The Anti-Puppet Master
Crossposted from Haaretz
“I have a small obsession: to get dancers to take their bodies and brains farther,” says choreographer Jacopo Godani. “An animal-like, emotional and physical approach to dancing is very important, but if the brain does not control the body, the body has a tendency to repeat its movements. Unfortunately, most dancers are programmed by their first learning experiences. But if they make room for the brain, it is capable of causing the body to do more complicated and advanced things. The body always responds to the memories stored in its muscles.”
This idea is central to the professional outlook of the Italian artist, who has worked and established himself in Germany but lives in France, and is visiting Israel right now. He was invited by the Israeli Opera and the Suzanne Dellal Center as part of their project — a joint, international repertory dance endeavor — to mount a new work with local dancers. Godani’s “Light Years” will premier tomorrow night (Tuesday) at the Tel Aviv Performing Arts Center Opera House; the program also includes “Super Nova” by Marco Goecke, a German choreographer, and “Through the Center” by Israeli Emanuel Gat; the performance will be staged again on Friday, December 10, at 2 p.m.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO