מחשבות של אפרת נחמה על הגמר של התחרות הבינלאומית לכוריאוגרפיה

Efrat Nehama’s Thoughts on the International Choreography Competition

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.

The virtuosity that recurs in all the works does not appear as a display of skill, but as a necessity. It is a way to hold the struggle without simplifying it, to articulate thought without shutting it down. Each creator moves from within their own loneliness, yet all propose a movement that does not seek resolution but presence. Dance as an act of becoming. Through this, all the works allow the viewer to encounter their own loneliness and the question it raises. Who am I and what is my movement within my inner struggle?

On virtuosity as an inner struggle

Wong Tan ki- It’s Not My Body Chapter 3.5- Hong Kong- First Prize

The virtuosity in Wong Tan ki’s solo work is not a show of ability for spectacle, but a mechanism of embodied thinking. It is a way of conducting a complex and almost cruel inner conversation between the parts of his body and mind. Hannah Arendt describes the concept of virtu not as technical excellence but as the ability to act in the world from freedom. So it is in this work, where virtuosity is born from tension and from the Sisyphean effort of the performing artist to investigate himself and his movement.

The body does not execute sequences but argues with itself. All parts of the body, large and minute, from the limbs and back to the smallest muscles between the shoulder blades, appear as independent entities colliding with one another. Through suspensions and stops they create brilliant and surprising movement combinations, as if each organ pulls in a different direction, expressing impulse, resistance or an attempt at control and decision.

This inner struggle is not resolved. It continues relentlessly. Tan ki demonstrates sharp choreographic intelligence, in which high skill serves not for unification but precisely for dismantling and conscious fragmentation of the body into layers of desire, fear, control and release. Virtuosity, then, is not an achievement but a process. It is a way of touching the gap between the ability to control and the need to let go, between action and pause, between the body as given and the body as foreign to itself, as the title of the work suggests, It’s Not My Body.

Precisely because the struggle the artist presents occurs at such a high level of skill, it does not remain confined to the artist alone. The viewer is invited to be drawn into that inner conversation and to find themselves echoing the questions posed by the dancing body. Who am I within my contradictions? Am I at peace with myself? What do I gain from my inner struggle? And is it even possible or necessary to resolve it? In this way virtuosity becomes an ethical act, an action that takes place on stage yet continues to operate within the consciousness of the viewer, as a space where inner struggle is not a weakness but a source of vitality, freedom and moving thought.

On the dancer as a solitary god

Vitor Hamamoto- Missing Names- Brazil- Second Prize

In Missing Names, dancer and creator Vitor Hamamoto stands on stage as a kind of modern demigod. A muscular, exposed and tattooed body bearing marks of time, identity and friction with the world. There is an immediate and almost threatening power in his presence, yet it does not crystallize into an image of control. On the contrary, this strong body reveals itself as vulnerable, moving between disintegration and concentration, between the display of strength and inward retreat.

The tattoos are not merely a layer of skin. They are absorbed into the movement, stretching and distorting with the muscles, like memories etched into the body and reactivated with every shift of weight. The dancer’s movement is sharp and precise, yet it does not flow into a comfortable sequence. There are sudden stops and strenuous holds, and although he stands before us, it seems as though he is falling inward. At times he appears to wield his body with divine force, and at other times to struggle against it, as if the body itself refuses to obey.

This duality between demigod and human creates constant tension. The body appears simultaneously as sculpture and battlefield, as something displayed and as something in which a quiet struggle unfolds. The virtuosity here is not theatrical but internal. It is expressed in the ability to remain at the extreme, to sustain tension over time, and to allow the complexity of the body, its strength and fragility, its beauty and its marks, to appear without resolution. Thus emerges an image of a body that does not seek to be whole or heroic, but a body that lives within contradiction and allows the viewer to encounter not an ideal, but a charged and complex humanity.

At the end of the performance the dancer crosses the stage in a slow and cautious walk. His body is bent downward and his hands are held before his lowered face. Sweat naturally pours from his face and it seems as though he is gathering his tears from the journey that was, that is and that will be. This is a moment that does not close the work but opens it, leaving the viewer with a sense of identification, with the recognition that we are all in the same boat, walking bent toward our destinies and unwillingly collecting the sweat of sorrow that streams from our faces.

