I’ll begin with a personal confession: Almost every dance enthusiast has their own personal memory of
that one time they saw a dance work that reshaped their perception regarding the potential inherent in the moving body on stage, or at the very least continued to echo within them for hours and days after the last movement stopped and even its invisible aftermath had dissolved in the air. For me, it was “Practicing Empathy 3,” the third work in the “Practicing Empathy” series by the Yasmeen Godder Dance Company, the work in which Godder took to the stage alone after having created only group works for her company for over twenty years.

Four years have passed since I saw the mesmerizing solo that concluded a trilogy of works in which Godder explored the concept of empathy through conceptual approaches and various choreographic structures. Despite this being a significant period of time, even as I write these lines, when I close my eyes, I can still see Godder’s silver mane whipping behind her as she executes a near-perfect pirouette en-dehors, only to instantly disrupt the classical movement, distorting it in favor of her own statement.

Godder shifted her center of gravity, deliberately throwing herself off balance, flung her long arm out to
the side, letting it sway freely, clenched it into a fist, slapped herself on the buttock, looked directly at the audience, smiled a teasing smile that didn’t reach her sad eyes, and began to run in circles like a mare galloping in a race without competitors. I think in that moment I was able to deeply understand what people mean when they say great artists have their own fingerprint, a distinctive style that sets them apart from others, movements that belong to a lexicon all dancers are familiar with, but when they execute them, these gestures become uniquely theirs. Beyond that, I recall the realization that spread through my body when I saw that the woman moving before me was a distilled embodiment of courage. “Yes, you can dance like that,” I thought – it’s permissible to show the effort, to place beauty and difficulty side by side, the overflowing passion and the fact that sometimes the soul cannot contain it. It’s permissible, possible, even advisable to place loneliness and vulnerability on stage, a feminine sexuality that speaks its flaws and humanity – for these are what make it so luminous and powerful.

Cut to the present. The International Dance Week in Jerusalem; Godder and her company – this time, alongside Godder, the fantastic cast of dancers included Anat Vaadia, Ilana Sara Claire Bellashen, Ofir Yannai, and Inbal Aloni – are premiering the new work, “Bare on Rust,” at Machol Shalem Dance House. My eyes scan the stage quickly, searching for Godder’s figure and finding her. Even when she kneels, her head drooping between her knees, it is hard to miss her. I wonder what story she will tell me this time.

Between deep weeping and a battle cry

The performance begins with the five dancers scattered throughout the stage. Clad in tight, shimmering silver-toned pants and snug, sparkling shirts, they look a bit like graceful aliens, momentarily recalling the figure of singer David Bowie in music videos from his iconic 1972 album, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust. But unlike Bowie, who celebrated an androgynous stage presence, the five women powerfully radiate their distinct femininity. Now, these women stand in crouched poses and begin to emerge from the shadows created by the dim lighting, revealing themselves and advancing in fragmented, almost robotic steps, in response to the jarring, somewhat alien beats of the soundtrack.

It is clear to me even from this opening image that this time Godder is not inviting us to a party, as in “Love Music (Now!),” her company’s previous show created in collaboration with the singer Dikla, which was a showcase of explosive and sensual feminine energy. Nor is she withdrawing inward with the same fragility that characterized “Practicing Empathy 3.” No, this time Godder is leading us through the gates of the underworld, deep into a universe of feminine lamentation and illusion. For the next hour, she and her four dancers will navigate this world of shadows, subjecting themselves and us to a jarring journey, one that is painful yet revitalizing to watch. Painful because the pain they harbor in their facial expressions and resolute movements, though non-verbal or narrative, does not truly belong to outer space, to a mythical tale, or to fiction. Painful because Godder is essentially holding a mirror up to our own pain, our struggle to survive, to move forward, to process, to cope with the fragments of the hellish reality of the past two years. Revitalizing because if they have a chance to move, then maybe we too have a chance to dream that one day we will heal.

The effort to locate the “Godderesque” movements, the sudden gestures that combine sculptural quality and momentum simultaneously, does not disappoint. Throughout the work, the creator’s DNA is well-encoded in every sequence, even the most minor: The dancer Inbal Aloni begins a movement phrase with a sorrowful expression that seems to affect her whole body, which appears torn between the desire to surrender to deep weeping and a primal urge to break out in a battle cry – knees swinging, soft, a lower body that seems to yearn to collapse, almost passive, contrasted with arms savagely thrown out to immerse themselves in the air and then freezing rigidly, until the fingers tremble, writhing with effort, sending a sharp burst of energy that propels the entire body forward. At times, she and the three other dancers look exactly like variations of Godder herself as they swing their limbs in the air and then suddenly collapse to the floor, letting their clenched fists meet it and advancing on their knuckles like beasts of prey hunting for battle.

