Back Exposed in the Studio

Since its opening in 2007, the Yasmeen Godder Studio, located at the Mandel Cultural Center in Jaffa, has been hosting a pressure-free residency program that invites dance makers coming from different backgrounds and different phases in their artistic careers. This residency program supports the research and development of their process, in the supportive conditions of the studio, offering both artistic and production consultation from the company’s team and, at times, an honorarium.

Exposed in the Studio 2025 – a shared evening by two residency artists who took part in the program over the past year:

“Assembly Instructions” by and performed by Nir Vidan

“The Silence of the Sirens” by and performed by Tamar Sofia Kisch

Thursday, September 25, 21:00
Friday, September 26, 14:00

One ticket grants entry to both works.

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»Assembly Instructions« is a solo performance driven by the desire to question and deconstruct the so-called normative body on stage. It is a body-based manifesto for multiplicity, a tribute to queer legacy, a quest toward the undefined.

The body in »Assembly Instructions« is a constantly evolving, experimental entity that continually abstracts itself, creating itself.

Through cycles of dis- and re-assembly, it sheds its skin to transform feelings and memories related to sexuality and shame, reshaping them into a new experience of the self. In a play between the sensual and the abstract, the erotic and the absurd, the intimate and the obscene, it seeks fullness in the incomplete.

Artistic Team and supporters:

Choreography, performance: Nir Vidan

The project is funded by the Berlin Senate of Culture and Europe and co-produced by Tanzfabrik Berlin. It is also supported by Yasmeen Godder Studio, Hazira, Kelim Choreography Center, and the Israel Lottery Council for Culture & Arts.

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The Silence of the Sirens deals with capturing bodily images in photography. It stands in the gap between a sensory experience that refuses explicit fixation and the eternal, unchallengeable testimony its documentation promises.

The work’s title is borrowed from Kafka’s short story of the same name (1917), in which the author recounts Ulysses’ infamous confrontation with the sirens and their alluring voices. In Kafka’s version, the absence of sound is the sirens’ deadliest weapon. “At the very moment when they were nearest to him, he knew of them no longer”, Ulysses does not hear their silence.

Accompanied by the sirens’ seductive charge, Tamar Kisch’s work navigates tensions arising from using the body as a tool to create an image. It is an attempt to escape the image while simultaneously fulfilling it. A desire to hold onto a sharp yet suffocated detail, screaming and swallowing sound.

Created and performed by Tamar Sofia Kisch

Artistic guidance: Tal Yachas

External eye: Ofri Lehmann-Mantell

Sound consultation: Itai Soffer

Costume design: Eran Shanny

The work was supported by the Yasmeen Godder Company as part of their Guest Artist program. It was created within the framework of the New Department program at SVT, with the support of the Jerusalem Foundation.

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Past residency artists include Sigal Bergman, Anabelle Dvir, Iris Erez, Shira Eviatar, Ayala Frenkel, Nur Garabli, Tamar Lamm and David Kern Bosmat Nosan, Shaked Mochiach, Uri Shafir, Nir Vidan, Ofir Yudilevich and many more. The residency artists are invited to do an informal sharing with the “Moving Communities” participants as well as to present their work at “Exposed in the Studio” – a yearly performance event, where they present their work in an exposed, intimate and raw setting of the studio, with production and marketing support.