“Dimona”, choreographer Aviv Eveguy’s latest work will be performed this coming Tuesday, August 4, as part of Suzanne Dellal’s SummerDance Festival. A composition for five dancers, it takes its name from a town in the Israeli Negev as a reference point for a journey of associations.
“It was important to me that it be the name of a place, to give it a border, a geographic anchor,” says Eveguy, “The sound of the word Dimona also connects to the word Demon – recalling something mythic, passionate, and feminine. That intersection of the feminine, mythic power and sense of place is the heart of the work.”
Eveguy, a former dancer with the Vertigo Dance Company, has been working as an independent choreographer since 2004, winning first prize with actor Amir Eveguy at the 2004 Bat Yam Street Theatre Festival with the appropriately named “He’s My Brother”, and the creative prize for “Room for Thoughts” staged at the 2006 Israel Festival. His most recent work was the trio “Animus” which premiered in 2007 at the Curtain Up Festival. “Dimona”, however, marks a new stage in his choreography, as he is not performing in the piece.
The transition, according to Eveguy, was not automatic: “When I am onstage I have a good feeling, I can sense the timing and respond to what is happening because it is alive. I can increase the tension… in Animus I could guide it from within. Here in Dimona I constantly had to get up from the chair and put myself inside. But it is different too because there are things that the dancers bring into the work. It’s a process that is different from creating within the work itself. There was a freedom to it that became more comfortable about mid-way through the work.”
In casting “Dimona” he was originally looking for a group of dancers within a wider range of ages, 20 – 40, but the oldest dancer who came to audition was 32. Eveguy says there is a different presence to older dancers on the stage, that he enjoys seeing. The cast – Sharon Dvir, Daphna Horenczyk, Limor Melamed, Reut Shatz and Adi Weinberg, are all indeed young dancers, yet it is clear that through the work process they have come together as a cohesive group and the connection between them is felt onstage.
Eveguy worked with the dancers on “Dimona” for seven months, meeting with them outside the studio to become better acquainted with them as individuals: “I wanted them to find within themselves a power that would be expressed on the stage. I wanted them all to be in the same room together, all at 100% of their energy. To maintain an equilibrium of forces on the stage at all times that would be all of them at 100% of their energy. I worked with them to notice when things are done automatically and to break that instinct and work with a heightened sense of awareness.”
The resulting work is an encounter between five entities, each driven by internal forces, coming together in the space. They are finely attuned to one another and intensely physical in their responses and interactions, yet each remains an independent entity. In Eveyguy’s words: “One can tell a story about five women who meet once every 120 years or so; connect to an event and then disappear.” Yet their encounter is not ceremonial or ritualistic, but rather instinctive, primal and spontaneous. What takes places between them now has not happened before and will not be repeated, it is of the moment; a coming together of forces. The excellent soundtrack, with music by Ori Drumer and J.S. Bach, enhances the sense of elemental mystery.
Although his process is very intensive, Eveguy says, “The particular steps within the work don’t interest me, it’s like a text, you need the text to begin with. Slowly, as it comes together you can erase the choreography from the body and what remains is the presence of a certain quality. You have the truth, you don’t have to shout it; you can simply tell it.”
Tuesday, August 4 at 21:00
Suzanne Dellal Centre, Tel Aviv
Tickets: 03-5105656
www.suzannedellal.org.il
