probe the hidden sides of life.

Noa Wertheim’s Mana. Photo by Gadi Dagon.

Curtain 2 is enlivened by the electrifying energy of Vertigo Dance Company and its younger division, the Vertigo Ensemble. Performed against a strikingly geometric black-and-white set, Noa Wertheim’s new Mana explores the essential differences between men and women. Danced with verve by the Ensemble, Elad Shechter’s Roni casts a broader gaze at the dynamics of control in contemporary life.

Yasmeen Godder’s Love Fire. Photo by Tamar Lamm.

Yasmeen Godder was a frequent presenter in Curtain Up during the early 2000s, but her premiere in Curtain 3 marks a dramatic departure from her previous works. LOVE FIRE, a duet danced to classical waltzes, reconsiders romanticism and includes a “performative installation-based response” by visual artist Yochai Matos. Iris Erez, who regularly collaborated with Godder as a dancer, unleashes her own choreographic power in the trio Numbia.

Ya’ara Dolev’s BLOSSOM. Photo by Gadi Dagon.

The clean lines, precise angles and graceful curves of the body take center stage as the Tel Aviv Dance Company performs two works in Curtain 4. Waves of movement wash over the dancers in BLOSSOM, a premiere by the company’s co-artistic director Ya’ara Dolev. Guest choreographer Michael Miler also displays what Dolev describes as a predilection for “pure, clean movement in space” in his Number 6.

Noa Dar’s Us. Photo by Tamar Lamm.

When Noa Dar selected Maya Brinner and Irad Mazliah for Curtain 5, the three choreographers talked about uniting their program with a common theme. Dar says that Brinner’s Red Ladies, Mazliah’s Unter den linden, and her own Us deploy unique perspectives on “difference versus conformity and stillness or stuck positions versus mobility and change.”

For Curtain 6, the team of Niv Sheinfeld and Oren Laor joined forces with dancer/choreographer Keren Levy to produce Big Mouth. Using their personal relationships to Israeli society as a jumping off point, the trio investigates the conflicting desires of belonging to a group while maintaining one’s self-expression. The program is rounded out by Noa Shadur’s Into the Night, which compares the reality of death with its melodramatic theatrical representation.

Inbal Pinto and Avshalom Pollak’s Trout. Photo by Asaf Ashkenazi.

Traditionally, Curtain Up hosts an additional program by a well-known group, and this year’s guest concert is guaranteed to make a big splash. Inbal Pinto and Avshalom Pollak’s Trout, which premiered in 2008 in Norway, floods a black-box stage with water to create an otherworldly setting where dancers mix with musicians from the experimental Kitchen Orchestra. It’s a magical way to cap off Curtain Up’s celebration of creativity.

More Information

Curtain Up runs from November 24 to December 7 at the Suzanne Dellal Center in Tel Aviv and from December 8-14 at the Rebecca Crown Auditorium in Jerusalem. Tickets (100 NIS for most shows) are available at 03-5105656 (Suzanne Dellal Center) and 02-5605755 (Rebecca Crown Auditorium).

For listings of Curtain Up performances, please visit the Dance In Israel Calendars page.

What is Israeli Dance? Two Festivals Hold Some Clues

Deborah Friedes Galili — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 16:46:51 +0000

What is Israeli dance?

This is a question that I have contemplated ever since I arrived here, and as I sat in the audience at many performances during the Tel Aviv Dance 2009 festival, this query resurfaced. The vast majority of dance I have seen in the last two years has been Israeli dance – that is, by my loose definition, dance made in Israel by Israeli choreographers – but most of what I attended during this festival came from abroad.

As my eyes readjusted to fresh work from unfamiliar choreographers and, at times, unfamiliar cultures, I couldn’t help comparing the characteristics of these foreign productions to those of Israeli-made work. By watching dance that was, by virtue of its far away origin, not Israeli, could I more definitively identify characteristics of Israeli dance and the Israeli dance scene? As I sat in the darkened theater for show after show, I asked myself repeatedly, “Could an Israeli choreographer have made that work? Would an Israeli choreographer have made that work, and if so, would I have perceived it differently?”

Beijing Modern Dance Company. Photo by Wang Zhe.

This last question echoed in my mind, growing louder and louder, as I watched the Beijing Modern Dance Company’s program at the Suzanne Dellal Center. More so than in the other performances I saw, I felt that this program’s two works were rife with cultural references specific to the country in which they were created. In the fourth section of Hu Lei’s Unfettered Journey, dancers clothed in elegantly draped fabric flowed across the stage with fans in their hands. Throughout Gao Yanjinzi’s Oath, a figure wearing what appeared to be traditional Chinese dress beckoned dancers representing parts of the natural world onstage to music that at times sounded distinctively Chinese. Had an Israeli choreographer’s name been attached to either of these works, these elements would not have been allusions to his or her own culture but instead marks of appropriation (and here I do not intend to attach a negative value to that often loaded word; this simply denotes a different process and point of connection to the elements incorporated)

While these overt references to Chinese culture set my mind in motion, it was the physicality of the dancers in the Beijing Modern Dance Company which triggered even more complex thoughts about what characterizes much of Israeli contemporary dance. Throughout my conversations with Israeli choreographers, many of them asserted that there was something distinctive about the physicality of Israeli dancers; there was a certain emphasis on weight, force, and power, along with a liveliness and rawness to their energy which several people connected to the pace and nature of Israeli life.

