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Episode 3

BoyzGirlz: Girl Power

Gender play in the works ofYasmeen Godder, Anat Danieli & Omer Uziel, Merav Dagan, Roni Chadash

What does it mean to create dance from a feminist, female, and gender perspective?
The third episode of Creatures of Dance focuses on Israeli women choreographers who explore the female body through fresh points of view, describing bold investigations of identity, embodiment, the flesh & corporality, and performance. In the works of Yasmeen Godder, Meirav Dagan, Anat Danieli, Roni Chadash, and others, complex layers of vulnerability and power, sexuality, pain, humor, and resistance are revealed. The conversations in this episode situate these artists in relation to cultural stereotypes of femininity—heels, fur, and blood—while placing them within the broader history of the female body in Western dance, challenging the old and pervasive image of the ballerina as an “ideal.”

This is an episode about the gender politics of dance as a subversive performative act—one that dares to confront taboos and articulate new positions.

BoyzGirlz: Girl Powerplay episode

00:00 / 01:04

Gertrud Kraus, two solos from the 30s (probably), Vienna.

Unknown photographer

This episode is narrated by: Sarah Holcman, Adi Drori, Nataly Fainstien & Ido Kenan

With

Yasmeen Godder choreographer, dancer and artistic director of the Yasmeen Godder dance company and of the Moving Communities project

Dr. Tal Dekel Head of the M.A program in Visual Literacy Studies at the Kibbutzim College of Technology and Arts & a lecturer at Tel Aviv University

Regular Guest

Ran Brown Head of the dance program at Telma Yellin high school for the arts, independent dance researcher and dance critic for Haaretz newspaper

Transcription Guy Dolev / Translation from Hebrew Michal Shalev

Photos of Gertrud Kraus Courtesy of The Israeli Dance Archive at Beit Ariela, Tel Aviv - Jaffa

Music

"Valse Triste (Sentimentale)״ by Tchaikovsky, Op. 51, No. 6.

Josef Sakonov & London Festival Orchestra, from the album Phase 4 Stereo Spectacular, released 2015, Decca Music Group LTD

״Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme״ by Jean Baptiste Lully.

Le Concert des Nations Jordi Savall, from the album La Musique au temps de Marin Marais, released 1992

״Ballet Suite No. 1.״ by Aram Khachaturian.

London Symphony Orchestra and Stanley Black, from the album Khachaturian: Ballet Suites from Spartacus & Masquerade, released 2015, Decca Music Group LTD

״Lonely House, Street Scene” by Kurt Weill (1946).

Piano Accompaniment by Christina Pepper, uploaded to youtube on 13th February 2019

״Heart and Soul״ (original mix) Bea Wain (1939).

From the album Bea Wain-You Started Something, released 2009 Dazzling Dames

Excerpt from Bloody Mary, by Merav Dagan (2018).

Recorded on live performance

* All musical excerpts are from the choreographies presented in this episode except: “Arrow Arrow” by Aglow Hollow (2019)

Links

Love Fire (2009) Yasmeen Godder - webpage

http://www.yasmeengodder.com/works/love-fire

Two Playful Pink (2003) Yasmeen Godder - webpage

http://www.yasmeengodder.com/works/two-playful-pink