Dances With Sculptures

Image by Efrat Valero
Crossposted from Haaretz

Image by Efrat Valero
Improvisations by veteran dancer Anat Shamgar and up-and-coming dancer and choreographer Arkadi Zaides form the basis of “Dance with a Sculpture,” an intimate, magical and profound show. Created with sculptor Avital Cnaani, the dance is accompanied by the sounds of the cello, played by Dan Weinstein and Karni Postal.
The name of the program aroused my curiosity, as I was hoping to see the extent to which the encounter between dance and sculpture has changed, 30 years after the trend swept over independent dance in Israel. Back then, the dancers’ interaction with sculptures and other props stemmed primarily from a desire to discover a new language of movement. The sculpture or prop became part of the movement solution, and technical dancing ability was occasionally sidelined in favor of creative solutions found in the encounter between the object and the body.