Hadar Ahuvia: The Dances are For Us
Friday evening’s performance will be followed by a conversation with scholar, Shirly Bahar.
The Dances are For Us continues choreographer, performer, and educator Hadar Ahuvia’s examination into the construction of Israeli folk dance. Working with a group of dancers with various relationships to Zionism, Israeli folk dance, and other classical and folk traditions, The Dances are For Us investigates the instrumentalization of dance in the birth of nation-states.
“Through the work, we strive to model accountability to our own heritage, histories, and to each other,” writes Ahuvia.
Directed and Choreographed by: Hadar Ahuvia
Performed by: Hadar Ahuvia Oren Barnoy, Raha Behnam, Autumn Leonard, rosza daniel lang/levitsky, Mor Mendel, Jules Skloot, Zavé Martohardjono
Text by: Hadar Ahuvia and the collaborators
Directorial Assistance: Jules Skloot
Project Midwifery: rosza daniel lang/levitsky
Dramaturgy: Amir Farjoun
Projection Design: Gil Sperling
Technical Operator: Marlee Weinberg
Lighting Design: Carol Mullins
Sound Design: Avi A. Amon
Costume Design: Zavé Martohardjono
Video (at the end) by: André Zachery/Renegade Performance Group
Administrative Assistance: Tara Sheena
Project Doula: Franny Silverman
Hadar Ahuvia moves between identities, reverberating from ruptures enacted within three generations of diaspora from Europe, to Israel/Palestine and the US. An white Jewish Ashkenazi artist, her work reshapes Israeli folk and traditional liturgy, proposing embodied repair, through choreographic and vocal practice. As such it is an homage and break from a lineage of Zionist cultural workers.
Ahuvia is grateful to have worked with artists Sara Rudner, Jill Sigman, Donna Uchizono, Molly Poerstel, Anna Sperber, Jon Kinzel, Stuart Shugg, Tatyana Tenenbaum, and Kathy Westwater. She currently performs with Reggie Wilson/ Fist and Heel Performance Group, and is in process with Tatyana Tenenbaum and Shira Eviatar.
She is grateful to have received support from the Brooklyn Arts Council, and residencies at DTW/NYLA (2012 Fresh Tracks Artist) Movement Research (2015 AIR), the 14th St. Y (2016 LABA Fellow), Art Stations Foundation through MR’s GPS program, CUNY Dance Initiative at the College of Staten Island (2017), EtM Choreographer + Composer Residency at Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning (JCAL), Yaddo, and Baryshnikov Arts Center.
Ahuvia has presented work at SPACE Gallery, Dixon Place, DTW/NYLA, Art Stations Foundation in Poznan, Poland, Brooklyn Studios for Dance, the 14th St Y, and The James Gallery. Ahuvia was 2018 Bessie nominee for Outstanding “Breakout” Choreographer, and named a Dance Magazine “25 to Watch in 2019.” She is a founding member of Jewish Voice for Peace Artists Council and organizes with Jews for Racial and Economic Justice.