Curriculum Year B
The bi-annual program for choreography in Kelim,
led by May Zarhy
Year B
From 0546305558 | by Rom Sheratzky. Photo – Dan Asuach.
Yearly project
In preparation for the second year of studies, the participants of the program are asked to come up with a proposal for a work, which they will work on throughout the year. Departing from this proposal and a few inspirational references for their process, the research and development of the piece will start, guided by the head of the program and professional guest mentors. The process will include own work in the studio of Kelim, group presentations, feedback sessions, one on one rehearsals and meetings with a mentor, and eventually presentations in front of a panel. The year will end with a few performances of the participants’ pieces in the space of Kelim.
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 theater, dance, and the visual arts and currently working on his MA at the University of Huddersfield, England.
Choreographic exercises
May Zarhy
Through a series of sessions we will practice basic choreographic exercises, independently from a specific theme or a development of a piece. Through the use of tools, such as: unisono, canon, solo vs. duo and more, we will deal with questions like one’s manner of transmitting one’s materials to another performer, the difference between feeling the material from “the inside” as a performer to seeing it from “the outside”, and more.
A few of the sessions will be in collaboration and the participation of the third year students of RE-SEARCH program for creative dancers, directed by Or Marin.
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.
The unfinished business with Liveness
Uri Shafir
Liveness is the most essential element in Live Performance. Is it though? What is Liveness? Where is it? In the body, in space, or in the conditions of the event? How does it manifest itself in those areas? In what ways does Liveness shape the choreography? Is it a friend or a foe? What problems, questions, riddles and unfinished business does it tackle us as dance makers and performers? How can we make the most out of these questions in a pleasurable experience? In this workshop, we will undergo a physical-performative practice that tries to ask questions around liveness, agency and nothingness as potential. We will read texts, watch videos, and linger in a space where the body can become a “Thing” – real but fictitious, concrete yet abstract – an unfinished business on its own.
Uri Shafir is an Israeli dancer, choreographer and a performance artist. He was born in the early 80’s in Israel. Uri is Creating independent works since 2009, and presenting them in different platforms and festivals in Israel and abroad. Uri is a graduate of MASPA (kibbutz Ga’aton Dance Workshop), Kelim Choreography Center (Israel), and the MA choreography studies in Montpellier France, in the MASTER EXERCE program, at ICI-CCN, (artistic director – Christian Rizzo). Uri received the Ministry of Culture prize for young choreographers in 2017, and the first prize in the 2015 international choreography competition of MASH (Machol Shalem) with his solo The Koloklum. As a dancer, worked and performed in Ensemble Batsheva Dance Company, and in dance works by Yasmeen Godder, Niv Sheinfeld & Oren Laor, Dana Ruttenberg, Maya Levy & Anando Mars, Guy Gutman and more. Uri is a Gaga teacher (Ohad Naharin’s movement language), leading Gaga classes around the globe. Uri also leads workshops investigating his working materials and choreographic methods. His works can be situated in the threshold between choreography and performance, and explore the notion of Liveness performance, while reflecting upon the act of performing through choreographed and un-choreographed movement, through different relationships and constructions with the audience, the performers, and the performance itself.
Reality Moves
Michal Helfman
The “performative turn״ that took place in the art world in the 1990s, opened the door for choreographers to enter the art spaces. The duet between the worlds of art and dance has continued to this day. For the art, it has restored the sense of the ritual and the physicality it lost in the course of late modernism. For its part, the art has yielded the dance world a critical and conceptual view of the reality in which the work is formed and displayed.
The workshop will focus on the terms “Relationship Aesthetics” and “Delegated Performance” that emerged from the encounter between dance and art. These terms point to the given reality as an existing repository of performative and choreographic modes of action. In doing so, it places the work within the social and the political orders of reality.
The workshop will consist of an introduction to works that move on the continuum between dance and art, from a guided reading of texts and from practical exercises. We will end the workshop with presentations that will make use of the museum space and the public sphere as “readymades” that bring about their innate special and chorographical substances.
Michal Helfman (b. 1973) is a multidisciplinary artist living and working in Tel Aviv.
