The “Curtain Up” Festival at Suzanne Dellal looks to the future, raising the curtain on emerging choreographers. Celebrating its 20th anniversary, the festival has invited prominent Israeli choreographers who took some of their first choreographic steps at the festival to be the artistic directors for this year’s event. Each of the 6 participating choreographers selected an emerging choreographer to showcase, resulting in six programs of paired premieres, with performances from November 24 – December 5th at Suzanne Dellal in Tel Aviv and December 8 – 14th at the Rebecca Crown Auditorium in Jerusalem.
Special guest of this year’s festival is Inbal Pinto and Avshalom Pollak’s Dance Company, with the Israeli premiere of “Trout” on December 7, at Suzanne Dellal. “Trout” was created in Stavanger, Norway and is performed with live music by Kitchen Orchestra, a Norwegian collective. Taking place in an uncommon space, created to look like the inside of a well or flooded basement, which becomes a meeting place for the characters portrayed by the dancers, actors, musicians, singers and even the walls, who play an important role in the piece.
The festival program will include:
Curtain 1: Nimrod Freed Hosts Anat Grigorio and Dafi Eltabab
Subtext: Nimrod Freed
The life underneath our lives. Two dancers and an actor dance in one frame, whose parts change constantly and rapidly, charged with repressed emotions. Set to music by J. S. Bach.
Daydream: Anat Grigorio
Opening up to a world that extends the moment between sleeping and waking, blurring the familiar border, loving to daydream…
Under the Rug: Dafi Eltabab
A glimpse into the lives of four women, in their intimate space: exposes situations that are not spoken of. Old fears, feelings that have been stored deep within, under the rug.
Suzanne Dellal: 25.11.09 at 21:00, 3.12.09 at 21:00
Rebecca Crown Auditorium: 10.12.09
Curtain 2: Vertigo Hosts Elad Shechter
Mana: Noa Wertheim
A work that deals with the essence of creation; containing a polarized world. The inspiration of basic shapes, a line and circle, that can also be interpreted as male/female, presence/absence, empty/full, black/white, created a unique movement language that employs a spiral structure that gains velocity and symbolizes increasing energy, and growth.
Roni: Elad Shecter
A work which deals with social codes that govern our contemporary reality. Shechter takes feelings of dominance and aggression as his starting point, which, according to him, have gained control over our lives in areas such as: social and romantic relationships, security, economics, and culture.
Suzanne Dellal: 26.11.09 at 21:00, 6.12.09 at 21:00
Rebecca Crown Auditorium: 11.12.09 at 13:00
Curtain 3: Yasmeen Godder Hosts Iris Erez
LOVE FIRE: Yasmeen Godder
The work was entirely created on familiar waltzes and deals with the romantic aesthetic of music through a private, personal prism, and endeavors to be unconditionally swept away. Through its cultural and personal distance from the music the work undertakes a humorous and convoluted journey between identities and different emotional layers, in search of “the romantic.” In this work Godder continues her ongoing collaboration with dramaturg Itzik Giuli and dancer Eran Shani. This is her first collaboration with visual artist Yohai Mattus, who creates a plastic-performance response to the work in his personal visual language.
Numbia: Iris Erez
An investigation of the site of bodily ruin exposes a spirit that seeks to forget or create for itself a substitute memory. The body as a textual space upon which human life is written. The dancers turn to their bodies and, like archeologists, try to reach these experiences through the signs that remain.
Suzanne Dellal: 27.11.09 at 22:00, 5.12.09 at 21:00
Rebecca Crown Auditorium: 14.12.09 at 20:00
Curtain 4: Tel Aviv Dance Company Hosts Michael Miler
Blossom: Yaara Dolev
A piece for seven dancers and an artist – Jeremy Hoffman – that centers on passion, the desire to blossom, to collapse and develop, the wonders of nature and human nature.
Number 6: Michael Miler
The work is about: multiple events, human awareness and music in six parts.
Suzanne Dellal: 28.11.09 at 21:00, 1.12.09 at 21:00
Rebecca Crown: 12.12.09 at 20:30
Curtain 5: Noa Dar Hosts Maya Brinner and Irad Mazliah
All three choreographers suggest different points of reference to situations of uniformity as opposed to individuality, static vs. change.
Us: Noa Dar
Noa Dar examines the individual’s potential for freedom in confrontation with a policing group which enforces conformity and uniformity.
The Red Line: Maya Brinner
A trio for three female dancers. Three identical women seek individuality in a world dominated by beauty and power, precision and competition.
Unter den linden: Irad Mazliah
Irad Mazliah tracks the moment in which opposites merge and change takes place: is it possible to stop and probe deeply something that is in motion, or is it better to let it continue to move and let go of the need for control and comprehension.
Suzanne Dellal: 29.11.09 at 21:00, 2.12.09 at 21:00
Rebecca Crown Auditorium: 8.12.09 at 20:00
Curtain 6: Niv Sheinfeld and Oren Laor Host Noa Shadur
Big Mouth: Niv Sheinfeld and Oren Laor
Niv Sheinfeld and Oren Laor invited dancer/choreographer Keren Levi (Kibbutz Contemporary Dance Company and Bat Sheva Ensemble) to take part in creating their new piece. The creators and their work spin into dizzying journey of episodes and images that reveal the internal contradiction between the desire to find one’s place within a particular framework and feel at one with it, and the desire to be released from it in order to achieve self-expression.
Into the Night: Noa Shadur
The work deals with the gap between the tragic reality of death and its melodramatic theatrical representation. Dealing with cliché and melodrama emphasizes our helplessness in confronting death.
Suzanne Dellal: 30.11.09 at 21:00, 4.12.09 at 22:00
Rebecca Crown Auditorium: 13.12.09 at 20:00
The festival enables choreographers who do not work with an established dance company to create new work in a supportive environment, free of logistic and financial concerns. “Curtain Up” is initiated and supported by the Department of Dance in the Ministry of Culture and Sport, chaired by Nilly Cohen. The festival is produced by the Israel Festival, headed by Yossi Gan Tal. Producer: Miri Manirav.
Top photo image credit: “Trout” Inbal Pinto Dance Company/Photo: Asaf Ashkenazi
[…] that changed the face of Israeli dance,” said Culture Authority Head Tzah Granit of the upcoming “Curtain Up” dance festival, which will take place from November 24 to December 5 at the Suzanne Dellal Centre […]
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