To bridge the 7,000 mile gap between Israel and Los Angeles, the Center for Intercultural Performance invited four of the most innovative names in Israeli contemporary dance to come teach at UCLA.
Since the beginning of their two-week residency at UCLA on April 21, choreographers Idan Cohen, Niv Sheinfeld and Ronit Ziv from Tel Aviv have been joined by Barak Marshall from Los Angeles to familiarize World Arts and Cultures students with their contemporary moves.
On Sunday, May 4th, at 2 p.m. in the Glorya Kaufman Dance Theater the public will have a chance to see students perform their work in “Bridges: Choreographic Dialogues Live from Israel.”
Anuradha Kishore Ganpati, Director of Development and Communications at the Center for Intercultural Performance, believes that working with choreographers from Tel Aviv will enable World Arts and Cultures students to enrich their artistic vocabulary by becoming aware of foreign expectations in dance.
“They (Israelis) are coming with a different sensibility, which is not American,” she explained. “So it’s a different sense of timing and rhythm, how they even explain something, the sense of detail.”
The UCLA collaboration with Tel Aviv marks the first time that the Center for Intercultural Performance has facilitated an exchange between Israel and UCLA. The Israeli choreographers’ visit to UCLA forms the second phase of the reciprocal exchange with Tel Aviv.
In 2007, the center worked with the Jewish Federation and the Tel Aviv/Los Angeles partnership to send three UCLA choreographers to Tel Aviv to work with the local community.
Jill Hoyt, senior director of Intercultural Programs at the Jewish Federation, feels that the exchange will broaden the American public’s perspective of Israel and help eradicate stereotypes.
“It can offer the community an opportunity to see a part of Israel that they don’t normally see, the world of dance,” she said.
However, the choreographers and students will undoubtedly reap the greatest benefits from the exchange because they have the opportunity to engage with a different culture’s approach to a mutual preoccupation: dance.
“Dance is one level of people being able to connect on their passion, on something that drives them,” Hoyt said.
Ronit Ziv, one of the choreographers, believes that the choreographers’ creations are as individual as themselves, and do not simply reflect Israeli political concerns.
Lailye Weidman, a third-year World Arts and Cultures student and dancer in Niv Sheinfeld’s piece, feels that dance takes precedence over learning about Israeli culture.
“It’s just been about doing this particular movement and we haven’t been talking. The little bit of Hebrew that comes through is just trying to communicate,” she said. “So that’s the part that I’m really curious about and hoping to get time outside of rehearsal to talk with the choreographer how their work fits into Israel.”
Weidman found the choreographers’ approach to be rigorous and challenging. She explained that they held auditions, something rarely done in the World Arts and Cultures department.
“In some way that was kind of stressful because we’re not used to audition and competitiveness at WAC,” Weidman said. “It was strange because I feel that the defining feature of WAC is that we’re all supportive of each other.”
While Ziv treats the students as professional dancers, she still recognizes that they are students. To her, they resemble her Israeli students in their freshness and enthusiasm.
“People are so the same at this age, they are influenced from the same things,” she said. “Students are students everywhere.”