Helfman has had solo-shows in KW Berlin, The Felix Nussbaum Haus, Osnabruck, the Israel Museum, Jerusalem and the Tel Aviv Museum of Art and the CCA Tel-Aviv.
She has exhibited in numerous international group exhibitions, including the 32nd Sao Paulo Biennial, the 50th Venice Biennial, Martin Gropius Bau Berlin, NBK Berlin, Kunstmuseen Krefeld among others. Helfman is a recipient of the Anselm Kiefer Award of the Wolf Foundation (1998), the Young Artist Prize from the Ministry of Culture (2001), The Ministry of Culture Award (2009) and the Artis Award for Exceptional Work in Uncertain Times (2020).
Helfman is a senior faculty member at the BFA and MFA programs of Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Jerusalem and Tel-Aviv, since 2003.
Helfman examines the notion of uncertainty as a chronic state in our society and perceives uncertainty and the vulnerability it carries as gateways to higher dimensions of consciousness and agency. Helfman sees in art the entity that can bring us into these dimensions.
Translation of sensational and visual information in movement
Shai Faran
The workshop will be dealing with the way that we translate, process and interpret information that we perceive both through touch and through our eyes.
Working with partners in different constellations, we will address the importance of clarity in communication while being placed in different roles- when asking for what we need and when giving what is needed. It’s a form of partnering work that is not aiming for efficiency or harmony, but rather for connecting to our own center by using resistance, force and support from the others.
Shai Faran is an Israeli dancer, teacher and choreographer, based in Europe. After studying in the dance department at the Misgav High School and at the Haifa dance workshop for dancers and choreographers she danced for the Kibbutz Contemporary Dance Company II, the Sigma Ensemble and the Dafi Altabab Dance Group. After studying and working in Israel, she moved to Europe, where she expanded her knowledge and started to develop her research, practice and methods of teaching and creating. She has worked with different choreographers such as Matej Kejzer, Maya M.Caroll, Yuval Pick, Alessandro Sciarroni, David Hernandez, Martin Kilvady and more and performed around Europe. She created several works which won scholarships from the America- Israel Cultural Foundation, the foundation named after Ehud Manor and the cultural senate of Berlin. In the last few years she has been teaching dance different frames for professional dancers, BA and MA education programs such as Danish National School of Performing Arts, Stockholm Uniarts, La-Manufacture in Lausanne, CCD University for Music and Dance in Cologne and more, in dance companies such as Cullberg Dance Company, Scottish Dance Theater, Corpus in Copenhagen and in open workshops around the world while developing her own work and presenting it as part of the Berlin dance scene, working as a freelance dance performer, teacher and choreographer.
Beyond Choreography: On the Choreographic Practice in a World that no Longer (Only) Dances
Dr. Idit Suslik
From the initial formulation of theatrical dance in the renaissance, it was perceived as representing a form of “being-toward-movement”, while choreography functioned as the practice of generating “a disciplined body performing the spectacle of its own capacity to be set into motion” (Lepecki, 2006: 7). Throughout the 20th century, many changes occurred in the art dance that influenced its aesthetic features, but only towards the end of the millennium a crucial turning point disconnected it from the idea of ‘dancing bodies’. In this course we will discuss the choreographic practice in light of the transformation of dance into an expanded field, and examine how contemporary terminology (such as post-dance or meta-choreography) resonates with ontological changes within dance, the bodies of knowledge that are present and active in this field, and the various practices that sometimes challenge traditional expectations of how and what we dance. These aspects will be demonstrated through an analysis of contemporary choreographic models in the dance of the present (such as lecture-performance, choreographic objects, and technological/virtual compositions, and more).
Dr. Idit Suslik is a lecturer at the Kibbutzim College of Education, Art and Technology, and regularly lectures to the wide public in series she curates and various learning frameworks (such as the Ministry of Education, Kol Atzmotai Tomarna – School for Dance Theatre for Men, The Preparatory Semester in Arabic of the School of Visual Theatre, and more). Her research focuses on the aesthetics of the body and dance, and performance analysis in dance and theatre through contemporary artistic and cultural contexts, and is regularly presented in academic conferences and journals in Israel and abroad. She previously served as the dance and theatre critic for ‘City Mouse’ and currently writes in her independent online platform ‘The Contemporary Eye’. She is a member of various professional and artistic committees in the fields of dance and theatre, and in June 2022 was elected as the Chair of the Israeli Society for Dance Research. A former flamenco dancer and teacher.
