"Raising the Curtain", the flagship project of the Ministry of Culture, took place this year for the 33rd time and included ten new dance premieres.
After two years in which it was possible to identify the traces of the plague in the works, both as aesthetics and as emotional frequencies floating in the qualities of the body, in the movement in space and in the dynamics between dancers, it seems that the creators of "Lifting the Curtain" turned their gaze inward this year.
According to the artistic directors, Dana Rotenberg and Oded Graf, the works reveal the "artistic milestones in the creators' journey so far", and overflow with "heartfelt wishes, fantasies, regrets about the paths they took and those they didn't" (from the program).
This trend was particularly noticeable in some works, which reflect the choreographic languages that their creators have already formulated, while at the same time offering new avenues of search in them.
Hillel Kogan's work, "THISISPAIN" (screen 1), is to a large extent a direct continuation of his investigation of dance and culture as languages that embody in their content hierarchies, power relations, and also binding (and limiting) social concepts of identity, gender, age, etc.
This time he works with flamenco as the most distinct cultural expression of Spain, while placing it in the middle between clichés - a discourse saturated with stereotypes about "passion" and men who are "macho", and "texts" that played a central role in building this image, such as the music of " Carmen" - and presenting it as an artistic practice with heritage and depth.
Next to Kogan appears the flamenco dancer and choreographer Michal Natan, and together they present the elements of the genre in pieces that demonstrate the singing, dancing, footwork and clapping - sometimes in a format reminiscent of a practice or lesson - but also create a foreignness to the visual language of art through the creation of the outlines of Dress the tail or the guitar using a broom.
In this way, Hillel Kogan floods the charges that have taken root in the language due to the struggles of identity and cultural ownership of it throughout history, but also invites to observe it in a closer and more open way - through his own eyes, as someone who discovers it as a new world.
Hillel Kogan and Michal Natan, photo: Yair Miyos
Tami Itzhaki approaches the body in all her works as an archive of personal landmarks and cultural and intellectual rings through a performative marking of what is already marked in it.
In "Meta-Tami" (Act 2), she reflexively observes her being as a dancer.
First through the construction of tension between movement sequences and physical actions that she performs with great skill, to nuances of self-determination that are under investigation, such as the "Tammy Y. ex-dancer" tattoo on her leg.
Gradually, the move to "writing a sequence" emerges, within the framework of which Yitzhak moves freely between a demonstrated lecture on the principles of the Herlis technique as an effort-free approach to working with the body, the interpretation of the concept of shemita in Judaism as an invitation to trust, and a renewed performance of the radical works of Marina Abramovich as an illustration of the state of full presence in the present of performance art.
Through these leaks between spaces of memory and knowledge, it seems that Itzhaky aims to bridge the contradictions built into her and merge "MC Tami" who performs biographical rap with someone who defines herself as "much more presentable in general", thus becoming one "Tami" - many faces and depths.
In the work "Hands Up" (screen 2), Ofir Yodelwitz offers a view that expands the interpretation of the handstand from a circus practice to a physical ability that embodies within it questions about the border - or the connection - between skill and art.
Judelwitz, who comes from diverse spaces of acrobatics, capoeira and martial arts, frequently examines the possibilities inherent in these body languages, from their role as a traditional social practice or an expression of popular culture to their contemporary forms that investigate their organizing mechanisms.
His new work unfolds as an autobiographical performance performed by Imogen Hotzel, a circus performer, and weaves the personal with the artistic: Hotzel demonstrates how the handstand defines her physical being in the world, and also the crystallization of the practice into a performative-cultural "text" by mapping its characteristics in the various formats of The circus - traditional, contemporary, cabaret and more.
In the rest of the work, Yodelwitz contrasts the human circus with the technological one and generates a series of intermedial reactions: a projected image of a rotating sprinkler is rediscovered through Hotzel's inverted spiral body, the movements of her fingers that are captured on the screen become a "theatre of organs", and a human robot provides a counterpoint to the handstand Through another and no less exciting circus practice - the spaghette.
Decoding the hand position.
Skill or art?, Photo: Yair Mioyas
"Shed Doth - The Epic of the Twilight Space / First Chapter" (screen 3), is another link in the morbid expression that Anabel Dvir has been developing for several years and can be defined as a body soundscape.
In its framework, the vocal expression of the performance - sighs, shouts, fragments of words, recitation and singing - becomes an extension of the body's movement and creates a material and sonorous image of what seems to be the externalization of a stream of consciousness and primal physical being, which is constantly pushed to the limits of extremes.
If in Dvir's first works the feeling of a "female tribe" emerged from the inertia of the action carried out from an internal, almost animalistic communication, then in "Shadut" the community is already an explicit image, and continues to cross the boundaries of time and place through the interweaving of traditional folklore expressions (in this case, of the Georgian culture) with sentences like "diamonds are a girl's best friend" or "blessed be the fruit" which have already become culturally charged sayings in the contemporary context space.
This is how the performative event becomes a ritual that celebrates a militant female presence, which seems to insist on being so in order to write a new story for itself.
Michal Herman and Anat Grigoriou,
"For the thousandth time" (screen 4), created by Michal Harman and Anat Grigoriou, continues the previous collaboration between the two that dealt with the physical-conscious state of getting lost, mainly in relation to the creative process and the identity of a "dancer".
In this work, it seems that Herman and Gregorio use the repetitive choreographic score they developed - falling and rising, settling and changing - to examine the encounter of the private body with gender patterns that embody in the content the expectations regarding the way the female body carries itself and is present in space.
The move develops as a series of "trials and errors" (or wondering) during which the two each time choose a different outfit, place themselves in sketched positions in front of the audience, but withdraw after the occurrence did not provide a way out of the loop.
The similarity between the two, which is intensified at the moment when they tie their hair together and become a hybrid figure, is a dramaturgical key that seems to be intended to say something about being "like this: without solutions" (as Rachel the poet, whose poetry is quoted in the text of the show), as an experience whose universality goes beyond the case the private body and captures fragile humanity within it in its distilled form.
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