In search of dance...

One of my favorite parts of New York was my discovery of the world of dance. Between the New York City Center, the Joyce and the New York City Ballet, I was seeing dance almost every week, and sometimes more. It became almost an obsession. The music, the lighting, the immediacy of movement, the constant division and recreation of space--and even in the most abstract of dances, the necessary figural element of the dancer's own body. In some ways, it is the most human of the arts.

And with the human, there is relationship, almost an implicit story. Dance cannot leave you cold.

Since coming back to Israel I've been trying to keep up this passion. There's a lot of great modern dance, but its harder to hear about--or at least I have not yet found the central information hub. And there are less great student tickets available, which in my current financial state unfortunately means a lot .

A few weeks ago, I went to the special late night opening at the Israel Museum, which served as a venue for student dancers and performance artist. After speaking to the dancers, my friend and I were lucky enough to get permission to come and draw during the advanced improv class at the Vertigo dance company.

These are mostly quick gesture drawings, often done so fast, and layered one over the other, that even I can barely tell what they are at the end. Here is a typical 5 drawings on one paper:

While viewing a class lacks the fusion of elements that makes of a finished dance performance, it focuses you more on the internal space of the dance: what the dancer is thinking about, how they are speaking to their body, what the movement means, the relationship to other dancers.

These sketches try to capture the essential line of the dancer's movement:

While in these I tried to catch a sense of the essential line of the dance as a whole by marking the different position of the dancer as she moved:

These focus on the relationship between the dancers in a duet:

The level of self awareness and of trust involved in improvising a duet is truly awe-inspiring.