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The Echo of the Impacts – SHELLING premier in Bonn

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  • Maren Nöding 19.04.2026

The Echo of the Impacts
“SHELLING” by Yasmeen Godder at Theater im Ballsaal in Bonn

A radical exploration of fragmentation and resilience: the Israeli choreographer transforms her body into a living archive, allowing the audience to feel the boundary between protection and impact.

Guest contribution

The evening begins in darkness. Only the faint creaking of a door announces a presence. A figure can be vaguely seen at the back right. The hair hangs low over the face. The head is bowed, the movements slow, almost remote-controlled, like a zombie. Yasmeen Godder moves diagonally from one side to the other, a laborious, repetitive process. The attempt to straighten up repeatedly collapses in on itself. Over everything lies a dense, steadily intensifying tension and the breathless question: will the body find a way into a stable, secure stance?

The performance at Theater im Ballsaal in Bonn is far more than that: it is a testament to absolute artistic urgency. Yasmeen Godder, for years a defining voice in contemporary dance from Israel, had traveled despite the current situation for the premiere of “SHELLING.” Clearly moved, Ballsaal curator Daniela Ebert addresses the audience after the performance: “That this premiere could take place today borders on a miracle.”

Beer and Constriction

I am doubly glad to have arrived in time. In the Irish pub next door, no one could direct me to the theater when I asked, but a guest named Ingo instead kindly offered me a beer over the booming music. What a different kind of performance. Here, just one wall away, gently penetrating sounds fill the space and convey a feeling of constriction. Massive shadows wander across the sides of the stage, at times making Godder appear larger than life. She performs with an intensity that gets under the skin. Her face is a battlefield of longing, despair, and questioning emptiness.

A central movement motif lies in the fine details of the hands: again and again, Godder raises them protectively in front of her face, as if trying to maintain an invisible distance from the outside world. But this protection suddenly flips into raw resistance. When the dancer repeatedly bites into her own hand, it is not merely a depiction of pain, but also a physical release of pressure. A pressure that her body carries as a living archive of stories and traumas of generations, as well as the brutality of a current political system with which many artists in Israel disagree. Breathing heavily, hands drum on the hard floor—in a struggle for autonomy. Almost imperceptibly, Godder eventually slips the long legs of her trousers off; they now hang down like shed skins. It is the image of a molting, without any hope of leaving something behind.

Disintegration and Reorientation

The entire dynamic of “SHELLING” is shaped by a nervous back-and-forth between disintegration and reorientation. Particularly striking is the quality of bodily tension: there are a few rare moments in which Godder attempts to let go, but this freedom of loosened posture never lasts. Immediately, the muscles contract again. As if this body must never fully abandon vigilance, it remains an instrument that has long internalized a permanent state of alarm as part of its identity.

Herein also lies the strength of “SHELLING,” leaving goosebumps and tightening the throat: the piece is anything but a simple commentary. What is shown is the struggle of a body to continue moving at all under the violence of an overwhelmingly complex and politically distorted situation.

When the lights come up for the applause, Yasmeen Godder simply stands there, with a smile, yet still visibly affected and struck. So are we. And for a brief, stunned moment, I think about the fact—and why—that such a special and important performance took place before a far from sold-out audience. While next door, people are drinking, perhaps also to forget. Because the social situation here (still, seemingly) allows it. While on stage, Godder struggles to keep feeling, to keep going, despite everything. I wish Ingo and all the other Ingos out there could have felt this contrast—and experienced how urgently dance can confront the impacts of its time.