Suzanne Dellal Center launches online platform to stream dance festival
“In my opinion, it is a miracle that in such a difficult time we managed to put up all of these premieres,” Naomi Perlov, artistic director for Suzanne Dellal Center, admitted.
By TAMAR URIEL-BEERITel Aviv dance offerings will include Renee Sheinfeld’s ‘I Saw a Butterfly’ and the Shaden Dance Ensemble’s ‘This Place.’ (photo credit: RONI DADON)
The Suzanne Dellal Center, the accomplished theater and dance center in the Neve Tzedek neighborhood of Tel Aviv, announced Monday that it will be launching an online platform for live streaming and viewing of nine upcoming dance premieres, set to take place throughout the Tel Aviv Dance 2020 festival.Tel Aviv Dance is an annual festival that has been held in the Suzanne Dellal Center since 1999, presenting dance ensembles and choreographers from Israel and abroad. Due to the current limitations of the coronavirus pandemic, the 2020 festival will only include local performers and will be available to view online only.Anat Fischer-Leventon, the new CEO of Suzanne Dellal Center, told The Jerusalem Post that one of the most difficult parts of the operation was “the unsurety about whether it will happen or not, and what that would mean.”“There was a lot of thought on how to do this in the most correct and respectful manner,” she explained. “There was a bit of a dilemma if we should film it live and it would be live online, or if we pre-film and live-stream. We found out along the way that the producer needs to know what he is coming to film. He must understand the performance, what stands behind it, so that the result is the best possible one. The producer came every day to watch. It is a complex productive process.”All of the performances, which are set to appear onstage for the first time during the festival, are choreographed by Israelis and will take the stage between September 8 and September 16. Every evening, a different premiere will be live-streamed online and will be available to its audience for the following 24 hours.“In my opinion, it is a miracle that in such a difficult time we managed to put up all of these premieres,” Naomi Perlov, artistic director for Suzanne Dellal Center, admitted. “It’s hard.”The opening night performance on September 8 will be Adi Boutrous’s One Other Thing, which deals with the male identity and its placement in the spectrum of control and power.THE FOLLOWING night will feature Annabelle Dvir’s 7 Inch of Slam – The Full Body Soundscape, which plays with the key relationship of presentation and sensation.The next evening, the Kaiser-Antonino Dance Ensemble, headed by Avi Haiser and Sergio Antonino, will be performing As Long As There is Air Around, which addresses the confrontation of the two with body, nature, their environment and the relationship between them.The following night will feature Ella Rothschild’s Abominations, which tells the cultural story of a meal around the table as each character suffers from loneliness, fighting along the border between life and death.
Orly Portal’s Fakarouni, Arabic for Think of Me, and is a “love song to love, to all my loved ones and lovers,” Portel said.Theater Dance’s Renee Sheinfeld will following the next evening with I Saw a Butterfly, an evening of dancing and singing to the music of Grammy award winner David Darling.Roy Assaf’s performance of Shape Number 16 will be onstage the following night, a work “for a single performance to choose its fate.”Shaden Dance Ensemble will be following with This Place, a trilogy representing a “place” in space that contains a handful of aspects of people’s minds and emotions.The festival will end on September 15 with Shlomit Fundaminsky’s Big Hand, Little Hand, which revolves around a woman sitting and waiting.“There is no comparison between a live performance and any other media. That is to say, in an auditorium,” Fischer-Leventon told the Post. “The experience of seeing the entire stage and feeling the experience, there is nothing like it. As long as we are not allowed to come back to the theater, we have a tool to nevertheless perform in front of an audience. It will never match a live performance.”As the performances are online, prices have been reduced to NIS 20 per performance, or any sum given in addition to a donation to the center. A ticket to all nine shows costs NIS 99. The performances will be available for viewing until September 25. Each performance begins at 9 p.m. with the exception of the opening night performance, which will begin at 10 p.m.
