Releasing the demon

Choreographer Yasmeen Godder’s signature use of guttural sounds and ‘ugly’ movements opened a Pandora’s box of ideas on the Israeli stage.

By ORI J. LENKINSKI
Dancing 521 (photo credit: Gadi Dagan)
Dancing 521
(photo credit: Gadi Dagan)
 Twelve years ago, when Yasmeen Godder first returned to Israel, her work was not well received. The local audiences, accustomed to purely physical, emotionally restrained dance performances, did not know how to swallow the erratic, hypercharged works put out by Godder. In those first few years, she was slightly taken aback. She had spent the previous decade studying in America, completing her degree at New York University and presenting work to a warm, receptive crowd. Suddenly, success seemed fleeting.
Now, more than a decade later, Godder is one of the most famous artistic voices ever to have emerged from the country. She has been commissioned to create works for companies around the world and has toured extensively with her repertoire. Earlier this month, she premiered her eighth evening-length opus, Storm End Come, at the Suzanne Dellal Center in Tel Aviv.
Over coffee and omelets at a cafe in Jaffa, just a few blocks away from her studio at the Mandel Center for Arts, she spoke openly about her relocation from New York to Tel Aviv and the chain of events that propelled her into the country’s artistic elite.
“I didn’t decide to move back. My partner, Itzik, was hired here to work with the Haifa Theater. I had presented work around New York and it was going well for me as a young choreographer. I saw myself staying there but life rolled me in a different direction,” she said. “When I came here I was an outsider. I didn’t emerge from one of the main Israeli dance companies. I didn’t have connections. It took time for people to understand what I was doing.”
Shortly after she arrived in Tel Aviv, the artistic directors of the Shades of Dance Choreography Competition invited Godder to participate. Unlike her competitors, her creative process took place abroad. In 1999, she shocked Tel Aviv with her solo Aleena’s Wall, opening a Pandora’s box of ideas that continue to infiltrate contemporary dance.
That first solo shocked everyone, including Godder. “I feel that all of my works were contained within that one solo,” she said. “I was so overwhelmed. I didn’t know how to digest all of the things I wanted to research. It propelled me to continue to create. It was like I opened a lid and a demon flew out.”
One of the distinguishing characteristics of Godder’s work is her harsh, at times uncomfortable, candidness. While Martha Graham expressed anguish by contracting her body into a concave shape, Godder contorts her face and lets go of a sequence of guttural sounds. Her use of voice, text, props and what many consider to be ugly movements were virtually unseen in dance here before her arrival.
Shortly after her debut during Shades of Dance, Eran Daniel, former artistic director of the Curtain Up Festival, asked Godder to make another work. Thus I Feel Funny Today was born. “The critics were very harsh with I Feel Funny Today. And then I went to New York and won a Bessie Award for it. It was the extreme opposite response,” Godder said.
Though the temptations to return to New York were strong, Godder had gotten her foot in the door and planned to stay.
And while she continued to create here, the effects of her time in the Big Apple left a permanent stamp on her artistic palette.
“I was very influenced by the performance art scene in New York. In the early ’90s, I went to see a lot of performance art in Dixon Place and PS122, alternative spaces. And those things still affect how I see the performing arts. I didn’t want to limit myself to thinking that because I’m making dance that it has to look a certain way. I didn’t want to limit my thoughts to what is perceived as the medium.
In performance art there is something essential that deals with the personal. To bring who you are, what is going on with you right now to the stage. That was undoubtedly a big part of my process,” she said.
It is impossible to speak about Godder’s work without referencing her creative and life partner, Itzik Giuli. Giuli, whose background is in theater, was a major player behind the scenes in Godder’s ascent to the choreographic limelight.
“Itzik and I have always been in dialogue about art. When we met, we were both students: I was studying dance and he was studying theater. He would bring a lot of ideas from his studies to me. In the beginning he would do a lot of theater exercises with me.”
This blend of performance art, theater and movement has spawned a new genre of contemporary dance.
Recently, Godder and Giuli opened the Act Search workshop for dancers at their studio in Jaffa. Over the course of eight months, dancers meet with Godder, Giuli and a number of their collaborators.
The decision to create a more established and intensive learning environment came from a desire to offer something akin to a university-level training program for dancers.
“In the workshop, I let dancers into my world of ideas and my way of working, certain techniques of generating material that I’ve used over the years. I taught a lot of classes and felt that there was a hunger for something more formal. A lot of my performers teach in the workshop as well. They are people who have worked with me for years and who have the desire and ability to develop other dancers,” she said.
In the studio, Giuli’s place in Godder’s creative process became more and more defined over the years. “Our relationship and the way we work together is always changing,” she said. Storm End Come is perhaps the most equal in their long line of collaborations.
For the process of Storm End Come, the two decided to mix things up a bit. Usually, Godder is the first to work with the dancers. This time, Giuli spent the first three months of the process alone with their cast of six performers. “It interested us to start a process backward,” she said.
After the initial rehearsal period, Godder observed the materials generated by Giuli and cast. “This was the first time that Itzik worked with the dancers independently of myself. Some of the things I saw, I liked, others less.”
From there, Giuli and Godder continued to expand upon the ideas already present in the work. “I took those initial ideas as a base from which to start creating. It interested me to preserve the feeling that I didn’t know what happened in the studio before I joined in, where the material came from and what Itzik said or did to make those things happen. I wanted to keep the feeling of mystery,” she explained.
Storm End Come was commissioned by three parties in Europe: Culturescapes in Basel, Switzerland, the Grand Theatre Groningen in the Netherlands and Centro Per La Scena Contemporaneo in Bassano Del Grappa, Italy. After the research, the company traveled to Italy, where its first performances were given as a site-specific installation in a grappa factory designed by famed architect Massimiliano Fuksas. The audience members wandered around the space freely, having imbibed a glass of grappa upon their arrival.
For the Israeli premiere, which took place on March 1, the piece was translated to fit a proscenium stage. However, Godder believes the experience of performing in an open space altered the essence of the work. “The perspective of space gave a lot to the character of the piece. Especially in the consciousness of the dancers, there is a feeling that something is very open. It’s another level of performance.
In the dancer’s eyes, the piece isn’t taking place on stage,” she said.
In Storm End Come, Godder investigated the concept of emotional and physical release. “After something big happens there is a feeling of letting go. I think this piece is about the longing for that relief. About trying to hold onto things that can’t be held onto,” she said. “It sounds very abstract, but it’s something we all go through.”
The Yasmeen Godder Dance Group will perform Storm End Come at the Suzanne Dellal Center on April 16, May 25 and 26. For more information about Godder and upcoming shows, visit www.yasmeengodder.com.