At this time in our lives, and at this tragic juncture of this still young country’s timeline, “festival” seems a strange and incongruous, if not downright ridiculous, appellation to employ.
While families continue to grieve over their loved ones murdered at the Supernova music festival and in communities down South and on the battlefield, and wait for their relatives and friends to – hope against hope – come back alive from captivity in Gaza, settling down in an air-conditioned auditorium to enjoy some staged show appears, at the very least, discordant with the current national zeitgeist.
But, as perennial artistic directors Itay Mautner and Michal Vaknin state, the Israel Festival sets out “to do what art and creation know so well to do – to create a space where complexity, multifaceted thought, and imagination can coexist in unison.”
As the lineup of the country’s preeminent cultural vehicle clearly demonstrates, this is no exercise in crass escapism. The event kicks off where it matters, down South, with a slew of poignant artistic offerings on September 10-13 in the Gaza border communities – Sderot, Ofakim, Kibbutz Dorot and Eshkol Regional Council – before continuing to its traditional home in Jerusalem September 17-27.
The curtain-raiser in Sderot (September 10, 7 p.m.) is a triple-header, starting with the premiere of the 7 Boom dance production by Liat Dror. The name references a card game the Sderot resident played as a child. The numerical and warfare inferences are self-understood, and the choreographer says the idea is “to bring the movement together with the place that had been abandoned,” as it were to kick-start her hometown back to life.
There is, of course, no getting away from the events of October 7 and its ensuing ongoing tragic and depressing fallout, and Dror says the work “examines the instability, the unsafe movement, the lack of a physical, personal, and national center.” There is a life-death-rejuvenation theme to 7 Boom which seems a neatly appropriate way to open this year’s festival.
The performers, Dror posits, “will test new relationships, seek to find stability in a shaky space, and practice how to help each other in precarious situations in order to find a healing anchor.” Ne’er a more curative word was spake.
The dance show is part of a four-hour slot at the Adama Center in Sderot in a program that also features a veritable melting pot of a music show called Yelala (Howl). A bunch of artists, originally from the north of the country, proffer a sonically and sensorially variegated repertoire that takes in “hymns that are prayers, songs that are requests, cross-continental influences, and, above all, a huge talent that ensures that every performance will be different.”
The organizers say the artists will come to Sderot “armed with love and diverse musical instruments, for a show that is a ritual meeting between sounds, words, and people.”
The opening triad is completed by a sound installation by Yaniv Schenzer, called Windless, which feeds directly and corporeally off the ongoing regional violence. Schenzer spent several months collecting shrapnel off rockets fired into Israel, took them to his studio, and turned them into musical instruments. Looks something like a sonic rendition of the biblical “swords into plowshares” prophecy.
The installation, which comprises dozens of metallic wind chimes, will be on display at the Adama Center September 11 through September 13.
At the Jerusalem Theatre
Back in the capital, at the Jerusalem Theatre, Vaknin and Mautner have lined up a stellar roster of artists across the 11-day schedule.
Unity – as per the myriad posters that festoon bridges, buildings, and vehicles all over the country – is very much at the programming core. One Day, for example, is an overnighter in which artists and audience share the stage of the Sherover Hall for a multidisciplinary multi-participant original production that starts at 5 p.m. on September 26, running through to 4 p.m. on the morrow.
The likes of singer-songwriter Shlomi Shaban, vocalist Eviatar Banai, actresses Dana Ivgy and Alit Kreiz, street photographer Alex Farfuri, Jerusalem-based a cappella troupe Great Gehenna Choir and comedian Adi Helman are in the 23-hour marathon mix. The curators say that artists and ticket-holders will join forces to “examine the places where togetherness is a source of strength, and the moments when it is a thin mask that hides divisions.”
Then there is Music People, dubbed by the organizers as “a show that is the soundtrack of our era,” featuring front grid poppers and rockers such as Berry Sakharof, Marina Maximilian Blumin, Alon Eder, Karolina, and Alma Gov in there, you get the marketing angle.
The rawer talent side of the lineup includes Yaara Cohen, whose music teacher and his wife, Shlomi and Shachar Mattias, were murdered on October 7. Talia Dancyg, whose grandfather was taken hostage and subsequently murdered.
The South also features in a multidisciplinary theatrical work called A Place to Live by the Otef HaNegev Theater company, whose ranks includes survivors of October 7 and evacuees. The production explores the personal journeys of the residents of the Gaza border communities based on WhatsApp messages, firsthand testimonies, and personal experiences, as the product of a therapeutic process the participants underwent.
In one of the few offshore items in the festival, German documentary artist Volker Gerling presents his Portraits in Motion photography-based performance at the Mikro Hall.
Earlier this year, Gerling visited Israel, touring the country and meeting dozens of locals, all connected in one way or another to October 7. He photographed some of the people he met on his analog camera.
“Gerling combines his compassionate gaze, sensitivity, and unique humor into an endearing stage performance that tells a story through photographs, allowing for an outside perspective into our most fragile moments,” say the organizers.
Dance and music meet, to good evocative and nostalgic effect, in the Love Music (Now) revisited collaboration between singer Dikla and dancer Yasmeen Godder. The two enjoyed a similar highly successful synergy in 2001, when they combined material from Dikla’s 2000 pop hit “Love Music” and Godder’s Hall production. The expansive Israel Festival reprise includes eight female dancers of different ages and backgrounds, with Dikla backed by a nine-piece band.
In 100 Men, filmmaker Hadas Neumann takes us on a very personal cinematic stroll around her childhood neighborhood, encountering some of the characters that may or may not lead her to where her heart really lies.
The emotional ante will shoot up even further when IDF reservist and playwright Roee Joseph presents Shura – Craft of Life Identification. It is described as “a play based on reality” which feeds off Joseph’s time at the eponymous IDF base where he and other reservists spent 60 days identifying victims of a massacre.
“Shura is a brave and exposed attempt to allow us all to understand what was there and, perhaps, to put it to proper rest,” say the curators.