Sometimes, immersed in this scene, it’s possible to forget that another way of moving exists. So there’s nothing like watching companies from abroad to sharpen my understanding of the physicality used in Israeli dance. Whereas Israeli dancers are often unleashed and explosive, the Chinese dancers were refined and measured. Whereas Israeli dancers often project a sense of solid strength and weighted groundedness in deep, low positions, the Chinese dancers assumed these postures with the poised agility of a martial artist. Whereas Israeli dancers may display and even revel in effort, the Chinese dancers exuded ease. “Yes,” I thought to myself as I sat in the darkened theater. “Maybe a particular physicality does characterize much of Israeli dance and distinguish it from dance from other countries.”

While these musings re-entered my mind as I watched foreign companies in Tel Aviv Dance, they’ll likely remain ever-present as I attend a very different festival later this month: Curtain Up. Every year, Curtain Up sheds light on Israeli dance by showcasing several programs worth of premieres by independent choreographers. Throughout the twenty years of its existence, the festival has not only provided a platform for numerous artists to explore new choreographic ideas but also offered them a boost to prominence, thus shaping the landscape of the larger field.

Publicity for Curtain Up 2009. Courtesy of Ora Lapidot PR.

In honor of the festival’s twentieth season, Curtain Up 2009 will offer an extraordinary opportunity to survey the scene through a special project spanning the generations of Israeli choreographers. Six well-established artists who were previously supported by the festival – Nimrod Freed, Noa Wertheim of Vertigo Dance Company, Yasmeen Godder, Yaara Dolev of Tel Aviv Dance Company, Noa Dar, and Niv Sheinfeld & Oren Laor – were chosen to create new works for this special Curtain Up. They also became curators of the festival, in turn selecting one or two emerging choreographers to premiere work.

After refreshing my eyes and my mind with Tel Aviv Dance’s international medley, I’m looking forward to re-immersing myself in the world of Israeli dance during Curtain Up. Who knows what insights will surface in the theater this time around . . .

No Ballet and Lots of Israeli Dance

Deborah Friedes Galili — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 11:14:04 +0000

Sisters by Michal Hersonski and Shira Ben Zeev. Photo by Günter Krämmer.

Ballet is verboten at the No Ballet competition in Ludwigshafen, Germany, and applicants are encouraged to present innovative, adventurous choreography that speaks to the future rather than to traditional aesthetic sensibilities. So it’s no wonder that Israel, with its growing field of contemporary dance, contributed a record six participants to this year’s select pool of competitors: Dafi Altbeb, Tami & Ronen Yitzhaki, Nadar Rosano, Reut Shemesh, Nadine Bommer, and Michal Hersonski & Shira Ben Zeev.

Michal Hersonski and Shira Ben Zeev. Photo courtesy of the choreographers.

It is a tribute to the strength of Israeli contemporary dance that two of these entries walked away with awards from this prestigious festival in October. Michal Hersonski and Shira Ben Zeev were marked as exciting emerging choreographers when their duet, Sisters, debuted as part of Israel’s biennial Gvanim (Shades of Dance) Festival in 2007. Now, though, the pair has clearly arrived: Sisters took third place on the international stage at No Ballet. “We were thrilled to get the third prize because there were many countries, and there were good groups with very interesting and intelligent works,” Michal reflects. “It was a very nice surprise for us.”

Manimation by Nadine Bommer. Photo by Günter Krämmer.

Meanwhile, Nadine Bommer’s clevely comedic Manimation captured the hearts of No Ballet’s audience, who honored the work with the crowd favorite prize.

Ohad Naharin Receives a 2009 Dance Magazine Award

Deborah Friedes Galili — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 07:28:02 +0000

Ohad Naharin. Photo by Maxim Vart.

It’s been a banner year for Ohad Naharin. Just a few months after receiving the prestigious Samuel H. Scripps American Dance Festival Award, the choreographer was named as one of the recipients of a Dance Magazine Award. Naharin will be honored alongside postmodern pioneer Sara Rudner, Balanchine ballerina Allegra Kent, and tapper extraordinaire Jason Samuels Smith on November 9 at the Florence Gould Hall in New York City.

The November issue of Dance Magazine features profiles of all four honorees, and I wrote the section on Naharin. Scroll down and zoom in below to read my article about Naharin and learn more about these other dance greats.

Download (PDF, 3.8MB)

Interview with Barak Marshall: Dancing between Israel and America (Podcast) (Part 1)

Deborah Friedes Galili — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 06:16:03 +0000

Barak Marshall in Aunt Leah. Photo courtesy of Barak Marshall.

(You can subscribe to this podcast using the iTunes software by clicking this link to the podcast feed.)

