Residency / 2018
Mandel Cultural Center
Supported by Mifal Hapayis
In this year, our residency program hosted 6 leading female figures of the Dance Scene in Israel, each with a distinct clear voice - Sharon Zuckerman-Weiser, Iris Erez, Merav Dagan, Yuli Kovbasnian, Annabelle Dvir, Tami Leibovits. All artists received studio time, a modest stipend and ultimately presented in our annual conference. We also hosted an international residency of Russian artist based in France - Dina Khuseyn.
Photo: Aviad Oren
by Annabelle Dvir
Photo: Aviad Oren
Merav Dagan
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Photo: Ophir Ben Shimon
Merav Dagan (1984) - is a choreographer, performer, and dance and yoga instructor. She is a graduate of the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance and at present is a Master’s student at the interdisciplinary art program in Tel Aviv University. Dagan was a DanceWEB scholar at ImPulsTanz in Vienna. She has worked with various choreographers and directors in Israel and has performed in festivals and theaters around the world. Her own work has been presented inIntimadance Festival, Machol Acher (Other Dance) Festival (2012), Shades in Dance festival (2013), A-ganer Festival (2014), and the Acco International Fringe Festival (2015). In 2016 she created COME CLOSER for Curtain up festival in collaboration with Stav Marin. Merav won the award for Best Actress in the Acco Theatre Festival 2012 for her role in the show "Marathon" by Aharona Israel. As a choreographer she won first prize in Shades in Dance Festival with the piece “I can see them coming”.
This is an offer to take the biological mechanism of the menstruation cycle and use it
as a choreographic score – an outline for a space of cyclical - temporary destruction.
This is a wish to establish the female body as a source of information and inspiration
for new insights, turn it into a platform one could view the world and operate in, in
the hope for a better future.
Annabelle Dvir
Photo: Amit Burkovski
Annabelle Dvir (1990) - Choreographer, dancer, vocalist and teacher, graduate of MA and BA with the Dean’s honors from The Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance, studying at KELIM Choreography Program, recipient of the DanceWeb scholarship 2018 - ImPulsTanz Vienna International Dance Festival. Recipient of Holon Municipality’s Art Excellence scholarship. Her works premiered in various festivals, such as Jerusalem International Dance Week 2018 - International SHOWCASE, Arts Printing House - Vilnius Lithuania, Intimadance Festival 2018, Between Heaven and Earth Festival 2017, Mazya Dance Series 2017, Jerusalem International Dance Week 2016, Co-production - Adama Dance Festival 2015, First Upcoming - The Israeli Choreographers Association and Dialogue events series. In her works she researches mainly the aesthetics that art has to offer to the humiliated, aching, bent body; to the changing contour between agony and pleasure, coercion to independence, and how they conjoin in the performer’s body as material, mass, sound - through visual, audial and plastic procedures.
Iris Erez
Photo: Daniel Tchetchik
Iris Erez (1971) - a creator, dancer and teacher of body and movement. Through her works Iris is searching to bring the political and public spheres through the private vibrating body and to research the reciprocal influences on one another. Teaches at the Academy for music & dance and the Visual Theater school in Jerusalem. Was also an artistic director of Machol Shalem Dance Festival and an actress. Today she is raising 2 boys.
In this project Iris is aiming to search the option of dancing the space, making the actual body vibrate its surrounding, becoming an environmental body. In doing so to question our ability to resist our environment, surrender to it and change it. What is between utopia and dystopia in the actual dancing body? In the gap between the will to move "out of here" and the will to move "from here" maybe lies the possibility to create a change (in Hebrew: "to dance a change") in a deep sense.
Yuli Kovbasnian
Yuli Kovbasnian, born 1986 in Russia, holds a B.ed in dance and movement from Kibbutzim College. Kovbasnian collaborated with choreographers in Israel including Arkadi Zaides, Ayala Bresler Nardi, Moran Itzhaki Abergel, Sigal Bergman, Nava Frenkel, Talia de Vries and others as well as Trajal Harrell in the USA.
Photo: Jenn Granit
Tami Leibovits
Tami Leibovits (1983) - Lives and works in Tel Aviv. Leibovits is a choreographer, dancer, costume designer and teacher. Her work examines the live body set in the sphere between Dance, Performance and Visual Art. Leibovits has presented her works nationally and internationally.
In this project I will be working with Fog as a physical entity that you can get lost in. Inside this landscape I am interested in the range between being alive and still. In the human capacity to inflict itself and its surroundings, inside a sphere which is vast and uncontrolled.
Photo: Oren Izre'el
Dina Khuseyn
Dina Khuseyn is a choreographer, performer and independent curator of festivals, educational programs and collective dance expositions. She was born and grew up in Moscow where she received her first dance education and diploma of a ballet dancer. She finished «Rotterdam Dance Academy» and received the DanceWeb scholarship in 2001. She worked with such companies and choreographers as Galili Dance, Anouk van Dijk, Gulbenkian Dance Company, Loïc Touzé, Tino Sehgal, Cally Spooner and others. In 2008 she was invited to American Dance Festival (North Carolina). Her work «Flies» got nominated for Golden Mask awards, other works were presented in diverse festivals in France, Russia, Hungary, Latvia and Spain. In 2009 she completed the ex.e.r.ce program, under direction of Mathilde Monnier, at the Contemporary Dance Center in Montpellier, France.
In 2015, in Moscow, she created SOTA - an open, mobile program, which cooperates with various cultural institutions in Russia and abroad, in order to create a platform for the development and promotion of contemporary dance as an important part of contemporary art and culture.
In 2016, in Moscow she created Performative Practice Place - an independent art space focused on the development of arts associated with performativity.
In November 2017, together with Emilie Houdent, she initiated and curated international festival "Déprogrammation" at the Theater Manufacture Atlantique, Bordeaux.
At the moment Dina Khuseyn lives and works between France and Russia, where she creates her choreographic and curatorial projects.
The development of her own artistic pass brought her to the point where her artistic practice is very much linked and related to her curatorial practice. Creation of “alternative/ different spaces” and investing in community - are two main lines present in her choregraphic and curatorial works.
Sharon Zuckerman Weiser
Photo: Sharon Zuckerman Weiser
Sharon Zuckerman Weiser (1977) - Born In Israel. Graduated from P.A.R.T.S in 1999. Since then has been alternating between dancing with others and creating her own work. Worked with various artists in Europe and Israel, such as Charlotte Vanden Eynde, Jan Decorte, Shani Granot, Arco Renz, Ulrich Rasche, Yasmeen Godder, Arkadi Zaides and others. For the last 9 years Zuckerman became Dance Dramaturg for several independent artists among them: Iris Erez, Maya Brinner and Hillel Kogan. She has been mentoring and teaching in different high education programs, specializing in working on the performative skills of dancers. From next year on she will be the head director of the New Choreography Program in Kelim Center at Bat Yam.
The Sub Way - A duo for two mature performers: Moshe Schechter Avshalom and Sharon Zuckerman Weiser. Dealing with the black boxes. The things behind things. The blind spots of the human consciousness- performative, dancy, physical consciousness. Removing the personal layer and touching a sub-layer – self-operating mechanism. Like Zuckerman’s other works – physical representation of the human and the performative communication between the performer and public feed the search and the finding.