When I became a mother, I came from the life of a freelancer. Both my professions, dance and journalism, are incredibly flexible. I was in and out of my house every day, spent hours in the studio with people I found inspiring and traveled abroad often. I could pop my laptop open literally anywhere and shoot off articles to my editor without ever setting foot in the newspaper’s office.Read more
The choreographer lives in the “future”, plans the performance, maps out the score, imparts it to their colleagues while the dancer exists in “l’avenir”. The dancer’s true potential, personality, artistry and will come to fruition in “l’avenir”, in the unknowable future. It cannot be rehearsed, foreseen, controlled. It is the chemical reorganization of atoms that occurs to a performer when met with an audience that propels the dancer into this mystifying state of what is to come.Read more
For me, becoming a mother was like performing a show I had never rehearsed before. And it was a very public show. Everyone I knew saw it. My parents and sister flew in for the premiere. My in laws were there. Friends came out of the woodwork to see it. Complete strangers came and most of them had something to say about it afterwards. My partner was in the front row.
It is true that technology is engulfing our lives and, in many ways, for the better. Our day-to-day is made more efficient and more comfortable by digital advancements. However, the creation of dance is something that, in my opinion, needs no tech bolstering or interventions.Read more
Choreographer Iris Erez made me pause at the Israeli Museum this month when she suggested that a room full of international visitors take selfies and place their phones on the ground, out of reach. Viewers peered down to find their reflections in a mosaic of black mirrors following Iris’ 30-minute-long solo, Self Ritual, presented by Machol Shalem Dance House’s Jerusalem International Dance Week, which hosts top curators and theater programmers from around the globe for five days of dance performances around the city.
As a performance artist whose works tend to associate with theater, I find that the performances that I love most are actually dance. I took a moment to wonder why and found three excellent reasons. Here they are:
Noa Shavit’s solo performance, Ingiven, shows a silently screaming mouth move above a sinewy body to Nick Cave’s stirring lyric, “The tree don’t care what the little bird sings.” If Shavit is that little bird, are we the tree? How many little birds fly around us that we fail to hear? There is a certain silence occupyingRead more
Pain of the Soul Ingiven – Noa Shavit Be in the pain Be the pain Explore the pain Let it out I know I did Thank You Noa Pain of Live Tissue Work of Flesh: Soundtrack for Five Slammed Bodies – Annabelle Dvir Flash The moment the flesh hit the ground Hoo Aaaa ChiiiRead more
Google search “media influence on art” and you will primarily find articles on how Instagram has transformed the visual art market and how incredible it is that a smalltown girl in Idaho can virtually visit the Louvre. Few articles cover a question that I found hard to ignore over the past few days at Machol Shalem’s International Dance Week in Jerusalem: how does mass media and new technology influence our own creation processes and conceptions, specifically dance-making?
And here, from within a medium, drowsy egg
Peeks out a work that is a true pearl.
The song of human meat, pounded into the floor
And from the pain and the impact
Emerges a beautiful, delightful poem.