When we sat down to talk in January 2009, I discovered that a conversation with Barak Marshall is very similar to his choreography: fast-paced, peppered with diverse cultural references, and chock-full of attention-grabbing details. These qualities had captured my eye when I saw the premiere of Monger, and when I saw a rare restaging of Barak’s first work, Aunt Leah, I realized these were hallmarks of his craft since the day he stepped into the studio.

As we cafe-hopped in bustling central Tel Aviv during a Friday afternoon, Barak and I delved into a deep, lively discussion covering both his own choreography and the larger context of contemporary dance. Join us for the first part of our interview as Barak talks about his background, his connection to Inbal Dance Theater and Yemenite dance, and the trajectory of his early career from the making of Aunt Leah to his appointment as the house choreographer for Batsheva Dance Company in 1999. Barak, who splits his time between Tel Aviv and Los Angeles, also reflects on the development of Israeli contemporary dance and differences between the dance scenes in Israel and the U.S.

Barak Marshall’s Emma Goldman’s Wedding. Photo courtesy of Barak Marshall.

From left: Margalit Oved in Barak Marshall’s The Land of Sad Oranges (photo courtesy of Barak Marshall); Margalit Oved in Barak Marshall’s Rooster (photo by Adi Mazan)

In our interview, Barak explained that his mother, Inbal Dance Theater star Margalit Oved, often served as a Greek chorus in his works. Now Margalit is reprising this role in Barak’s new Rooster, which premieres on November 12-13 as part of Tel Aviv Dance 2009. Check out the excerpt below and head over to Tel Aviv’s Opera House to see the full work!

Video: Barak Marshall’s Rooster

Other Podcasts on Dance In Israel

Israeli Dance: What’s Happening in November

Deborah Friedes Galili — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 17:47:32 +0000

November is a month of festivals and foreign tours. For more details about these events and other performances, visit Dance In Israel’s Calendars.

At Home

Lee In Soo’s Modern Feeling is part of Tel Aviv Dance. Photo courtesy of Ora Lapidot.

Tel Aviv Dance 2009 is in full swing at the Suzanne Dellal Center and the Opera House. Still to come are companies and choreographers from France, Spain, Korea, and Israel. Check out the lineup in Tel Aviv Dance 2009 Mixes Global and Local Dance and get to the theater from now until November 13 to catch some of the best international dance around.

Sharon Vazanna’s Walking Inside Water. Photo by Amina Husberg.

While international performers are taking over the main stage at Suzanne Dellal, the center’s more intimate Yerushalmi Theater is hosting a mixed bill by emerging Israeli choreographers. On November 6, Odelia Kuperberg presents the trio Without Blinking, while Sharon Vazanna premieres her solo Walking Inside Water. Cuban-born Lazaro Godoy joins the program with his striking Jugo de Limon.

Noa Dar’s Us premieres at Curtain Up 2009. Photo by Tamar Lamm.

Soon after Tel Aviv Dance finishes, another major festival will take its place on Suzanne Dellal’s stage. Haramat Masach, or Curtain Up, is an annual platform for premieres by Israeli choreographers. To celebrate the Suzanne Dellal Center’s 20th anniversary, this year the festival invited established choreographers to create new works and host fresh creations by emerging artists. Curtain 1 opens with Nimrod Freed plus Anat Grigorio and Dafi Altbeb; Curtain 2 pairs Vertigo Dance Company’s Noa Wertheim with Elad Shechter; Curtain 3 boasts Yasmeen Godder and Iris Erez; Curtain 4 includes Tel Aviv Dance Company’s Yaara Dolev and Michael Miler; Curtain 5 features Noa Dar with Maya Brinner and Irad Mazliah; and Curtain 6 closes with the team of Niv Sheinfeld and Oren Laor as well as Noa Shadur. The festival ends with a special performance of the Inbal Pinto Dance Company in Trout. Check back soon for more posts on Curtain Up 2009, and see below for articles about individual choreographers who will be participating in this year’s festival.

Video: Rina Badash’s Revealed Under the Covers

Although Curtain Up dominates the dance programming in late November, there are still a few dance performances to be found outside this platform. On November 26, Tmuna Theater will host Rina Badash’s Revealed Under the Covers, a multidisciplinary work featuring a solo dancer, live music, and video art projected on four screens.

Abroad

Ohad Naharin’s MAX. Photo by Gadi Dagon.

After presenting Ohad Naharin’s Hora and Mamootot at home during the Tel Aviv Dance festival, the Batsheva Dance Company is packing its bags for a European tour. Audiences in the Netherlands, France, and Germany can catch performances of Naharin’s Mamootot, Deca Dance, MAX, and Sharon Eyal’s Love. Want to read more about these works? Take a look at Mamootot: Challenging the Performer-Spectator Divide, Ohad Naharin’s Deca Dance in Israel: A Cycle Completed, and MAX: Connecting to Ohad Naharin’s Choreography.

Ohad Naharin teaching Gaga in Tel Aviv. Photo by Gadi Dagon.

Meanwhile in New York, Ohad Naharin will receive one of the 2009 Dance Magazine Awards on November 9. During his trip stateside, he will teach master classes in Gaga at Peridance in New York City from November 9-10. Hear some of the choreographer’s thoughts on Gaga in Ohad Naharin on Gaga (Video).