The singing body
Laila Mazal Yenishen
Our bodies change through time. There is an intimate connection between our rising on our feet and our ability to rise in song. This process takes us – as individuals and as a species – on a journey toward balance, movement and contact – with ourselves and with our world.
In this vocal workshop for dancers and choreographers we’ll explore the physicality of sound : sound in itself, the anatomy of the voice, and our experience of it. We’ll aquire tools to work with breath, resonance, perception, overtones, textures, etc. And we’ll cultivate creative tools by learning from different vocal traditions, improvising and listening to each other.
Laila Mazal Yenishen is a musician and multidisciplinary artist born in Paris in 1981. She’s invested in vocal creation and pedagogy, and explores the realms between the traditional and the experimental. Laila is a member of various projects like the Great Gehenna Choir, Hakolot Hatsafim, and Opus Octopus. She is a vocal trainer and choir leader. Graduate of the Visual Theater School, she studied musicology, sound art, Western and non Western musical traditions, and various approaches to vocal work.
To be an independent Artist – production management and initiation
Anat Radnay
The purpose of the meetings is to map the “actors” in the independent creative scene in Israel and to provide basic tools for self-management of a production. To get to know the various opportunities that exist in the field for an independent artist and to sharpen the organizational-production “muscle” of each of the artists.
Topics to be studied:
1. Mapping the organizational environment of culture and art in Israel. Who are the “actors” in the arena? We will review most of them, from the government offices through supporting bodies, large and small cultural institutions and more. We will then discuss how all this relates to our work.
2. Excel – a basic tool for managing budgets and schedules in production processes and self-management.
3. Budget and flow – practice.
4. Opportunities – fringe and dance centers, festivals and events, budgetary sources.
Anat Radnay
CEO of EVE – Independent Theatre Makers Association. Manages, produces, and initiates various cultural projects. Over the years she has gained experience in managing cultural institutions and took part in numerous artistic projects both in the field of performing arts as well as visual arts. Anat is engaged in consulting and mentoring young cultural organizations and independent artists and also lecturer at Sapir College in the Department of Culture Studies. Over the years, following her involvement in a variety of projects at various scales and a wide range of arts, Anat has gained extensive experience and deep understanding in the field of cultural policy in Israel.
Sound creation for choreography
Tom Klein and May Zarhy
How to collaborate when one’s medium and professional vocabulary is different? What does it mean to write music for a dance piece? What could be a satisfactory collaborative working process for you?
In a first joint course of the Bi-annual Choreography Program in Kelim and the New Music Department in the Musrara Multidisciplinary School of Art in Jerusalem, choreographers and musicians embark on a collaborative creative process, finishing with a presentation.
At the beginning of the course the participants will examine dance pieces, which exemplify specific conscious relationships between movement and sound. These will serve as a ground for discourse and collaborative experimentation. Thereafter, the participants will split into small teams, with whom they’ll work on a weekly basis with the guidance of the course’s mentors.
* Most of the course will take place in Kelim choreography center, and two of the sessions will take place at the Musrara Multidisciplinary School of Art and Society in Jerusalem.
Tom Klein (1987) is a composer, sound artist and cellist. Klein’s art deals with the performance of sound in relation to the physical, social and political space as well as his ongoing work with dancers and choreographers. As a creator and performer, he incorporates contemporary composition, improvisation, performance art and studio production. Klein has performed at the Israel Festival, Suzanne Dellal International Exposure, Mekudeshet Festival, Pecha Kucha TLV, Dance at Mazia, Zikuk, Tzlil Meudcan, Hangartfest Italy, CIRCE Georgia. Klein is the co-founder of SEDEK, an artist collective based in Jerusalem aimed at promoting the local experimental scene. Klein is a B.Mus and MA graduate, Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance, and has earned scholarships from the Ministry of Culture, America-Israel Cultural Foundation, Mifal Hapais, and the Siday Fellowship for Contemporary Music.
