Often it’s hard for her and Daniela to say goodbye after spending a full, fun Saturday together. At the end there’s always drama and tears; they don’t want to go home. They say they’re sisters. When they were younger, they used to say “sisterses.”
Daniela and Yaara are both only children. Alona is also an only child, and you feel her struggle as an only child facing the world, changing moods during the show, and the voice of the tree asking her to give up the leaf she considers as hers.
Next time, we mothers can remind them of that moment in the show. Not so there will be less drama, but maybe the memory of Alona parting from the leaf will help them see separation a bit differently.Read more
The greatness of a personal work, in my eyes, lies in its ability to touch even those who are far from its direct contexts. Podium does this wisely, and invited me to examine my relationship with rules, with the constant search for the firm hand and for excellence that are paired together in my imagination.Read more
Throughout the work, the four performers repeatedly toy with the idea of transmuting thoughts into language; of expressing dance with words and vice versa; of making their inner and private dialects not only heard but understood by others — be it a dancer interpreting the choreographer’s score, a dancer reacting to a fellow dancer on stage or a dancer communicating her sensations and thoughts with the audience through words or movements.
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First Things by Michael Getman, performed with virtuosity by Ariel Gelbart, is a fascinating, deep, and multi-layered work. Fragments of textual and musical information meet a distilled choreography, and together they ask the most fundamental question: what is the human experience?Read more
…it seemed that together, the four embodied in their bodies and movements the nomadic, hybrid spirit so characteristic of flamenco’s history. This was precisely because the four insisted on integrating — alongside typical Spanish gestures and sounds —movement languages and imagery external to flamenco, whether through the use of Hebrew, plastic objects, or references to modern dance.Read more
This gap between the two, between Shamgar’s certainty and Shafir’s searching, creates the backbone of the performance. It is an intriguing gap, full of potential. At times, their meeting feels like a dialogue interrupted between sentence and sentence. Rather than producing conceptual unity or emotional fusion, the separateness remains clear, and as a viewer I felt it strongly.Read more
Everything about this production was thoughtfully designed and executed by Poda.
A true Renaissance man. Accompanied by my 6 year old daughter, I felt so fortunate that this was her introduction to the magic realm of opera. I was charmed by her questions throughout the piece, especially “Ima, when will they stop singing?!” Poda made this ancient world of Carthage, shipwrecks, Gods and witches so sumptuous, the aesthetics alone could hold the attention of a young art lover. Read more
There is so much magic in simple things, especially when simplicity is born from long and demanding labor. Such is the work of Kazuyo Shionoiri and Dror Liberman Keep it up: simple and profound, shifting from moment to moment and from performance to performance, and above all, touching and lingering.Read more
The final round of the International Choreography Competition, in which four works were presented, does not coalesce into a overarching theme, rather it reveals itself as a consistent emotional space. Loneliness emerges as a point of departure and as raw material. Three solo works and one trio draw a portrait of contemporary dance as a practice of being alone, even when others are present on stage and despite the presence of spectators. This is not romantic or sentimental loneliness, but an existential loneliness of the artist and the dancer, those who operate within themselves, out of division, tension and inner struggle, and who seek to communicate it not through confession or narrative, but through a moving body in inner and outer space and in time.Read more
Based on a True Story is a moving performance, full of tenderness and softness, and for the most part also full of compassion. It brings us into contact with states of fragility and strength, with relationships that are built and unraveled in moments, with the possibility of telling a story without speaking it in words. There is generosity of body and of heart, and a deep appreciation for the humanity that exists between the performers.Read more