White Bird is tremendously excited to present the West Coast debut of Vertigo Dance Company from Jerusalem, Israel, on October 13-15 at the Newmark Theatre in Portland. They will perform the North American premiere of  Mana, Vessel of Light, created in 2009 and considered a masterwork in Israel.

We asked Brian Schaefer,  an American currently writing and studying in Tel Aviv,  who is extremely knowledgeable about dance in Israel, to share his thoughts on the state of contemporary dance in Israel. We thank Brian for his illuminating essay, that will be included in the printed program for Vertigo.
 

Exploring Dance in Israel
Brian Schaefer

Brian Schaefer is a writer based in Tel Aviv. Israel and a board member of the Dance Critics Association.

 

Israel has grown up quickly. Within less than three quarters of a century, the young country has evolved from a communal, agricultural society in the early pioneering days to a technologically successful start-up powerhouse. In many ways the development of contemporary dance in Israel has mirrored changes in Israel itself over the past sixty-plus years. 
 

One particularly noteworthy shift is from the drive to create a cohesive, singular Jewish society to one that embraces the variety of identities and issues of its increasingly diverse population.  Nurit Yaari, a professor in the Theater Department at Tel Aviv University, says of the country’s beginnings: “Israel was a melting pot of people coming from all over.” And the idea was that “from the mixture we will all become a united homogenous society, Israeli society.”  The participatory nature of folk dance helped to facilitate this effort. But with numerous waves of immigration in the 70s, 80s and 90s from Russia, Ethiopia, and Arab countries, the concept of a united Israeli population that shares a common history, language, and customs was challenged by the new ideas and practices of its ever-changing citizenry.
 

From that shift, one can trace the focus from communal folk dances to the more individualistic approach of contemporary dance, a genre of performance which has blossomed in Israel over the past two decades, garnering much attention and acclaim in the international dance community. Though folk dance continues to be widely practiced in Israel, concert dance (dance for the stage) has responded to the multi-ethnic, multi-dimensional society that has emerged in the last several decades.
 

Classical ballet, on the other hand, has been largely ignored. Orit Naor, the Executive Director of the American-Israel Cultural Foundation (AICF), an organization that provides funding to support young Israeli performing artists, suggests that the reason for this is that “[The ballet] is very structured, you go by rules, you don’t have too much freedom to create.  And the problem [with] Israelis is that we don’t have any borders.  …In our lives, the borders are not clear and we behave like this, too. And modern dance is exactly what speaks to us and I think that’s why it’s flourishing.”

In addition to an atmosphere that was ripe for creative rebellion, a major catalyst in 1989 took the growth of Israeli dance to an entirely new level.  “The success [of Israeli dance] coincides with the establishment of the Suzanne Dellal Centre,” says choreographer Barak Marshall.  He credits “the infrastructure that Suzanne Dellal has created, both internally and as a platform for worldwide exposure” as a vital ingredient to the recent dance boom.  The Suzanne Dellal Centre, located in Neve Tzedek, one of the oldest neighborhoods of Tel Aviv, is a sprawling campus, featuring four theatres, rehearsal studios, cafes and restaurants, five minutes away from the Mediterranean coastline. In its more than twenty years in existence, the Centre has launched numerous initiatives to mentor the next generation of Israeli dance artists and provide platforms and mentorship for their professional growth.
 

Two of Israel’s top dance companies that frequent the stage of Suzanne Dellal now come to White Bird offering very different artistic pictures of dance in Israel.  Vertigo Dance Company’s mystical and lush Mana evokes a tribal energy and ancient spirituality while Yasmeen Godder’s Love/Fire presents some outrageous images with a subversive dark humor that suggests Israel’s modern, quirky side.

Last year, White Bird audiences experienced yet another expression of contemporary Israeli dance with Barak Marshall’s Monger, a commission of the Suzanne Dellal Centre.  As Marshall explained it,  “The entire movement is derived from the ethnic heritages that make up my history,” he says. “The Yemenite, the Indian, the Yiddish, the vaudevillian.”  The eclectic musical score reflects Marshall’s – and Israel’s – mixed background as well, from Yiddish to Yemenite, Balkan to classical.

Noa Wertheim, Vertigo’s choreographer and co-artistic director along with her husband Adi Sha’al, points to her religious background as a source of inspiration. “I’m very much connected to my Judaism,” she said in an interview in 2007.  “I come from a religious family and we have a deep respect for our traditions.”  The title of the company’s work at White Bird, Mana, refers to the vessel of light described in the Zohar, the book of Jewish mysticism.  While her work does not explicitly address religion or interpret religious text, the meditative quality of Mana, its congregation-like gathering of disciples in flowing black robes, and the way it rises to near ecstasy at the end very much captures the essence of some type of faith.

Thematically, Wertheim is much more interest in social connection. “I’m not political at all,” she said in the same interview. “But I’m socially responding.  For me it’s important to live in the society and reach the people and take responsibility.  I feel very much Israeli. I have an inside fire that I communicate well.”
 

She’s not alone in actively staying away from the current headlines. Deborah Friedes Galili, an American who studied contemporary dance in Israel as a Fulbright scholar and has since moved to the country, was curious to discover if the political situation in one of the world’s most contentious regions affected the performances coming out of it.  She found that very few choreographers admit to addressing the situation explicitly.
 

Galili notes, however, that even when the conflict is not the primary topic, its presence in the Israeli psyche is still present.  “It’s not necessarily that they’re dealing, for instance, with the geographical issues of borders here,” she says.   “But there are borders between people and those issues come out with personal space and there can be an awful lot of pushing and pulling and invading of space [in the dances]… People are using the body to deal with those issues.”

Wertheim agreed that Israeli bodies on stage closely reflect the ways that Israelis relate to each other in daily life as well. “I think [there is] this energy of the mix of the people here and the tension in the country. They want to explode on stage and get out that energy.  The good and bad come together.”
 

The result is a dance scene that is recognized for its dynamic energy, dark humor, complexity, intensity, and an unromantic sense of beauty. Galili notes also the way that the social reality reflects itself in dance and “how people bring themselves to the work and the way choreographers end up creating work. It’s going to be passionate… and really rich.”  Naor agrees, noting that In Israel, everything is exaggerated.  “People always take everything to the extreme,” she says.  “I think there is something very special here, very creative.  We go to the extreme in everything.”