Curriculum Year A
The bi-annual program for choreography in Kelim,
led by May Zarhy
Year A
Choreography workshops
Questions and elementary terms workshop
May Zarhy
Instead of waiting for the crisis to arise, or be surprised when it’s suddenly present, why don’t we invite it ourselves?
By a practice of posing fundamental questions, both personal and professional, we will invite that which drives us in the present moment while confronting a wider context of questions such as: why art? What could choreography be? Why to create? Why not? From there, we will unfold elementary terms of choreographic practice in order to begin creating a common vocabulary for conversation. This will lead us to converse through the body, the word and the listening in order to see and sense where each one is at that very moment. An opening workshop for the new choreography program.
Choreographer and performer May Zarhy (1984), creates independently stage, site specific and participatory works. She operates the intersection of choreography, performance, and sound art. In her work she explores the materiality of the human body through movement and sound. Zarhy is a graduate of the ‘Rotterdam Dance Academy’ (2006) and the choreography program ‘ex.e.r.ce’ in Montpellier France, directed by Xavier Le Roy and Mathilde Monnier (2007). During her studies, she also worked as William Forsythe’s assistant at the Forsythe Company (2005). Later, Zarhy co-founded with Fabrice Mazliah and Ioannis Mandafounis the collaborative trio Mamaza (2009 – 2014), with whom she created and performed around the world. The trio members were selected as associate artists at deSingel, Antwerp (2011-2012), and resident artists at Künstlerhaus Mousonturm, Frankfurt (2012-2014). Zarhy works as a dramaturg and rehearsal director for fellow artists such as: Adi Boutrous, Hermann Heisig, Uri Shafir, Fabrice Mazliah and more.
TO PLAY DANCE
Hillel Kogan
Dance, texts, objects and sound that are means that will serve us as raw materials for a performative, intertextual discourse, about the act of making art, and about cultural values.Peeling the ideologies from the aesthetic, we will upload the aesthetic with new ideologies.
We will play dance like musicians play music and actors play roles.
We will put in question the validity of standards and criteria of dance and artwork at the present point in time.
Let’s also look at the past.
The dancing body – which is always in some degree of conflict – wonders what is perceived as worthy, aesthetic, artistic, beautiful, cool, new and interesting, and to a considerable extent, also ridiculous. We will dance with the body, artistic gestures and actions of constructing meaning.
Hillel Kogan, Born in 1974. He is an award-winning choreographer, dancer, dramaturge and teacher, whose work has been performed in venues and festivals all over the world. Kogan has danced in companies in Switzerland, Portugal and Israel. He is also an assistant to Ohad Naharin in Batsheva Dance Company and around the world, co-directed the Curtain Up festival in 2015-2016, and created works for companies in Portugal, France and Austria.
The multidimensional concern of the dance workers
Sharon Zuckerman Weiser
In the workshop we will meet the choreographic kaleidoscope, discuss and examine various components of choreography and how they fit and collaborate with each other. We will examine how we, as creators, develop an overall understanding and thought about our creative DNA, which advances our processes, clarifies which working method is right for us and refines our choreographic dialect. We will look at examples from the work of the workshop facilitator, Sharon Zuckerman Weiser, and will taste some of her working methods.
Sharon Zuckerman Weiser (Born 1977), choreographer, performer, dramaturg and creator in various media. Investigates the human dimension in performative work and the performative dimension in human existence. In the last decade she has created various platforms for the professional community for the exploration, experience and emergence of creative products. Among other things, she founded “Simulator – a conscious space for physical performers”, curated “Idea in the Eye” – a series of performances of dance ideas, directed Kelim choreography program and taught improvisation, performance and dance in many settings. Graduate of P.A.R.T.S (Brussels), and currently studying in the MFA program at Bezalel. Mother to 3 wonderful daughters.
Towards Documentary Choreography
Arkadi Zaides
In his artistic work choreographer Arkadi Zaides investigates the possibilities of choreography to relate to today’s societal urgencies through the use of documentary materials. For about a century, documentary theatre has reconstructed factual information in order to analyze a specific event or phenomenon. Visual art practitioners have joined this trend and demonstrated how factual information can be altered and questioned. The field of choreography is driven by critical experimentations but until recently, practitioners seemed less prone to confront topical political issues. Choreography, however, is able to weave together factual information and embodied practices in order to question social and political realities as well as the idea of documentary and authentic self. In this workshop, Zaides will be sharing his artistic work as well as questioning together with the participants the possible modes of engaging with reality through one’s own perspective practice.
