In this tense social period, choreographer Yasmin Godder seeks to create a space of devotion, relaxation and empathy. As part of the Tel Aviv Dance Festival, which opens this week at the Suzanne Dellal Center in Tel Aviv, she will present her work "S.O.S. - Songs of Sequence". "I wanted to create a space and time that our neural system would relax into. Leave room for people to feel comfortable, and not push them," she says.
According to Gooder, "I think of it as a lounge where you can find a corner that's good for you, and it wouldn't offend me if people suddenly wanted to close their eyes. Devotion interests me more than what one devotes oneself to. S.O.S. talks about the need to create a safe, therapeutic space for people and dancers, the possibility of being present alongside others, without the feeling that you are being attacked or attacked. Not to be aggressive, violent, anti."
From "S.O.S. - Songs of Sequence", photo: Yair Michos
This is the largest production Gooder has created to date. It features 11 performers of different ages and ethnic identities, some of whom have been working with Godder for years and others who are new to the cast.
Inevitably, this mix raised questions about the relationship between ethics and aesthetics, demonstrating for Gooder how much practicing empathy is not just for the artistic product.
"For me, empathy has to do with the political space we're in." Yasmin Godder, Photo: A. Majewska
"It's a mirror in front of the microcosm called 'band making,'" she explains. "Within the studio, you always have to be hypersensitive to people really meeting themselves and others who have certain perceptions. The project also confronts internally: how the rehearsal is conducted, who speaks, how everyone feels at work."
Listening to Gooder talk about her work, you can't help but think of the term "artivism" – activist art that seeks to make us better human beings. In parallel to her work, Godder holds the dance classes "Community in Motion" for people with Parkinson's in her studio, and for the past two years she has been artistic director of "No'ot Ma'a Ba'ad", a bilingual women's festival that takes place in Arabic and Hebrew, alongside Palestinian artist Nur Gravely.
In many ways, the way she perceives empathy returns to a primal humanity, which is essentially available and existing, but is experienced as new because we have distanced ourselves from it so much, and this also shapes the kind of activism that Gooder fulfills as a creator.
"For me, empathy is connected to the political space we are in. It's an attempt to get out of a certain circle of thinking and reacting to my reality immediately or impulsively, and create an act that goes against it, but in a different way – it softens into and pauses to look in front of me. 'S.O.S.' is a reading of a critical moment that feels like it's screaming, recognizing empathy as an act of ripples."
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