Noa Wertheim’s Mana. Photo by Gadi Dagon.

Further south in Washington D.C., Vertigo Dance Company will perform Noa Wertheim’s new Mana at the General Assembly of The Jewish Federations of North America (the GA). This year the GA will meet from November 8-10, and Vertigo will perform at the opening plenary which also features a speech by President Barack Obama. Israeli audiences can see Mana when Vertigo performs at Curtain Up in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

Yasmeen Godder’s Singular Sensation. Photo by Tamar Lamm.

Yasmeen Godder’s dancers are also headed to Europe for more performances of Singular Sensation in Belgium and Germany. Learn more about the choreographer in Close Encounters Series: Yasmeen Godder.

For Young Dancers in Israel

Over the next several months, a select group of young aspiring dancers will develop their artistry in weekly Gaga classes and repertory workshops taught by members of the Batsheva company and staff. Want to be part of this project? If you’re between the ages of 14 and 22, you can audition on November 10 at Studio Varda in the Suzanne Dellal Center. For more information, contact Michal at todance@013net.net.

Phaza Morgana 2009: Batsheva Dance Company in the Desert

Deborah Friedes Galili — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 07:24:26 +0000

Ohad Naharin’s Anaphaza. Photo by Gadi Dagon.

Two weeks ago, the distinctive sound of dancers drumming on enormous water cooler bottles flooded the courtyard of the Suzanne Dellal Center as the Batsheva Dance Company rehearsed Ohad Naharin’s Anaphaza. But last week, the studios were eerily silent. Why? Batsheva took Anaphaza, water bottles and all, down to the Arava desert for Phaza Morgana 2009. From October 22-25, the usually placid Timna Park overflowed with audiences and energy as Batsheva and the Idan Raichel Project put on three spectacular shows.

My preview of Phaza Morgana was originally published as “Dance in the Desert” in the Jerusalem Post.

* * *

Dance in the Desert

This weekend, the desert won’t be so deserted. Crowds of eager spectators are flocking to scenic Timna Park, twenty-five kilometers north of Eilat, for Isrotel Phaza Morgana 2009. Nestled among the park’s striking rock formations at the foot of the magnificent Solomon’s Pillars, a 3,000 seat amphitheater will host three spectacular programs designed to entice the senses and enliven the spirit.

The world-renowned Batsheva Dance Company has partnered with the Israeli hotel chain Isrotel to present Phaza Morgana on five previous occasions, but this year’s festival promises to be the most sensational event yet. As in previous seasons, the dance troupe’s large-scale production of Anaphaza forms Phaza Morgana’s centerpiece and maintains a magical appeal.

Ohad Naharin’s Anaphaza. Photo by Gadi Dagon.

Choreographed for the Israel Festival in 1993 by Batsheva’s artistic director, Ohad Naharin, Anaphaza boasts pulsing rhythms, inventive movement, clever props, and eye-catching costumes which have made the work a favorite among audiences and critics alike; indeed, the dance has been seen by an astounding 350,000 people around the world and won recognition as one of the artist’s signature works. For Phaza Morgana, over thirty dancers from the Batsheva Dance Company and the Batsheva Ensemble will bring Anaphaza to life with their unchained energy, spreading from the stage onto the rock formations themselves.

Batsheva Dance Company’s other program in the festival is Take Two. Created especially for Phaza Morgana, Take Two combines selections not only from Naharin’s rich repertory but from Sharon Eyal’s growing body of work. Eyal’s choreography, which masterfully moves large groups of dancers through the space, is well-suited to the grand scale and soaring backdrop of the desert stage. Her Bertolina was a success at Phaza Morgana 2007, and now excerpts of her more recent Makarova Kabisa will be featured in Take Two. Naharin’s portion of the program will include sections from older classics such as Mabul and Naharin’s Virus as well as newer favorites like Seder and Shalosh.

Phaza Morgana in Timna Park. Photo by Liron Simon.

While dance is at the heart of Phaza Morgana, this year’s event also highlights music with a captivating concert by the Idan Raichel Project. Based on the group’s latest hit album, the show Within My Walls will be accompanied by a sixteen-member orchestra and will include special guest appearances by internationally known soloists. Marta Gómez contributes a Colombian flavor to Raichel’s ensemble, and Somi adds African accents to the group’s eclectic sound. With the Idan Raichel Project’s irresistible beats and intoxicating melodies, Phaza Morgana’s crowds will leave the festival dancing.

Video: Isrotel’s promotional video of Phaza Morgana

A New Design (and Some Statistics) for a New Year

Deborah Friedes Galili — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 11:17:19 +0000

In honor of our website’s first anniversary, we’ve rolled out a new magazine-style design! If you’re reading this in your e-mail inbox or RSS feed reader, please visit us online and explore the new features we’ve unveiled (featured content, easier navigation, a better featured video system, an advanced search box, and more).

In the next few weeks, aside from our usual articles, we will publish some posts talking about the new features and also asking you about the direction we will take in the upcoming year.

