The show ‘Love Is Strong as Death’ presents a new, contemporary and current interpretation of previous works by Liat Dror and Nir Ben Gal: Two-Room Apartment \ Anta Oumri \ Dance of Nothing.
They are all about love, relationships, power struggles, definition and identity of each individual. All three works come from a point of view in which our own inner struggles, those between myself and the other, and the struggles between peoples and cultures are the same. The greater the struggle, the greater the love.
In the dance company’s home in the Gaza border communities – in a place where fighting, dance and compassion are constantly woven into the everyday reality – these works receive a more mature, softer and reconciled view.
The same questions that remain so relevant despite the span of years remain unanswered, and it sometimes seems that, more than anything else, the same familiar baked goods are the ones that continue to answer, wrap and provide comfort. The work is accompanied by recordings of live music performed in past performances in which feature the organic sounds of conversations, laughter from the audience, the squeal of defiant feet on the floor and the echoes of breaths trying to stabilize themselves are heard—all of which give the sound the sequence of layers of time and once again allow a Sufi melody to meet with Hebrew poetry. That agreement to the encounter, which is agreement to vulnerability; It is the same agreement in the midst of the struggle to see what’s similar, what’s held in common, the points of connection and thereby respect and accept the difference.
‘When my eldest brother enlisted into the army, my mother invested the entire range of her emotions in baking cookies, the brother wrapped in uniform went to battle and the mother toiled with skilled hands on the preparation of the baked goods that would wrap him on his return. When I became a mother of adult boys and girls who enlisted in the army, the picture, which is almost romantic in its immense pain and seemingly so normative, took on different dimensions. Within the world of movement, I asked questions about creating reality, how the simple and human movement in each and every one of us can create an experience that doesn’t intensify pain, but rather opens up to spaces of tolerance, to softness and breath. The skill of the hands in the daily, existential doing, to those hands that speak what the words will not say, brought life and the stage together. The choreographic work began with learning to knead the dough. The dough contains within it the magic of rest: as it simply resides in its not-doing, it grows. Its softness and flexibility depend on a combination of skill and relaxation. This is actually how we are with ourselves and how we are in our encounter with the other. What allows this meeting to be soft, empowering and fruitful, and when do we cling and choke until the ‘air runs out’ and things become sticky or hard. The work moves between the breathing spaces that bring a smile and compassion, and those that leave us breathless.’ Liat Dror
‘Two Room Apartment’ 1987 deals with boundaries and their permeability. The couple’s love and the ‘military’ space seem to blur. The warfare, the definition of the territory, the essence of togetherness and separateness, the longing for closeness that comes from yielding, sharing and supporting.
‘Anta Oumri’ 1994 As a line from one of Umm Kulthum’s songs says – ‘I saw you before you were born’, and it speaks of unconditional love. The range of love expands and calls to the heart that wants to cease being a battlefield.
This reading is driven by the vessel, the basin that is the pelvis; throughout the work it is the force that drives and contains, increasing its ripples into the waters of the Mediterranean Basin.
‘Dance of Nothing’ 1999 deals with the essence of nothingness. At its core is the preparation of the dough, the same dough whose very rest produces its quality. We avoid resting, running ahead and on to the next thing. We don’t allow ourselves to stay and just be, and let things strengthen on their own. The delicate relationships between nothing and everything, between practice and waiting: perhaps these allow compassion to rise and prove itself.