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
What if we created a similar tradition around dance and choreography, a gateway into bringing performance and creative process to life on entirely new levels of engagement following a show? An opportunity for the audience to meaningfully interact with the choreographer (perhaps the dancers as well?), as they metabolized a work? A “Dear Abby” for dance lovers to thoughtfully discourse with choreographers about their work, but life as well. The two are so intertwined in the arts.
I chose to create such an avenue of communication in response to experiencing Lior Tavori’s work 8th Day.Read more
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.Read more
Maya Brinner’s beautiful piece, ‘Home Work,’ embodies every sense of this learning curve while weaving motherhood into the tapestry seamlessly. We learn to dance by dancing. We learn to mother by mothering. We’re all in this delicious state of learning.Read more
We go back to the Beginning. Back to peeling potatoes. Back to actions we thought we had evolved beyond. An invitation to step into more presence. A modern day Sisyphyean task that never ends. In her potent work, Sally Anne Friedland (along with Gucci Kohan) fearlessly explores our hunger for connection, our longing for meaning and purpose amidst the backdrop of war, conflict, and strife. The tension excavated in “A-Peeling” is viscerally uncomfortable and involves facing hard truths of the circumstances we find ourselves in: We are Sisyphus. Pushing the rock up the hill ad infinitum. But the rock has been replaced by potatoes–an endless supply to be peeled. Read more
Ori Lenkinski’s ‘A Dance Piece’ is nothing short of masterful. Revealing and revelatory in its’ autobiographical authenticity, vulnerability, and candidness, Ori charms and enthralls the intimate audience in the Menashe Dance House studio (the original sanctuary she began the journey of creating the piece) from the moment she walks in and begins an interaction reminiscent of the dynamic between friends.Read more
Everything about this piece yields moments that are so stunning, gracefully emitting and embodying an effortless elegance that leaves you breathing more deeply. Subtle moments between dancers, solos that border on remarkable, ensemble segments that are revelatory–they all are weaving a tapestry through movement that resets the very scaffolding of our fascia and how we perceive our bodies in space and time. We go on an expansive proprioceptive journey while simply sitting in the chair! Neural networks and pathways yielding more activity than when we arrived to Suzanne Dellal. We are the weavers and the woven. Read more
Suppressed feelings, stunted Intuition. This is the design: confusion and disorientation have their own violence to them. Every time Yossi began to FEEL something, moments of disbelief, confusion, something new, something strange, something real, his repetition of “Yo, yo, yo!” reinforced what was unfamiliar. He was simultaneously resisting and spell-casting with each “Yo”–a quiet opposition to Patriarchal Forces that had silenced, banished, and cursed the internal guidance systems responsible for questioning the absurdity of such force, manipulation, and control. The red fabric stuffed in the mouths of the 4 male dancers representative of this silencing by the Patriarchy.Read more