Heather DeAtley’s Reflections on ‘Landscapes of Gold’ by Sharon Fridman
*Photo by Asya Skorik
I arrived at Suzanne Dellal with my two excited Littles on the Friday morning of the grand Kid’s Summer Festival. The hour journey there was filled with a repeated loop of the Minions and the Disney film Wish. These cymatic landscapes have rapidly become our summer soundscape while driving, not exactly the most soothing to one’s nervous system, alas, but I love how it makes them laugh and smile. As we stepped into the realm of the Festival, a leisurely space with pillows to relax on just outside Studio Ora, books to delve into and a video of all the festival performance trailers, the magic began to infuse our hearts. A spell was being cast where wonder and mesmerization lead. This continued as we excitedly entered into the studio, a large black stretchy fabric on the studio floor juxtaposed by the soundscape of bubbles.
As everyone took their places in the audience, Sharon graciously greeted us all. I was delighted by all the young feet drawn to the performance space, running out eagerly, the delight of curiosity in their smiles and gleeful laughs, only to run back to their parents quickly. “Stay, stay!” I wanted to encourage them. “Keep exploring! This space is yours.” My littles were among the oldest kids in the audience (3.5 and freshly 6) and were less drawn to explore such things. I noted the moment of heartache with that observation, as it wasn’t so long ago they would have been. How fleeting this period of life truly is. Amidst a soundscape of bubbles mimicking an underwater environment, I let this little moment of grief for what has passed rise, and fall. Just as that bubble of big feeling popped, our journey began.
Sharon enters the space, he certainly has a bit of Shaman in him, I think to myself. His presence carries some mysticism and definitely magic. He stands on the black stretchy fabric, symbolic of so much of the shadow side of life we have been dancing with. And he begins to turn, and turn, and turn. As he does so, the black fabric spirals around his feet, as if creating a vortex of sorts. And just like that, the color that is all the colors and vacuum of light was reduced to a small spiral. He had cleared the path for magic and whimsy to literally roll in.
A gold piece of aluminum-plastic like material meanders playfully into the performance space. The kids in the audience, including my munchkins, are fully engaged with this mysterious entity as it makes its magical entrance. Hidden within the globule of gold are the wonderful dancers Noa Chen and Dikla Rejevsky. Noa emerges first with wondrous elasticity and fluid movements.
Photo by Asya Skorik
A new chapter unfolds as Noa interacts with the golden globule. Her facial expressions and comical gestures are perfectly synchronized, she has bewitched the kids with delight and abject silliness. When Dikla emerges, the kids are smitten with her energy and enthusiasm.
As the next chapter of imaginative playing with the gold material unfolds with little fish, buckets, and fishing poles, my kids begin to disconnect. Something was getting lost in performance translation for them. When they didn’t want to go out on the material turned sea, I held the space for that. Another moment of longing and loss arising as I observed all the younger littles unabashedly entering into this radiant under the sea realm. Have they simply just grown beyond this level of play? Another transition in the use of the golden material in more multi-functional imaginative ways elicited a bit more engagement and interest in my 6 year old daughter but it was short-lived. When things don’t land for kids, they just don’t land. We have a humbling invitation to accept said reality in an artistic setting and beyond. I’ve learned to respect their rhythms and that they know best what speaks to and calls to them. This is sovereignty laced with the dignity of individual experience. And in doing so, I’m remembering to do the same for my inner child.
Towards the end of the piece, Sharon dances with (what I assume to be) his young daughter–a spritely little blonde of about 2 who would often repeat “Di! Di!” with a gleeful smile on her face as they spun and moved together at varying levels. I found their duet charming but was sensitive to my increasingly restless littles.
While the resonance with my littles seemed limited to the grand golden entrance and initial duet between Noa and Dikla, the reception and engagement of the rest of the audience was a testament to the artists’ success in creating a world where their imagination is respected. Their moving bodies are honored as equal artistic partners. I appreciated the reverence offered to the littles–so needed in a world that so often fails to constructively and effectively create true kid-centric spaces for exploration.
How different our world could be if we were to put kids at the center more often as these wonderful artists did for 50 minutes on a Friday morning in July in a country besieged and broken by war. A world where we let their wonder lead, or simply roll in like a golden globule of magic possibility.
Sharon Fridman presented ‘Landscapes of Gold’ as part of the Kids Summer Festival at the Suzanne Dellal Centre on July 25, 2025.
Heather DeAtley
Born in the United States, Heather arrived to Israel in 2011 to dive into the rich movement and dance culture here. Suzanne Dellal became her sanctuary as she immersed herself in the rich worlds of Gaga and the Ilan Lev Method. As a former Division I collegiate gymnast and dancer, movement was always at the center of her life but everything shifted dramatically following a herniated disc that required surgery at the tender age of 19 her sophomore year at the University of Iowa. Her journey into the healing powers of movement had thus begun.
Heather pulls from her long history of movement practice to create synesthetic experiences through her words, event production, poetry, tipulim and intuitive movement journeys. Creatrix of Wombyn in the Water and Wombmynt, alongside Body Poetry (Ilan Lev Method tipulim), Heather blends her fascination with somatics, neuroscience, embodiment practices, pregnancy, birth, embryology, and so much more into all she does. A love of all things dance has always underscored these other passions.
Prior to becoming an ima nearly 6 years ago, Heather had helped in coordinating Suzanne Dellal’s International Exposure festival, graduating to positions of international development and promotion with individual choreographers: Galit Liss, Sally Anne Friedland, and Adva Yermiyahu. These experiences served as the inspiration behind creating/curating the Salon Series in which she hosts female choreographers in her living room of Sde Yitzhak (including fellow Creative Writing contributors Yulia Frydin and Ella Greenbaum!). Movement and poetry are at the core of all she does.
Heather looks forward to launching her body-sourced “Poetry of” workshops later this year.