• Anat Zacharia 24.09.2024

A smile morphs into a grimace, a murmur into a shout: Dikla and Yasmeen Godder live on the edge.

The performance that brought together Dikla’s acclaimed album with the frenetic movement of Godder at the Israel Festival is filled with intensity. They are not just describing an experience; they themselves are the experience, present in the moment on stage.

The Yasmeen Godder dance company and singer Dikla present “Love Music (Now!) – Shout Aloud” at the Israel Festival in September 2024. This joint event revisits Dikla’s esteemed album from 2000, bringing together eight dancers of various ages and backgrounds with nine musicians for an evening of active friction.

Dikla’s hoarse voice combined with Godder’s frenetic movement creates an autonomous system that does not necessarily strive to please, to be visually appealing, or beautiful, or good. Together they articulate something new, different, liberated from molds and dictates, leading to a new world, a life on the edge. They offer us a space where we can escape from the painful daily consciousness; a place to channel pain, to feel, and to open emotional channels without defensiveness or caution, swept into an action that resolutely refuses to be productive.

In “Love. Music. (Now!) – Shout Aloud” the desire to surrender to beauty is repeatedly interrupted by the harsh, painful cutting of the eyes. Disruption is the feeling reverberating in the space, whether in excess and exaggeration or in absence and annihilation. At every moment, there’s a different kind of disruption, a disobedience to certain norms, refusal, lack of focus, and so on. There’s hardly a single impressive focal point; rather, there are states of body and mind unfolding on stage in the margins, quickening the pulse, giving the sense of an endless creation.

Both in music and in dance, pain and discomfort are present, and it seems that like Dikla’s album, the movements were born from internal work; the body expresses a thirst for connection. Godder’s movement language is sophisticated, based mainly on exaggerated physical gestures: fragmented, neurotic. While the melody of the songs flows harmoniously, harmony shifts to disharmony, a smile turns into a grimace, a murmur into a shout, wild energy freezes. And the costumes by Shahar Avnet, those airy dresses meant for floating, designed for a cocktail party but rolling and stretching with the dancers on the floor, sharpen that floating elegance, youthful, weightless, free from the burden of locality.

They leap, drifting aside with a vibrating hand against the cheek, scooping hands, a growl distorting the face, a palm striking the elbow, and at moments they are sensual, expressive women; at times playful girls sticking out their tongues. The body bursts with joy. “Good morning to all the children who had no night,” sings Dikla, amplifying the helpless awareness, neutralizing the dance from associations of control and surveillance, and the vulnerability within the experience of human existence momentarily unites everything.

“Love. Music. (Now!) – Shout Aloud” is a meeting between two creations: a live rock show meets a dance performance, almost a different medium. Dikla and Godder do not describe an experience here; they are the experience, present in the moment on stage. What connects them is us, the audience, interpreting them from the current historical moment dominated by the disruption of world orders and threatening images of war. Our “now” imbues them with new meanings.

Dikla and Godder are prominent figures in their respective fields, and additionally, they are figures rich in style and charisma. The meeting of Dikla’s dramatic epicness with Godder’s frozen demeanor may spark initial interest due to the gimmick of the performance. But above all, they both possess a compelling, powerful force that evokes a sense of upliftment, reminding us of the desire to live—a desire that stirs the wish to protect the possibility that life continues.