A lot has happened since we established Dance In Israel one year ago today. We’ve published over 90 articles, including 8 podcasts. 26,000 visitors from 137 countries around the world have explored our site, looking at 2 pages on average. 120 people subscribe to us via e-mail, and approximately 40 have our content delivered to their RSS feed readers. We have 312 fans on Facebook (and counting). We’ve hit Google page rank 5, a sign of our strength on the web. And to boot, we – Deborah, who writes the posts, and Tal, who builds the blog – got married!

Thank you for following us as we developed over the past year, and please stay with us – there’s lots more to come!

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Tel Aviv Dance 2009 Mixes Global and Local Dance

Deborah Friedes Galili — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 08:14:29 +0000

Compagnie Heddy Maalem in Rite of Spring. Photo by Patrick Fabre.

Tel Aviv used to host a popular festival called Dance Europa, attracting cutting-edge companies from across Europe. Three years ago, the festival expanded to include offerings from around the globe, and now the annual Tel Aviv Dance festival is a highlight of the city’s cultural season. Tel Aviv Dance 2009 runs from October 16 until November 13, with shows at the Suzanne Dellal Center and the Tel Aviv Opera House. To find out more details about performances, please visit the Dance In Israel Calendars.

A version of this article, titled “Hot Dance for Cold Evenings,” was published in the Jerusalem Post.

Hot Dance for Cold Evenings

“Everyone wants to come to Tel Aviv. Everyone wants to perform here,” says Yair Vardi, director of the Suzanne Dellal Center. Judging by the roster of world-renowned dance productions about to descend on the city, Vardi’s boast is not an exaggeration. In the last few years, the annual Tel Aviv Dance festival has become a destination for both rising stars and well-established names on the international circuit. Now, Tel Aviv Dance 2009 will mount fourteen programs at the Suzanne Dellal Center and the Tel Aviv Opera House. A special initiative will bring three of these concerts to Haifa as well.

This year’s schedule of performers is particularly diverse, both in geographic origin and in aesthetic. Here’s the lineup:

Australia

Video: Tania Liedtke’s Construct.

From far-off Australia comes Tania Liedtke’s Construct, which pairs power tools and physical prowess to comedic effect.

North America

Hubbard Street Dance Chicago in Nacho Duato’s Gnawa. Photo: public relations.

Hubbard Street Dance Chicago offers a taste of American contemporary dance with repertory by Jim Vincent and Alejandro Cerruda. This popular troupe adds a bit of foreign spice with Gnawa, a dance by Spanish choreographer Nacho Duato set to intoxicating North African rhythms.

Europe

Other productions have a similar international mix, including two which involve European countries.

Video: Heddy Maalem’s Rite of Spring.

Although Compagnie Heddy Maalem hails from France, the fourteen dancers in its rousing Rite of Spring are from Mali, Benin, Nigeria, Senegal, and Guadeloupe.

Video: Andalucia Lejana is choreographed by Victoria Eugenia, Manolo Marin, Silvia Duran, and Yoko Komatsubara

Meanwhile, the flamenco flavored Andalucia Lejana is a collaboration by four choreographers with dancers from Spain, Japan, and Israel.

Ballet Nacional de España. Photo: public relations

Flamenco assumes center stage again in Ballet Nacional de España’s program, featuring fifty dancers and musicians. The troupe is performing Jose Antonio’s La Leyenda and Aires de Villa y Corte.

Video: Yoshua Cienfuegos’s Cisnes Negros.

Also from Spain is Cienfuegos Danza, whose director Yoshua Cienfuegos takes a dark look at our animal instincts in his contemporary Cisnes Negros.

Michael Schumacher and Jiri Kylian’s Last Touch First. Photo by Robert Benschop.

Europe’s strong presence in this festival is rounded out by Last Touch First, a production from the Netherlands. On a stage strewn with sheets, six dancers move in slow motion through Michael Schumacher and Jiri Kylian’s spellbinding choreography.

Asia

Several choreographers and companies from Asia are also making an appearance at this year’s Tel Aviv Dance.

Wang Honghai’s My Dream showcases the riches of Chinese dance and music, but with a twist: the work is performed by nearly 100 members of the China Disabled People’s Performing Arts Troupe.

Beijing Modern Dance Company. Photo by Wang Zhe.

The Beijing Modern Dance Company, China’s premiere modern dance company, displays a more adventurous style in Gao Yanjinzi’s Oath and Hu Lei’s Unfettered Journey.

Video: Shang Chi-Sun & Dancers

Taiwanese choreographer Shang Chi-Sun offers two more contemporary works, Nuwa and Dialogue II.

Video: A mixed bill by three Korean choreographers

Three Korean choreographers who won the 2008 Choreographic Festival at Seoul are sharing a mixed bill. Ryu Seouk Hun presents Uncomfortable, Huh Kyung Mi offers Evolution, and Lee In Soo shows Modern Feeling.

Israel

Amidst this select global spread of top-notch choreography, it is a testament to Israeli dance that three programs in the festival are wholly devoted to work made locally. Batsheva Dance Company, which arguably has the greatest international reputation of any Israeli group, presents two contrasting concerts by artistic director Ohad Naharin.

