Choreography: Yasmeen Godder
Creating Performers: Shuli Enosh, Dor Frank, Yuli Kovbasnian, Uri Shafir, Edu Turull Montells and Ofir Yudilevitch
Climax has been originally conceived as a site-specific performance for a Museum’s space. Reassembled anew by Godder to fit into varied of open spaces the work is an active invitation to the audience to move as they engage in an emotionally intimate, yet forcefully provoking performance. Incorporating tension-filled movement phrases from Godder’s 15 years of artistic oeuvre. The six dancers are situated in-close proximity to the public allowing themselves and the viewers to be captured and released from each other’s grasp. The almost ritualistic creation of circle shaped forms in the space turns the viewers into witnesses as well as participants. Seamlessly deconstructing and integrating new situations out of Godder’s physical, emotional, communal, spatial, and conceptual lexicon of movements, the dancers are reassessing the human condition as it culminates throughout Godder’s concrete reality. The essence of dance and performance is rendered through the deftness and sensitivity of the dancers as they challenge the viewers’ perspective of space and time. Examining the art of performance and its relevance in our troubled age, Climax utilizes repetitions, unisons and group tasks in an attempt to critically investigate current notions of national identity and self-determination.
Born in Jerusalem and grown up in New York Yasmeen Godder has a significant role in the Israeli dance scene and receives both local and international recognition. While still studying dance at the Martha Graham school, she has been deeply connected to the punk scene in downtown Manhattan. She received her BFA from the Tisch School of the Arts at NYU while attending a variety of workshops and classes at Movement Research which have impacted her approach to dance making until today. Her work expresses itself in a unique physical and visual language and a committed honest and brave execution which invokes a rare physical- emotional- experiential effect.
Choreography: Yasmeen Godder
Co-artistic director and dramaturgy: Itzik Giuli
Creating Performers: Shuli Enosh, Dor Frank, Yuli Kovbasnian, Uri Shafir, Edu Turull Montells and Ofir Yudilevitch
Costumes: Adam Kalderon, Tami Lebovits
Lighting Design: Omer Sheizaf
Spatial Sound Design: Eran Sachs
Consultation: Ido Feder
International Touring: Dalit Itai, Gal Canetti – as is presenting arts
Administration and Production: Guy Hugler
Climax was commissioned by The Petach Tikva Museum of Art for Set in Motion Curated by Drorit Gur Arye and Avi Feldman Co-production with th??tre Garonne, Toulouse (FR)
Lately we have been witnessing the return of dance to the museum. Why return? because
from the late 1970s until the mid-1980s tight links were made between independent “alternative”
dance artists and the
visual arts. Museums, galleries, and events such as Nitzana and the Tel Hai festival hosted
experimental dance and many works were site-specific. In those years of experimental dance,
works were created with objects,
and some of the artists collaborated with sculptors such as Avraham Ofek, Dalia Me’iri and Ziva
Lieblich. A dialogue took place between the body and the sculpture/object, with the intention of
creating a new language,
as images emerge from the encounter of body and still matter. Performers danced with
sculptures in museums as the audience followed them from one exhibit space to the next.
(...)
“Climax” is a political work, perhaps an Israeli archeology. It is a mixture of the sense of
togetherness of the circle of creators, togetherness and security, juxtaposed with the sense of
insecurity as in the part where the
group stands, hands rightly holding each other until bodies literally cling as if seeking mutual
solace, as together they slide to a sitting position, back-to-back with the expression of lost
children. Or when the group lies
belly-down in a tight pile, all nodding back and forth like a whining child, or like someone who
wishes to go back to the womb.
Ruth Eshel, HaAretz
