The work ‘Strange’ by Noa Dar, created in collaboration with the writer Yosef El-Dror, and premiered in 2000 as part of the Curtain Up festival at the Suzanne Dellal Centre. Now, a quarter-century later, Dar is revisiting the piece with ‘Strange in 26’. The work is being staged as part of the Friday at Ora, a performance series, which returns to dance works created between 1990-2015, featuring intimate and exposed studio performances.
The original show was fundamentally driven by the questions – What goes on in a viewer’s mind while they are watching a dance performance? What are they thinking about? What do they “understand”?
The performance brought to light the thoughts of a spectator who reacted in real-time and out loud to what was happening on stage. The dance and the spectator’s remarks stretched two parallel lines of stage action, demanding a split attention from the audience for a dialogue that was thoughtful and, at times, funny. A dialogue between the dancers and those watching them, between dance and the discourse about it, between the sophisticated and expressive physicality of the dancers and the thoughts of the spectator glued to his seat.
The curiosity that motivated the work on ‘Strange in 26′ led to a contemporary observation on the act of observation that took place in the 2000 ‘Strange’. It examines what has changed since then in the reciprocal relationship between dance and the audience, and in the nature of the discourse held within the confines of the performance space. Alongside this, the ad-hoc lab of ‘Strange in 26’ investigates how the passage of time affects the qualities of the execution and the movement material itself. Together with the dancer Michal Mualem, who is returning to the same materials she danced in the original ‘Muzar’ after 25 years, the work re-examines the one who is at the heart of the dance—the performing dancer, who gives life to the movement material and thereby constitutes the dance itself.
Noa Dar is a dancer and choreographer who works in Tel Aviv with the ‘Noa Dar Dance Group,’ which she founded in 1993. Over the years, she has developed a rich, original, and groundbreaking body of work in collaboration with artists from various fields, partners to the development of new forms of creation and performance. Her works focus on the points of contact between the body and the fabrics of its physical and socio-political environment. Since returning to performing in 2018, her own body has become an additional arena through which she explores concepts such as memory, temporality, and transformation. Among her works are ‘Lists of longings and Lessons for hope’, ‘’Come Lay Down’, ‘Land Slugs’, ‘Inventory’, ‘NoaNoa’, ‘Skin’, ‘Anu (Us)’, ‘Arnica’, ‘Tetris’, ‘Strange’, ‘Children’s Games’, and many others that have been presented at leading festivals and platforms in Israel and around the world. Dar has won numerous awards, including the Minister of Culture Prize for Young Choreographers, the Performance Prize for a Company from the Ministry of Culture, the Rosenblum Prize for the Performing Arts from the Tel Aviv-Yafo Municipality, the Dance Creation Prize from the Ministry of Culture, and the Landau Prize for Arts and Sciences from the Pais Council for Culture and Art.
Credit:
By: Noa Dar
Text: Josef El-Dror
Performers: Michal Mualem, Moshe Shechter Avshalom, Actor in Soundtrack: Gal Zaid
Music Editing: Udi Kumeran
Artistic Director of Curtain Up 2000: Eran Baniel
Original Cast of 2000 Strange 2000: Michal Mualem, Gal Zaid, Asaf Shatz, Ilaya Shalit, Maya Brinner.
Portrait Photo: Liron Weissman
Performance photos Strange (2000): Tamar Lamm