Video: Ohad Naharin’s Hora.

Hora, Naharin’s most recent work, is danced to Isao Tomita’s synthesized versions of familiar melodies and performed against a vivid green set. Naharin’s Mamootot offers an altogether different viewing experience as audience members surround the dancers in the studio.

Video: Barak Marshall’s Rooster.

Barak Marshall’s Monger was a hit in last year’s festival, and now he is returning with a new production, Rooster. Twelve powerhouse dancers, one opera singer, and Margalit Oved – the legendary Inbal Dance Theater star and Marshall’s mother – trace a narrative inspired by Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot and Y.L. Peretz’s “Bontsha the Silent.” This mix of talent, combined with Marshall’s masterful storytelling and marvelously multi-layered movement, sets Rooster on a pathway to success – and premiering in Tel Aviv Dance doesn’t hurt either. Reflecting on his second Tel Aviv Dance experience, Marshall muses gratefully, “This is a twice in a lifetime opportunity I’ve been given!”

Andrea Miller: From Gaga to Gallim Dance (Podcast)

Deborah Friedes Galili — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 12:45:46 +0000

Andrea Miller. Photo by Franziska Strauss.

(You can subscribe to this podcast using the iTunes software by clicking this link to the podcast feed.)

Usually I meet choreographers before I interview them, or at least I have seen a concert or two of theirs. But having heard plenty of positive buzz and watched some captivating clips on YouTube, I was sufficiently intrigued about Andrea Miller to set up a Skype conversation with the New York-based choreographer this summer.

Unlike most of the artists I’ve interviewed in the last two years, Andrea isn’t Israeli. However, she’s no stranger to the Israeli contemporary dance scene. Prior to taking Manhattan by storm with her three-year-old company, Gallim Dance, Andrea lit up the stage as a member of the Batsheva Ensemble. I couldn’t help but wonder if and how her fresh aesthetic had been affected by her time here in Israel.

Gallim Dance in Andrea Miller’s Blush. Photo by Karli Cadel.

Andrea and I spoke shortly after Gallim Dance made an appearance at Jacob’s Pillow, one of the most prestigious summer dance festivals in the United States. Besides discussing Blush, which Gallim Dance presented at the Pillow, we talked about Andrea’s path from training in Humphrey-Weidman technique to Juilliard to Batsheva. Join us as Andrea reflects on her experience in Israel, Gaga, her artistic influences, and Gallim Dance.

If you too are intrigued by Andrea, you can hear more from her when she participates in a special panel, Contemporary Israeli Dance and the Reinvention of the Jewish Body, at the JCC Manhattan on October 22 during Jewish Body Week. Want to see some of her choreography? The Northwest Professional Dance Project is premiering a dance by her this week in Portland, Oregon, and in the next few months alone, Andrea’s work will be presented by Utah’s Repertory Dance Theatre, Ballet Hispanico, and the Juilliard School. 2010 will take Andrea to Holland, Canada, and Switzerland before Gallim Dance’s summer engagement at the Joyce Theater in New York City. And for now, you can get a taste of her work by watching the clips below.

Video: Gallim Dance trailer, with excerpts from several of Andrea Miller’s works

Gallim Dance in Andrea Miller’s Blush. Photo by Franziska Strauss.

Video: Excerpts from Andrea Miller’s Blush

Other Podcasts on Dance In Israel

Israeli Dance: What’s Happening in October

Deborah Friedes Galili — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 23:09:16 +0000

Video: Maria Kong’s Fling

As usual, there are lots of dance performances happening in Israel’s dance scene this month – but as I looked at the calendar, I realized that October is packed with several extra-special events. Below are some teasers for premieres, festivals, foreign tours, online contests, and more. For additional information about the following events and other performances, please visit the Dance In Israel Calendars.

Israeli Dance at Home

The members of Maria Kong. Photo by ASCAF.

Four former Batsheva dancers – Anderson Braz, Leo Lerus, Ya’ara Moses, and Talia Landa – make up Maria Kong, a new company which debuted fling last month to sold-out crowds. Now in its second run at the Nachmani Theater in Tel Aviv until October 10 and with a third set of shows planned for November 9-15, fling is clearly here to stay. 3-D projections, stunning costumes, and a striking score of both live and recorded music set an otherworldly mood for the work, but it’s the group’s supremely dynamic movement and supercharged stage presence which gives fling a lasting impact.

Shlomit Fundaminsky in La Divina. Photo by Aviv Zemer.

In honor of Tmuna Theater’s 29th anniversary, this month’s performances at the Tel Aviv institution are priced at a mere 29 shekels (that’s roughly $8!). Participating choreographers and dance groups include Shlomit Fundaminsky, Hagit Yakira, Ensemble Maya and Tomer, Acco Dance Center, Anat Shamgar, Efrat Reuven, Benyamin Yagendorf, Elad Ben-Sasson, Inbal Shachar, Tzachi Cohen, Shai Faran, Aviv Eveguy, and Maya Brenner. Hear about Shlomit’s work in Shlomit Fundaminsky: An Interview about Improvisation and Israeli Life.