Maurice Blanchot writes about the responsibility of the author when writing about Samuel Beckett:

“Art demands that the person who practices it be sacrificed for the sake of art, be made other, no longer someone, not transformed from the human being he was into an artist with duties, satisfactions and artistic interests, but into no one, into the empty and living space in which the summons of art are heard.”

-from Unbound Dance by Ramzi Barth, translation by Niv Sabriego, page 169, Asia, 2019

The author, namely the creator and performer Vitor Hamamoto, transforms himself through the visual tattooed images on his body and through movement that carries inner contradiction, from a human being into no one. In doing so, he invites the hypnotized viewer to feel a living call that resonates into their personal and collective world.

On dissolving estrangement in the gaze of the seeing eye

Béatrice Larrivée- Briefly- Canada/Israel- Third Prize

In the solo work Briefly by Béatrice Larrivée we encounter a delicate yet chilling dance embodied in the fragile body and voice of the dancer creator. Larrivée stands on stage with an exposed body and a soul that appears wounded and bleeding, reading aloud excerpts from On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by the American Vietnamese poet and writer Ocean Vuong. The poetic words are in fact a letter written by a boy to his mother in a language foreign to her, so that she cannot read his words.

The text opens an intimate space of vulnerability and draws the audience into partnership with the most abyssal inner personal experience of the dancer. The dancer is trapped in the paradox of being seen and unseen, expressing through dance and text the desire for and anxiety of the gaze, which may embrace her and at the same time wound, imprison and fix her.

At the climax of the solo she appears in movement as if injured or struck, one hand covering her eye as she says, To be wonderful you must first be seen, but being seen makes you prey. In that moment she recalls the figure of the dancer described by Mallarmé, she makes herself a body. While Mallarmé viewed the dancer as an almost superhuman metaphorical figure creating herself through movement, here Béatrice seems to stitch together the parts of her wounded soul through movement and word, from the fragments, with the attentive and accompanying gaze of the viewer.

Larrivée presents an image of someone who is on stage and yet not here. Through her descriptions of nature, as well as through her body and movement, she creates additional inner and outer worlds that operate simultaneously before us. Larrivée’s loneliness differs from that of the monk. While the monk withdraws from the world to be alone, Larrivée withdraws into movement in order to discover and voice her loneliness. Unlike the monk who disconnects from the outside, she moves outside the world and outside herself at the same time. She approaches her loneliness not to hide, but to carve herself within it.

There is courage in this act. Not heroic courage, but quiet courage, the courage of one willing to look directly at the crumbling inner parts and say, this too is me.

The personal background of Béatrice Larrivée adds another dense layer of meaning to her solo work. She herself is a migrant, born in Canada and living and creating in Israel, floating between languages, cultures, and sensations of belonging and estrangement. Like the character Little Dog in Ocean Vuong’s book, she carries in her body the experience of crossing geographic, linguistic and inner borders.

On balance within the crack

Avshalom Latucha- The Three Body Problem- Israel- Fourth Prize

Throughout most of The Three Body Problem, the three dancers maintain an almost stubborn balance. They do not touch one another and do not merge, yet their relationships are preserved with meticulous care. Every movement of one body is accompanied by a shift of the others to another area of the stage, as if they are sustaining a delicate gravitational system, moving around one another without merging, maintaining distance yet also dependence.

This is a metaphysical space of three bodies organized in controlled instability, a clear echo of the three body problem in physics, a system with no fixed center that nevertheless does not collapse. This balance does not instill calm but constitutes an ongoing effort, a continuous holding of relation.

Only toward the end does an almost silent yet charged change occur. Two bodies move closer to one another, creating the appearance of closeness, while the third body remains, seemingly, alone. This moment is not a dramatic climax but a small crack in which what was hidden all along is revealed, that balance is not equality, and that the closeness of two always generates the loneliness of the other.

The philosopher Emmanuel Levinas writes, “I am responsible for the other without expecting reciprocity, even if it were infinite. Responsibility, as articulated by the dance through the body, is a spatial act that cannot be resolved. It moves without rest, changes, and at every moment places someone on the edge of remaining alone.”

In The Three Body Problem we are presented with a trio, yet despite the shared movement in space, what is present is avoidance of one another and the profound loneliness of each dancer in their inner world. Their body speaks, but their voice is not heard.