Back Choreographies of Contrasts – Dr. Elisabeth Nehring
Dr. Elisabeth Nehring
19.06.2024
Choreographies of Contrasts – The Work of Yasmeen Godder
Eight dancers, nine musicians, one singer – the stage pulsates with energy when Dikla’s music meets Yasmeen Godder’s choreography in Shout Aloud. Today, the Israeli singer is a star, but when Yasmeen Godder discovered Dikla’s first album Ahava Musica in 2000, the singer was still unknown to the mainstream. Just having arrived in Tel Aviv, Dikla was sleeping on friends’ sofas, waiting tables, and letting herself be swept away by the city’s energy. Dikla’s childhood in Be’er Sheva was packed with diverse musical influences: classical music, rock, pop, and metal filled the neighborhood air, while her parents, from Egyptian and Iraqi families, listened to Arabic, Turkish, and Egyptian music, as well as songs from America and Israel. This wild acoustic experience shaped the music Dikla has produced for many years, never confined to one specific genre but always a blend of various musical traditions and influences. For Yasmeen Godder, this genre-defying music is fascinating. In the broad range of influences, the choreographer sees part of her own artistic development and finds even deeper connections: “While we have an interest in lightness, Dikla and I are not necessarily light at heart. We both carry a deep sense of darkness and intensity.”
Indeed, something resistant always expresses itself in the bodies of Yasmeen Godder’s dancers. Often, it seems as though intention and expression, inner feeling and outward manifestation, stubbornly refuse to align. Characteristics of her work are twisted eyes, clenched hands, bodies in tension, faces deformed by fingers, hardened muscles, and exaggerated sexualized gestures. A varied movement vocabulary of the uncontrollable that appears in different forms in Godder’s early pieces – creating a stark contrast to the qualities that made Israeli choreographers famous, most notably Ohad Naharin, who has led the renowned Batsheva Dance Company since 1990: softness, strength, harmony, fluidity, and self-identification. Looking at Godder’s early works from Two Playful Pink (2003) and Strawberry Cream and Gunpowder (2004) to I’m Mean, I Am (2006) and Storm End Come (2011) and even See Her Change (2013), the term “grotesque” comes to mind. Sharply put: between 2003 and 2015, Godder was undoubtedly an artist of the grotesque – in its original sense. Instead of working with the absurd, fantastical, ugly, or bizarre, she united contrasts like horror and comedy, absurdity and threat, tenderness and monstrosity in her choreographies.
Because of this, the expressions in these pieces are not overwhelming but ambivalent and ambiguous; often, they are difficult to interpret, provoking discomfort, even disturbance. Yet, the Israeli choreographer has always avoided making her social references too explicit. However, it is clear: Yasmeen Godder draws on the concrete reality surrounding her, which is reflected in a complex way in her productions without slipping into overt political agitation. Her physical art is – to this day – a subtle and nuanced processing of a highly complex reality.
Over the years, her pieces have become more abstract and less direct in their messages. However, Yasmeen Godder never loses her sharp sociopolitical awareness, only shifting her focus. While an early task for dancers might have been, “Show yourself in a way as if you were an extreme version of yourself to reveal something authentic,” her interest has gradually shifted towards the connecting moments of human interaction. A turning point in her artistic interest was the German-Israeli research project Störung/Hafra’ah in 2015, where people with Parkinson’s, professional dancers, and scientists came together to explore movement and develop approaches that benefit those with Parkinson’s. Up until then, Godder had primarily worked with a stable group of professional dancers. From this point on, she opened the studio doors to people of different ages, bodies, and needs. In this context, Godder and her dancers rediscovered their abilities – as a means to touch and move people, both literally and figuratively.
At that time, Godder realized that dance could be a reason for the community to form – simply because people meet regularly, touch, exchange, and dance together. From these encounters, the series Practicing Empathy emerged in 2019: stage productions where Godder and her collaborators explore how dance and performative encounters can create alternative ways of being together, with empathy as a central element. The project was guided by many questions: Is empathy a skill or a feeling? Is it emotional or cognitive? A character trait or something that can be trained? What triggers empathy? Can it become toxic? How much of others’ emotions can we bear? Godder’s growing interest in real, impactful encounters has led to a continuous deepening of this exploration. The desire to bring people of different backgrounds and identities together is reflected on multiple levels, such as opening her studio in Jaffa/Tel Aviv to the neighborhood, within an Arab-Jewish kindergarten, and, of course, as an artist with her potential audience.
This fits well with the movement workshops for women from Arabic and Hebrew communities that she has offered since the COVID-19 pandemic, in collaboration with dancer and choreographer Nur Garabli. Together, they dance the Palestinian Dabke and explore their physical responses in mindfulness sessions. Holding hands, touching, and physically connecting – this simple act brought the women closer and allowed them to open up to each other. However, this was not always easy, especially in such a politically and socially turbulent time as after October 7, 2023. Even though the workshops paused for a while, the women met again. It became evident: the bonds of trust created through dance are not always stable or unshakable, but they endure through many difficulties and pains.
These experiences significantly influence the work with the all-female group of dancers in Shout Aloud. Together with Dikla’s music, the dancers engage in a ritual on stage, finding their own voices, joy, and exuberance while supporting one another. They embody a belief that Yasmeen Godder formulated long ago and has never abandoned, despite knowing as a realist that it’s not easy: through dance, everything can become better – because as an art form and open practice, it fosters connection, touch, and communication, bringing people together rather than driving them apart. This is more important than ever – not only in the Middle East.