Their resemblance to Godder, or to one another, is strengthened by the fact that the work is made up of repetitive sequences performed in unison (even when one of the dancers suddenly changes direction, or breaks eye contact with her companions). Nevertheless, Godder manages to allow her performers to maintain their individual uniqueness, interpreting her movement language through it. Thus, for example, even when she opens her mouth wide, baring her teeth as if she were a lioness preparing to leap onto her prey, and then suddenly shoves a fist between her jaws and melts to the floor as if her legs received a quick command to collapse beneath her, the dancer Ofir Yannai still maintains her long, elegant lines and the inherent delicacy of her gestures. When Anat Vaadia raises an arm and sends it toward her forehead, spreading her fingers on it in a gentle gesture and in perfect coordination with the others – as if they were all survivors of a shipwreck signaling with a subtle code, known only to them, that they await rescue – she still trembles from her unique, wild energy. All the dancers boast a loose, untamed mane of hair that drags heavily across their faces or whips around them as they whirl, giving them the appearance of mermaids carried by the terrifying movement surges passing through their bodies, but it is easy to identify the specific mane of Ilana Bellashen, whose head movements and lifts of her endless legs possess the stately magic of a proud Amazon.

The sirens’ song

It is probably not by chance that the image of mermaids occurred to me. The choreography of “Bare  on Rust” relies on cyclical structures of falling and rising, seemingly not allowing the dancers to remain stable on their feet for long, as if they were trying to navigate their way through a stormy sea. One moment they lean on their ankles as on stakes and flutter their arms like spinning tops, and the next moment their torso leads them to sprawl on the floor, where they clasp hands, like sisters in battle drawing strength from one another. One moment their hands sweep the floor, like marionettes disconnected from their holding wires, and the next moment a leg jutting toward the ceiling sends a wave up the spine, leading them to stand on one leg. Again and again they rise, fall, transcend, and somehow survive. As I watch them struggle like this, I think of their struggle as metonymous to the struggle of all  women, and specifically of all the women whose lives have been shaken by the horrors of war over the past two years in Israel and Gaza, leaving us with no stable ground to stand on.

Only at the end of the work (caution, spoiler) does a comforting reprieve finally arrive. As a backlight traces a beautiful lunar sphere on the back wall of the hall, the dancers gather after the storm of movement has sent them away from each other and in all directions. Their limbs intertwine, and they form a single human-female cluster, swaying from side to side like a ship in the middle of the sea. They begin to sing a kind of wordless chorale, for a long moment that becomes chilling as their voices insist on continuing to resound even after the lights go out. As I listen to them, I remember the Sirens from Greek mythology, those mythical creatures dwelling on rocky islands in the sea whose power lay in their voice. Their singing was so tempting that every sailor who heard it lost his mind, navigated straight toward the rocks, and met his death by drowning. The Sirens’ song was essentially a sweet and inevitable death.

As the dancers’ song fades and the sound of applause fills the hall, I recall the poem “Diving into the Wreck” (1973) by the late poet Adrienne Rich: “There is a ladder… I go down… and there is no one to tell me when the ocean will begin. First the air is blue and then it is bluer and then green and then black. I am blacking out and yet my mask is powerful, it pumps my blood with power. The sea is another story. The sea is not a question of power. I have to learn alone to turn my body without force in the deep element. I came to explore the wreck. The words are purposes. The words are maps. I came to see the damage that was done and the treasures that prevail. The thing I came for: the wreck and not the story of the wreck. The thing itself and not the myth. The drowned face always staring toward the sun. This is the place.”

I realize that for Godder, the Siren-dancers are not deadly creatures; the opposite is true. Though their voice and movement are unsettling, it is only because they testify to the intensity of pain and the courage required of us throughout life. Perhaps this is the secret of the gripping power of Godder’s practice. Similarly to Rich, she insists on seeing both the damage and the treasures, on manifesting the brokenness in the body again and again, “the wreck and not the story of the wreck. The thing itself and not the myth.”