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.
Costume Workshop
Lee Meir
Clothes carry within them many different meanings; from functional aspects such as covering and protecting the body, through sensory aspects of touch, smell, or memory, to questions about identity and belonging. Whether we like it or not, our clothes tell the world around us how to read us.
In performance work, the costumes often unconsciously tell us how to look and read the piece- what context it is placed in / stems from, what should we pay attention to, what references does it point out. As a choreographer who is also involved in costume design, I often encounter two main problems when dealing with costumes in contemporary dance – either the question of costumes is pushed to the last minute and the result is often random or generic, or the costumes takes on too much importance and lights the piece in a manner that is not supporting it.
In the workshop we will throw clothes, textiles and objects on ourselves and around us. In return they will throw back at us possibilities of choreography. These will form the basis of the scores with which we will experiment together. Through combining an intuitive and sensory approach with a reflective and analytical one, we will search together for different ways in which clothes can help us understand what actually interests us as contemporary
dance makers.
Lee Méir is a Jerusalem born, Berlin based freelance choreographer, performer and costume designer. Her works vary from solos to collective formats, always based on her understanding of art primarily as a meeting point between ideas, people and craft. Her works explore the tension(s) between language, movement, sound, and meaning production, and are presented internationally in platforms such as: Tanz im August Berlin, Brighton Festival, Heidelberg Tanzbiennale, Tanzquartier Vienna a.o. She is a recipient of the Pina Bausch Fellowship 2019 in cooperation with L’Ecole des Sables in Senegal. In 2020 she collaborated with the Swiss director Boris Nikitin, on 24 Images per Second (Kaserne Basel/Gesnerallee Zürich/ Wiener Festwochen). Her latest piece, ‘sound&safe’, which explores rhythm and togetherness, premiered in 2021 at HAU (Hebbel am Ufer) Berlin. Lee completed choreography studies at HZT- Inter University Centre for Dance Berlin in 2013.
Writing for Choreographers
Noa Shuval
Choreographers are often required to write about their work. Explaining one’s work in writing can be challenging – possibly because the demand to describe the artistic practice in words seems counter-intuitive. However, the ability to articulate such ideas is an acquired skill.
In this workshop, you will practice writing introductory texts to your work. We will focus on project statements and bio blurbs; if time allows, we will discuss grant proposals and official emails.
Participants are expected to turn in written assignments; these will be analyzed in class and during one-on-one sessions. The workshop will provide participants with tools and tips for writing about their practice intimately, accessibly, and accurately.
Participants can choose to write in Hebrew or English.
Noa Shuval, Ph.D., psycholinguist, teaches at the Cognitive Linguistics Graduate Program, Tel-Aviv University. A translator and editor, she has extensive experience working with artists on their texts. She also taught writing for artists at the MFA program, Bezalel Academy for the Arts.
The Code and the Secret
Nir Shauloff
The workshop will examine various performative formats and explore different ways to structure a piece. Together and individually, we will try to discover and invent our own code: How can we formulate the order, the narrative, and the duration of a performance? Is it possible to redefine the contract between time, space, and audience? How do we settle the dispute between image, material, and medium?
The workshop will include a joint discussion and individual work.
Nir Shauloff is an artist and a theatre-maker. His work spans various practices in the media of video, sound, text, and research. He is the artistic director of The Autumn Cult festival of Hazira theater in Jerusalem and teaches at the SVT. 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.
Back to Instincts
Roni Chadash
The class starts with a soft floor warm up, which focuses on giving weight, using the edges and joints of the body as an engine for movement, releasing muscle work, extending the body to space and more elements taken from release technique and feldenkrais, adapted to my own research of the body and its possibilities.
As the class continues, we find our way up standing, having some more dynamic & flowing exercises which focus on the connection to the space, separation of body parts, rage of movement and releasing ambition and control. We play with different body qualities and textures in order to open how we approach movement and the never-ending possibilities of the way we move the same thing.