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

Yossi Berg and Oded Graf are presenting their new 4 Men, Alice, Bach and the Deer at the Lab in Jerusalem on October 14-15 and at the Inbal Theater in Tel Aviv’s Suzanne Dellal Center on October 16-17. This often humorous exploration of the idealized man won rave reviews when it premiered this summer in Germany and Poland, and now the choreographers have revamped their work with a cast of standout Israeli dancers: Hillel Kogan, Irad Matzliach, and Yossi Berg and Oded Graf themselves.

Barak Marshall’s Rooster premieres in Tel Aviv Dance 2009. Photo by Gadi Dagon.

October means it’s time for the Tel Aviv Dance festival! This festival brings some of the hottest names in dance from around the world to the Suzanne Dellal Center and the Tel Aviv Opera House. Stay tuned to Dance In Israel for more on Tel Aviv Dance 2009, which runs from October 16 through November 13 – and if you’re nostalgic, you can reread my preview of Tel Aviv Dance 2008. Last year Barak Marshall’s Monger was a big hit when it opened Tel Aviv Dance, and this year, his new work Rooster will close the festival.

In partnership with the Israeli hotel chain Isrotel, the Batsheva Dance Company is presenting the 6th Phaza Morgana Festival in Timna National Park, Eilat from October 22-24. This year’s festival includes Take Two, a program featuring choreography by Ohad Naharin and Sharon Eyal; Anaphaza, one of Ohad Naharin’s iconic works; and a special appearance by the Idan Raichel Project. Check out my most recent article on Batsheva, Batsheva Dance Company: From Graham to Gaga, for background on the company and a list of other related articles about the group.

Israeli Dance Abroad

Whether you’re in Europe, the United States, or Asia, there’s something coming your way this month . . . .

Barak Marshall’s Monger. Photo by Gadi Dagon.

Barak Marshall’s production of Monger kicked off this month with a trip to Seoul and Daego, South Korea; the final performance of this tour is October 7th.

Video: Yossi Berg and Oded Graf’s Heroes.

Besides presenting their 4 Men, Alice, Bach and the Deer in Israel, Yossi Berg and Oded Graf are taking Heroes to the N.O.W. Festival in Saarbrucken, Germany on October 10. The pair returns to Staatsheater Kassel, Germany for an October 25 showing of a new creation, Fairy Tales, which has its official world premiere in December.

Iris Erez in Arkadi Zaides’s Solo Colores. Photo by Gadi Dagon.

From October 11 until the 25, Arkadi Zaides is touring with Solo Colores and Solo Siento in Asia. After showing Solo Colores at the Shanghai Dance Festival in Shanghai, both works will be performed in Taipei at the Kuan Du Arts Festival and then in Tokyo. For more about these works, check out my article Arkadi Zaides: Community Connections and Stunning Solos.

Yasmeen Godder’s Singular Sensation. Photo by Tamar Lamm.

Yasmeen Godder’s Singular Sensation will be performed in Prague on October 11-12 as part of 4+4 Days in Motion, and on the 28th-29th, the work will be part of TANZ IN BERN in Bern, Switzerland. Read more about Yasmeen’s work in Close Encounters Series: Yasmeen Godder.

Inbal Pinto and Avshalom Pollak’s Hydra. Photo by Seto Hidemi.

The Inbal Pinto Dance Company takes Hydra to the Dance Umbrella Festival in London on October 18-19. The creators talked about the development of Hydra in my podcast Inbal Pinto and Avshalom Pollak: An Interview on Imagination.

Gilat Amotz’s Empty Room. Photo by Lucky Trimmer, Berlin.

Gilat Amotz’s solo Empty Room will be performed in Masdanza, the International Contemporary Dance Festival of the Canary Islands. Empty Room is one of only 10 solos which were selected for this competition, which runs from October 17-24. Gilat’s choreography was also chosen to be included in the Masdanza Tenerife Festival at the Teatro Victoria in Santa Cruz in Tenerife from October 25-26.

As part of Nextbook’s Jewish Body Week, the Foundation for Jewish Culture is presenting an evening titled Contemporary Israeli Dance and the Reinvention of the Jewish Body at the JCC in Manhattan on October 22. Choreographers Deganit Shemy, Andrea Miller of Gallim Dance, and Saar Harari of LeeSaar: The Company will show excerpts of their work and participate in a panel discussion moderated by dance writer Elizabeth Zimmer. Read a bit about Deganit Shemy’s premiere of Arena at DTW last spring in From Writing to Talking about Dance, and find out about Andrea Miller’s connection to Israeli contemporary dance in Gallim Dance at Jacobs Pillow: Waves of Influence.

Rachel Erdos’s Alma. Photo from Gvanim Be’machol 2007.

Rachel Erdos is headed to the United States to set Alma on the Washington D.C.-based troupe CityDance Ensemble. Her work will be performed at the Kennedy Center as part of CityDance’s “Latitude” program on October 29-30. CityDance toured the Middle East last spring, and I caught up with them in east Jerusalem; read about their visit in CityDance in Jerusalem: Exploring the Gaps Between American and Israeli Dance.