Arkadi Zaides is an Israeli choreographer of Belarusian origin. In Israel, he performed in companies like Batsheva Dance Company and Yasmeen Godder Dance Group before starting an independent career in 2004. Zaides graduated from “Amsterdam Master of Choreography” (now DAS Choreography) at the AHK Academy of Theatre and Dance in Amsterdam (NL). He is currently a Ph.D. scholar at the Royal Conservatoire & University of Antwerp. Since 2015, his company Institut des Croisements has been based in Villeurbanne (FR). His works have been presented worldwide. He received numerous awards, such as the Émile Zola Prize for Performing Arts for demonstrating engagement in human rights issues (2013).
Guest workshop
Pietro Quadrino
“Only Art can change the world” Joseph Beuys said. How can we, as artists, make a treasure of these words? To be on stage means to be in a constant form of creation. Something inevitably different happens every time somebody steps on the stage. We want to be aware of this, because whether you’re an actor, a dancer, if you know what you’re doing, or at least know that you don’t know what you’re doing, whatever you do, you’ll do it better.
Pietro Quadrino was born in Rome in 1987.
After completing his studies in Political Science at the “La Sapienza” University of Rome, he began his career as a theater actor. He moved to Paris where he graduated at the AIDAS, International Academy of Performing Arts, specialized in Commedia dell’Arte. He toured in France before coming back to work in the national Italian theater “Teatro di Roma”. In 2012 he joined the theater and dance company of the Belgian artist Jan Fabre.
During this period, Pietro Quadrino also works with other internationally renowned directors, such as Ariane Mnouchkine, Peter Brook, Angelica Liddell, Alex Rigola, and others. In 2016 he founded his own theater company Post Scriptum Company, with which he creates shows, (L’Uomo Rivoltato, Jungle Dream) performances, (Oh my girl!) and movies (Algot&Claes).
Transplanting the Performative in Everyday Life and the Quotidian on Stage
Rotem Tashach
Contemporary theory is impossibly complex and heavy, isn’t it? Not to mention using contemporary theory to create. At times it just feels too convoluted and just down right next to impossible. In the workshop we will examine the easiest most initial solutions in order to discover the immense potential they hold in creating alternative tactics for creating, performing and thinking about choreography and performance today.
Rotem Tashach is an independent choreographer and performer specializing in lecture performances. Dance history, choreography, stage skills and acrodance teacher. Artistic co-director of Intimadance Festivals of 2013-2014. Teaches at Zuzima a house for contemporary movement, Mitzpe Ramon. Taught at the program for choreography and movement for stage and screen at Sapir College (2017-2018), at the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance 2012-2017. Taught Dance History at the Kibbutz Seminar College (2012-2014). Gave a lecture series titled ‘The war between Body and Order’ in Kelim school for Choreography in Bat Yam and in Hakvutza School of Contemporary dance. MA in Performance Studies from New York University (2019). MPS in Interactive Telecommunication from New York University (2006). BA in Art History from the Tel Aviv University(2000). Selected works: On the way to Throat Command (2021); BN2 (2018); It’s All Good (2016); Paved Life (2012) translated into Slovak and performed by Elledanse in Slovakia and the Czech Republic 2014-15; Polished Concrete made for the Israel Museum in Jerusalem (2011), Hudud (2011), Monuments (2010), Corporpolis (2010), Israelica (2009) and Metamorphoses (2008) for Intimadance festivals 2008-2010.
Move your image
Andreas Merk
The workshop is informed by my approach to generating movement which comes from dancing and a plural understanding of our bodies’ ability to express.
At the beginning of each gathering we will start with an hour of dancing together, where inhabiting the body will be our focus. Direct relation to the music and dancing with the music, while the body and mind work alongside, will be practiced in order to spark the imagination in the creation of movement. Understanding what we do will be less important than following impulses to share a common dance.
I will introduce a variety of tools of how impulses can be expressed and shared, harvested and distributed. The term ‘plural’ will be explored, through a variety of rhythms or patterns established in parts of the body. The use of the entire body and all its forms of expression will be encouraged.
Following our dancing, we will go into choreographic exploration, where we will use those tools and further their deepening as learned and explored mainly in my work experience with the choreographer Marlene Monteiro Freitas, with whom I have worked for the last 10 years.
Born in Germany, Andreas Merk studied at HfMDK, University for Music Performing Arts in Frankfurt Germany, P.A.R.T.S. Performing Arts Research and Training Studios in Brussels Belgium and Scuola Teatro Dimitri in Verscio, Switzerland (BA). Working experience includes the work for stage and screen with choreographers and directors, amongst them: Tania Carvalho, Falk Richter, Nicolas Stemann, Tomer Heymann, Marlene Monteiro Freitas, Inbal Pinto, Avshalom Pollak. Further experiences include creating, teaching workshops, master classes of the work of MMFreitas, bodywork studies of Feldenkrais, Zen-Body Therapy, Shiatsu.
Somatic Practices
Mind the body
Michael Getman
Our body is the central idea that underlies our experiences of the world.
It experiences worldly things, and it is also experienced as a thing in the world.
In the workshop, we ask to imagine a world where there is no longer a distance between ‘it’ and our knowledge of ‘it’… how, then, are we going to talk about it..? to dance it..?
We will be moving and dancing the relationships and qualities that occur in our bodies; desires, choices, thoughts, feelings, senses, extensions… all are different aspects of the physical experience.
We will explore how physicality creates meaning, organizes thoughts into movements into other ideas, creates something from nothing, and produces an individual performative language.
We let our physical knowledge emerge as the primary canvas on which choreographic thinking is realized. With precision, freedom, and sensitivity, we dance between the self, the body, and the world.
Michael Getman is a choreographer and performer born in Israel to Russian/Jewish parents Dora Karolin and Zachariah Getman. Upon completion of his professional training at the Bat Dor school under the direction of Mrs. Janet Ordman, he joined the Batsheva dance company. In 1999 he joined the Ballet Freiburg Pretty Ugly as well as Theater Saarbrucken, Germany. He has been influenced by his experience as a dancer, working with, learning from, and interpreting works by choreographers including Ohad Naharin, Amanda K. Miller, Marguerite Donlon, Orjan Andersson, William Forsythe and Naomi Perlov. Since 2007 he has been working as a freelance choreographer. Michael examines and is curious about the relationship between our bodily actions, cognitive responses, subjective experiences, and the ability to respond to the ongoing demands of experience with various emotions. His works have been presented in various festivals and venues around the world. Michael expands his artistic search and research by collaborating with artists from the field of theatre, dance, and the visual arts and currently working on his MA at the University of Huddersfield, England.
The Choreographies of Your Life
Almog Loven
Description: Infinite choreographies continuously form and go extinct in this world. By being alive I knowingly or unknowingly take part in many of them. Upon attempting to add something to this world, I wish to see: Where do I already take part, and where do I contribute without noticing. When I wish to acknowledge the scope of my accumulated experience in life, I try to be as open and as attentive as possible. Sometimes this means doing nothing special but allowing the day to wash over me. Sometimes this means doing something unexpected. Sometimes to courageously participate in a journey that does not have a clear destination. One way or another, all that is offered to me through the branching choreography of my life, is to see its various layers, and their constantly changing forms, and to step into them.
Almog Loven graduated from The Maslool Professional Dance Program in Tel Aviv in 2009. He then won the prestigious danceWEB scholarship, for Vienna’s Impulstanz festival. As a professional dancer, Almog has danced with Inbal Pinto and Avshalom Pollak Dance Company (Israel), La Veronal (Spain), Noa Shadur and Gil Kerer. Further International collaborations led to the creation of three short dance films: Nomad’s Feet (2013) by the Dutch Jelle Warendorff was shot in Vienna, Nurture (2019) by the Sicilian Esco L’acqua was shot in San Francisco, and the latest Makura (2020) by the Ukranian/Canadian Olya Glotka was shot in Israel. Almog is a certified practitioner and teacher in the Ilan Lev Method. He also holds a degree in Psychology, Literature and Cognitive Science from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he focused on the study of chronic pain and psychological flexibility. In 2017 Almog founded Weightlessness, a platform dedicated to exploring honesty through movement. He has led Weightlessness workshops in London, Arnhem, Amsterdam, Groningen, Florence, Cologne, San Francisco, Nevada City, Colorado, Philadelphia, Berlin, Toronto, Montreal, Paris and Tel Aviv.
Release based physical deepening
Anat Vaadia
The classes combine gentle listening to the body and its multi-systemicity along with dynamic work, on the floor, in standing, and in space.
In the lesson we will learn structured physical sequences and through them we will ask questions of performance, experience and being.
Along with structured sequences, we will also go through less structured and more experiential exercises that encourage deepening of inner listening, and practicing movement from altering states of being.
Feldenkrais classes for moving and creating people
Anat Vaadia
Classes will begin with a “classic” Feldenkrais lesson, as Moshe Feldenkrais taught them.
After the practical lesson we will talk a bit about the principles that appear in the lesson, understanding more about the core of the Feldenkrais method. We will reflect about the connection between the Feldenkrais method and creative processes. How it can enhance a method of working in the studio, and how the method can inspire and enlighten a very wide range of fields in the world of performance, movement and dance.
From somatic work to improvisation
Anat Vaadia
In this series of classes we will start the day by moving the body through basic release exercises as well as exercises from the Feldenkrais Method. After the warm up we will go more into personal research. Exploring different aspects of our approach to our body and to movement as a physical, sensual, mental experience. We will then widen the personal perspective, exploring our relation to space and those around us. Raising questions about composition, attentiveness, mutual attention, and choreography. Questioning how all these can support creative processes and choreographic research.
Anat Vaadia, Born in Jerusalem in 1978. A graduate of the Robin High School of Music and Dance in Jerusalem, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and the Academy of Music and Dance in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Between the years 2002-2008 she lived and worked as a dancer, creator and dance teacher in Europe. Since 2008, she has been working in Israel as a dancer, choreographer, rehearsal director, and certified teacher of dance and the Feldenkrais method. Among the choreographers she collaborated with; Yasmeen Godder, Adi boutrous, Shira Eviatar, Uri Shaffir, Gilad Yerushalmi, Guy Gutman. As an independent artist, her works have been exhibited in various settings and at festivals in Israel and around the world; Rohkunstbau, Feld 5, Tanztage Festival, Lucky Trimmer, Shades in Dance, Macholohet, Machol Shalem, Diablog, IntimaDance and more. She has created two dance works as part of a research project at Yasmeen Godder Studio involving people dealing with Parkinson’s disease.
Happy Dancer
Stefan Perry
Through various functions of our body we will explore the constantly changing physical being while observing the fraction of the second when an action is formed. We will explore different strategies of composition. We will try to let go of our preconceived ideas of what dance is and try to connect to the animalistic instinct in our bodies. We will try to let go of the conscious mind and to connect to the instinctive unconsciousness that lives within. We will get to know the flowing energy in our bodies as a source for joy while using the reflex of laughter to guide our movements. We will look for a symbioses between internal happenings and the external environment. We will deal with different kinds of balances through focusing on being on one leg. Through observing the anatomy of the movement we will get to know the emotional and energetic gestures of our body.
Ferry Stefan, born in France. In 1994 he finished his studies at Conservatoire National Supérieur de Paris, where he earned a degree in classical Ballet. Until 1999 he danced at Les Ballets de Monte Carlo in Canada; from 1999, he joined the Batsheva Dance Company as a dancer. He performed the choreography of Ohad Naharin and others in Israel and worldwide. Created different works in Israel and Europe. Nowadays he is teaching Gaga, Modern, and ballet classes.
Theory in Practice
From Model to Creation – a choreography workshop with theoretical seasonings
Lior Avizoor
At the heart of this workshop is the assumption that an association between initial motivation and work methodologies can be identified. Throughout the classes we will observe working models of different choreographers, explore the reasons that led them to use certain methodologies and review the background and context of these choices. In addition, we will practice some exercises central to the work of the discussed choreographers and build short solo’s inspired by them.
Lior Avizoor (1981) is an independent researcher in the field of dance. In her work she focuses on deepening the discourse on the performing arts and connecting dance to other cultural domains. Lior studied dance at the Theaterschool in Amsterdam and Art Philosophy at The Tel Aviv University. She finished her Masters (concerning instant-composition and the philosophy of Martin Heidegger) with Excellence and today Lior is busy finishing her PhD (dealing with the ontology of the Dance Work). Lior was co-artistic director of ‘Room Dances Festival’ (2012-2015), co-editor of ‘MAAKAF online magazine for the performing arts’ (2010-2017) and initiating curator of the ‘KONTRAPUNK’ dance series at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art (2013-2018). Lior teaches theory and practice in various institutions in addition to working as dramaturge for independent contemporary dance choreographers. Since 2019 she is the Director of the Batsheva Dance Company School.
Ideas workshop
Ana Wild
In this workshop, we will practice working with ideas. Looking at the initial stages of a creation process, we’ll try to deepen our understanding of «research». How do we articulate an idea, research and develop it? In choreographic/artistic contexts, the use of the word «research» is often unclear or not concrete. In this workshop, we will experiment with tools and practices of research around ideas and terms from within the artistic process.