Roni Chadash, 1990, is an independent choreographer, performer and teacher, based in Tel-Aviv, Israel. In her movement research, Roni is deconstructing the body into multiple joints that function independently. She is in a constant search for instinctive, emotional and raw motives for movements. Her works are characterized by the attempt to deconstruct the body, the movement, the image, the relationship between the audience and the performers and the act of the show itself. The way she deals with the body peels it from history, stereotypes and dictated labeling and confronts it with a naked present.
Roni’s works received numerous awards for their originality, in Israel as well as abroad, including Israel Ministry of Culture Award for Young Choreographers (2021, 2018) and ‘Shades in Dance’ Award (2015).
Pilates
Ariel Gelbart
As movers, we invest a lot of time and resources in the nurturing of our creative and artistic visions. Unfortunately many times, it may come on expense of our physical well being.
Especially during the peaks of intense periods in the studio, I see the importance of proper preparation of the body in the start of a working day, raising awareness and taking time to maintain the body.
My research provides accessibility to the Pilates Method principles while linking them to the intense day to day we have as dancers and creators.
We will work on general and specific strengthening of the body – while finding elongation, release, breath work and implementation of efficient movement in order to prepare the body optimally for a days work.
Ariel Gelbart danced in several dance companies throughout the years.
Among them, The Inbal Pinto and Avshalom Pollak Dance company, Batsheva Ensemble, and SOL Dance Company. Today Ariel works as a freelance dancer with choreographers: May zarhi, Michael Getman, Adi Boutrous, and Gilad Yerushalmi.
In the last years Ariel has been deepening his knowledge in the world of pilates while creating links to dance and to injury rehabilitation and prevention.
Kungfu Dance
Kerem Shemi
In class we explore movement principles and elements drawn from internal Chinese martial arts. These principles can deepen our understanding of the kinesthetic body, increase our awareness of movement possibilities and lead us into creative movement and dance.
At the basis of this practice we set the question: what is the basic physicality these martial arts explore, as arts that study the state of the unknown. We will move in a delicate balance between softness and structure, relaxation and stability and ask what is an available body. Through this we track concepts such as center, rooting, momentum, spiral movement, yin and yang qualities and exploding force.
The class consists of two main parts: the first part focuses on instructed movements and exercises inspired by martial arts. The second part is taking these principles into guided improvisation, providing a platform for individual research and exploration.
Kerem Shemi is an Israeli dancer, choreographer, martial artist and teacher. Her daily practice consists of a unique combination of dance and martial arts, which is manifested in her choreography and teaching. She holds a BA in dance and choreography from the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance. After her dance education she continued her movement research in China and Berlin, living, training and teaching full time for five years at the WDP school for internal Chinese martial arts of Wudang. At present she is a faculty member at the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance and teaches in various dance programs Chinese sword and ‘Kungfu Dance’ – a movement language she is developing for several years. She performs with her choreographic works and collaborates as a dancer with other independent artists as Rebecca Ann Tess, Ofir Yudilevitch, Nir Vidan, Ofri Cnaani, Maayan Danoch, Anat Shamgar, Uri Duvdevani, Nitay Kallay Avigail Sfez, Tamir Friedrich to name a few.
Movement encounter
Michal Sayfan
In the classes that I will share with you, we will move with deep listening to the body in every moment, we will become more aware of our movement in space, of an inner movement, the movement of our breath, voluntary or involuntary movement.
We will look into the possibility of resting while moving.
We will connect to the messages received by our body and find movement which allows alertness, vitality, calmness, enthusiasm and excitement.
I’m Michal Sayfan, a dancer, a Gaga teacher, an Ilan Lev Method practitioner and a herbalist. I was a dancer in the Batsheva dance company where I danced mostly creations by Ohad Naharin and Sharon Eyal. As a freelance dancer, I worked with inspiring choreographers: Ella Rothschild, Gili Navot, Talia Beck, Noa Zuk & Ohad Fishop. As a dancer, I would get injured often and constantly searched for ways of healing through movement. I became a Gaga teacher (Ohad Naharin’s movement language) in 2006 and a practitioner of ILM (Ilan Lev method) in 2011 which helped me discover and learn about the exceptional ability of the body to heal itself and become more sophisticated.