Israeli Dance Online

Video: Michael Miler’s Speed of Light

Michael Miler’s Speed of Light is one of 10 finalists in the Sadler’s Wells Global Dance Contest 2009. The winning entry will be performed at Sadler’s Wells in London in January 2010 as part of the program Sadler’s Wells Program. Like Speed of Light? Vote for it! Speed of Light caught my eye when it premiered at the Shades of Dance Festival last March; read my impressions in Behind the Scenes at Gvanim: Shades of Dance Festival .

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For a calendar including these events and other performances, please visit the Dance In Israel Calendars . Know of some other exciting event relating to Israeli dance in Israel or abroad? Leave a comment below with the details!

Acco Fringe Theater Festival: Alternative Theater (and Dance)

Deborah Friedes Galili — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 08:42:12 +0000

Video: Some of the entries in this year’s competition, including Ofer Amram’s physical theater work Sanatorium

I took a detour from writing strictly about dance when I accepted an assignment to cover the Acco Fringe Theater Festival for the Jerusalem Post. Though I’ve never been to this event, I’ve heard that it’s one of the most adventurous and intriguing festivals in the country – and I was certainly intrigued by how many programs in this theater festival are movement based.

Some shows are billed as dance theater (Yoav Bertel and Avigail Rubin’s A Compensating Experience), physical theater (Ofer Amram’s Sanatorium), or motion theater (the group Makhol). Others are outright dance works, like the Acco Dance Greenhouse ensemble’s Neuronirvana, which was shown this summer as part of the Maholohet festival at Suzanne Dellal.

The international selections also feature a good dose of movement. 3Some, from Germany, was created by Israeli choreographer and actor Nir De-Wolf with Knut Berger, while The Vengeance Cell is by Japanese butoh artists Taketeru Kudo and Jun Wakabayash. The Teatro Pavana street theater group from the Netherlands includes stilt-walkers, and the German group Grotest Maru employs physical theater techniques in The Waters of Acco – A Dance on the Shore.

To learn more about this year’s Acco Fringe Theater Festival, read my article below, which was initially published in the Jerusalem Post.

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Alternative Acco

In the midst of the Jewish holiday of Succot, modern-day Israelis added a new celebration. Just as the ancient Israelites journeyed to Jerusalem for the holiday, hundreds of thousands of hungry culture-goers flock annually to the old city of Acco during Hol Hamoed to witness the latest harvest of alternative theater. Now in its 30th season, the Acco Fringe Theater Festival is as adventurous as ever with 450 diverse performances challenging typical notions of theater.

Smadar Ya’aron, who is co-directing the festival for the first time with Moni Yosef, explains, “We are looking for pieces of theater which propose another approach, whether it’s visually, or concerning the content or other aspects of the theatrical event . . . What is also important for us is that the theater will be daring . . . To dare to do a step, to dare to say something which is maybe not so popular, to dare to try and explore.”

This year’s lineup certainly promises a wealth of bold, experimental creations. Some works blur the borders between disciplines, such as the offering from the motion theater Makhol, which includes paintings by visual artist Kim Goldberg. Other selections inventively refigure the relationship between performers and viewers. Stage Fright is presented by one performer to one spectator, while in Les Souffleurs Comandos Posiques, actors whisper secrets into the ears of the audience via pipes. Puppet theater, physical theater, pantomime, light shows and a variety of street theater add to the festival’s eclectic mix.

While the works themselves may be departures from conventional theater, the programming reflects a sense of continuity and tradition. As in previous years, the 2009 Acco Fringe Theater Festival includes a prestigious competition for ten selected works. Several events are also designed to pay tribute to the festival’s 30-year run, including a special symposium, a photography exhibition, and a retrospective by the Ghetto Fighters’ House in honor of the play Arbeit Macht Frei fun Toitland Europa, which was performed 15 years ago at the festival.

Yet in their debut as directors, Ya’aron and Yosef have placed a fresh twist on the Acco Fringe Theater Festival. Yosef notes that this year’s schedule boasts a wider array of international guests hailing from Japan, Italy, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Australia, Poland, Russia and the Czech Republic.

Video: Excerpts include productions from Germany, Japan, and Italy as well as street theater from around the world

Even as the program features a more global component, Yosef reveals that there is also greater emphasis on local flavor. Initiated by the festival, Pablo Ariel’s Whispering Alleys takes audience members on a tour of the old city, and Yoav Bertel and Avigail Rubin’s A Compensating Experience follows six Acco residents who took part in last year’s riots. Project Acco, a co-production of the festival and the city’s new center for culture, youth, and sports, includes Jewish and Arab Israelis as well as performers from France, Lebanon, Iran and England. Meanwhile, local Jewish and Arab youth took part in an artist-in-residence project and will present their creations as part of the festival.

Yosef states,”We want very much for the festival to be a bridge between the culture and society.” As these works tackle the complex cultural issues which characterize Acco, forge interaction, and spur dialogue, they establish a powerful link between art and life. Alternative never felt so real.

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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*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.