Ana Wild (1987) is a Performance and installation artist, graduate of The School of Visual Theatre in Jerusalem (2011) and DasArts – Master of Theatre in Amsterdam (2015). Ana Wild is a young girl, a graceful punk, a memorisation maven, interested in voice, in speaking, in words, in knowledge-structures, in anthropology, history, mythology, poetry, graphic design, electricity, in creation ex-nihlis, in musicality, learning, understanding, repetition, cyclicality, in Hebrew, English, French, Arabic, in translation, in print, in magic, in adventure, in friendship, in agency and in power. Her work oscillates between the theatre and the gallery, and was presented in Seoul, Geneva, Brussels and more. In Israel, her work was shown in MoBY – Bat-Yam Museum for contemporary art, Habait theatre in Jaffa and more. Her work “Worlds, a Canaan-Futuristic Song Cycle” was produced by Hazira, Jerusalem and co-produced by l’Arsenic, Lausanne. In 2019 the work was nominated for the PREMIO prize in Switzerland. In 2018-19 Wild was a fellow at Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart. Between 2021-22, She will be a resident in Artport, Tel-Aviv. Wild teaches at the “Olympus” study program for artists at the Liebling Haus.
Collective initiatives
In the second trimester of the first year we will dedicate one slot a week to reflecting on the performative context, rather than its content. This will be done through an experiment in which the participants will receive all of the spaces of Kelim Center for a day and will need to collectively decide what to do with this day. Questions such as: what’s needed now? What’s important? To Whom? And why? Arise from the experiment. Questions, which touch upon the position of the artist in relation to the place, time and society in which one exist and one’s motivation to act. From confronting these themes, the group will develop a concept and a format for that specific day and act for its realization collectively, with the guidance of the head of the program.
Theory
Thoughts on Performance
Nir Shauloff
The course looks at key moments in the history of stage and explores basic concepts in performance studies. We will present questions and problems related to the Event and the conventions of the medium, and address dilemmas concerning its materiality: audience, action, and the performing body. We will read and get to know texts and works from the ancient world to present times, discuss the successes and failures that the Art of the Now offers, and examine the political potential of performance, the only form of art made of humans.
Nir Shauloff is a theatre-maker and performance artist. His work spans various practices in the media of video, sound, text, and research. His projects have been presented at many theatres and art venues including: Bauhaus Dessau, Mousonturm Frankfurt, the Ruhrtriennale, Gessnerallee Zürich, the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Schwankhalle Bremen, Reading International, Jerusalem Season of Culture, and Bat Yam Museum.
Taste: A knowledge that cannot be known and a pleasure that cannot be experienced
Shir Hacham
In this course we will read and discuss the book Taste (77 pages) by Italian philosopher Girogio Agamben, published in 2015.Agamben discusses taste as a hybrid, deceptive and problematic sense.
On the one hand, we use taste in order to construct arguments and statements that we ultimately cannot justify, because beauty (the object of our tasteful statements) cannot be empirically situated or extrapolated.
On the other hand, taste (as a critique or a judgment of an object) gives rise to a pleasurable feeling that we cannot encompass or experience, because on the basis of that pleasure, we only form bodies of knowledges.
Taste oddly conjoins knowledge and pleasure, intelligibility and sensibility, its epistemological status undetermined and opaque.
Agamben claims that taste, as a metaphysical problem, was thought up long before the emergence of the science of Aesthetics in the early modern period.
Taste was an essential part of Plato’s dialogues, who discussed the necessary gap between beauty and truth.
In contrast to Aesthetics, which present itself as the “science of taste”, Agamben claims that in Kant – the Aesthetic thinker per se – the judgement of the beautiful cannot be a science or a knowledge, by discussing the sensible and impossible Idea of Beauty in The Critique of the Power of Judgment.
In short, taste is not merely an Aesthetic issue, not a knowledge confined to the disciplines of the arts. Taste is bound to a fundamental split between our ability to know, and our ability to desire, which fuse them in an impossible way.This course is defined as a philosophy course.
Shir Hacham holds a master’s degree in philosophy from Tel Aviv University. She practiced in the Department of Philosophy, wrote about dance in the Haaretz newspaper, and danced to the works of choreographers such as Sahar Azimi, Irad Matzliach and Dana Rutenberg. Together with Ido Feder, she founded “Tights: Dance and Thought”, and published articles in magazines in Israel and around the world.