Dance. What’s in it for the audience? An aesthetic experience? Intellectual? Emotional?
There is a vast distance between viewer and practitioner in dance. Dancing and watching dance are such different activities: for the dancer onstage, it is an intense experience of the mind and body, working in symbiotic hyper-drive; for the viewer, it is inevitably, a physically passive experience, and sometimes, one of emotional and intellectual disconnection and even confusion. To put it plainly: aside from a loyal band of acoloytes and dance aficionados, dance, contemporary concert dance, is not popular.
Unlike football, where all practitioners, even those on the extreme edge of amateur, enjoying seeing a good game, and are often willing to travel long distances and spend inordinate amounts of money to watch a really good game, contemporary dance just doesn’t seem to attract a crowd. Is it because yelling loudly from the bleachers or the comfort of a couch generates a neurological high closer to that of playing football, than does, say, sitting immobile for forty minutes and then clapping enthusiastically, with a genteel “bravo” called out at the end of a performance? For the football fan, football is an essential part of daily life, whereas for the most part, contemporary dance is relegated to the lofty distance of “highbrow culture” or “leisure time activities” – all at a distance from everyday life.
This distance and dissonance between the experience of the practitioner and the viewer are the focal point for this year’s Intimadance Festival at Tmuna Theatre. Now in its 14th year, the festival was initiated by Tmuna founder and director Nava Zuckerman to create a place and platform for choreographers to question and examine their own art and practices, without the onerous burden of commercial concerns. This year’s artistic directors, Rotem Tashach and Inbal Yaakobi, themselves dancers and choreographers, developed the theme from an awareness of the intensity of their own experiences onstage.
“Our physical sensations as dancers are powerful,” said Rotem Tashach, “the audience experiences dance through optics and culture, not internally through the nervous system.”
Intimadance will offer a perspective on everyday life “observed and analyzed through a different framework,” explained Rotem Tashach, “our view of the everyday is usually enslaved by other disciplines: psychology, sociology.” In other words, most of us non-dancers tend to interpret the situations of our lives in psychological, political or sociological terms. What would be the implications of examining, experiencing and interpreting life in choreographic terms?
The selected cohort of choreographers each relate to this theme in different ways, with five short works in Program Aleph, and four in Program Bet. Two guest works will premiere at the festival: Sha’a Im Ochli-kol (An Hour with Omnivores) by Shani Granot and Nevo Romano, and Be’Nogea Le’etmol (About Yesterday) by Adva Zakai.
Program Aleph includes: Maya Brinner – Nisuyim Be’Hipnosa (Experiments in Hypnosis); Ariel Bronz and Bar Eltras – Noach Be’Koshi, O Eich Hifsakti Lachtoch Batzal Be’Sakin Shel Uga (Barely Comfortable, or How I Learned to Stop Chopping Onions with a Cake Knife); Asher Lev – HaMeragelet Rut (Ruth the Spy); Saar Szekely – Zamzemet; Tal Shibi – Ktzat Yoter Hofshi (A Little More Free).
Program Bet includes: Maayan Horesh and Nitzan Lederman – Miss Catch; Gabrielle Neuhaus – Barcode; Hillel Kogan – Ohavim Aravim (Loving Arabs); Olivia Court Mesa – Tzomet (Junction).
My recommendation: see as much as you can! Tickets are priced to be viewer-friendly: 65 NIS for one performance; 100 NIS for two. All performances will take place at Tmuna Theatre, 8 Soncino Street, Tel Aviv. Call 03-5611211 to order tickets.
Intimadance dates and times:
Program Aleph: Wednesday, June 19th at 20:30; Friday, June 21st at 14:30; Saturday, June 22nd at 20:30.
Program Bet: Thursday, June 20th at 20:30; Saturday, June 22nd at 17:00.
Sha’a Im Ochli-kol: Wednesday, June 19th at 19:00; Saturday, June 22nd at 19:00
Be’Nogea Le’etmol: Thursday, June 20th at 19:00; Friday, June 21st at 13:00
Roy Herzlich’s terrific video will give you an idea of things to come:
