Back The Place Comforts – The Contemporary Eye
- Idit Suslik 25.09.2024
The Place Comforts – The Contemporary Eye
Choreographer Yasmeen Godder and singer Dikla returned to a significant milestone at the beginning of each of their artistic journeys with their joint performance “Love Music (Now!) – Shout Aloud” echoing the name of Dikla’s debut album from 2000. From this album, Godder chose the song “Boker Tov” as the accompanying music for her solo in the iconic work Hall (in which Dikla also performed live at the end), presented in the 2001 Curtain-Raising Project. With their breakout, both creators established themselves as having distinct voices within the arena in which they operate: Dikla’s Israeli identity was different from that typically accepted in the musical mainstream due to the tone of her singing and the fusion of Arabic stylistic elements with electronic production; and Godder’s movement language brought to Israeli dance (independent and otherwise) representations of exposed and vulnerable bodies that were simultaneously strange and relatable due to the distilled humanity communicated through them. The renewed meeting on stage between Godder and Dikla has now materialized after a long working process, and it is evident from the explicit reference to the present in the title of the performance that the creators are returning to personal and shared materials from a contemporary prism, seemingly aimed at presenting the frequency that connects them to the audience.
In the immediate experience, “Love Music (Now!) – Shout Aloud” is primarily a spectacle: the orchestra accompanying Dikla consists of nine musicians, while Godder’s company features eight dancers, and both ensembles are rich in stylistic diversity—varied instruments and bodies with different ‘dancing’ histories. This aspect, which is strongly associated with Dikla’s ‘larger-than-life’ presence in her performances, initially seems to contrast with the raw roughness that characterizes Yasmeen Godder’s choreographic language, which is typically communicated through direct and unmediated theatrical economy. However, as the performance unfolds before the viewer, the sharpening sensation is that this ‘exaggeration’ is a deliberate pushing of the structured choreographic boundaries toward new spaces of stage presence, transforming the dancers into ‘wild beasts’ who growl and sing, throwing limbs in all directions, raging and maximizing the expression of their bodies and existence. Accordingly, it appears that Godder consciously unraveled the established choreographic patterns in favor of a conceptual realization of the performance as living, pulsating, and unrestrained energy. Not by chance, many audience members stood at a certain moment at the sides of the Jerusalem Theater to dive into the singing and dancing with their bodies and surrender. This sight, which is not typical of dance performances, sharpens something about the relevance of “Love Music (Now!)” in the current era, emphasizing the importance of community, which—through its gathering, like the circle of dancers that opens and closes the performance—rekindles the desire for life in the soul and allows, even if for a limited time, a celebration of it.