Uri Shafir -A Prayer on Nothingness

Uri Shafir discusses the challenge of generating movement material and the studio practices he devises to break down traditional patterns of sequences and combinations, allowing the material to emerge as something alive, open, and responsive. Dwelling in “nothingness”, deviation, starting from zero, questions like “how are you?”, and the image of the trickster serve as methods for creating material. He seeks to dismantle choreography from mechanisms of power and control over dancers, and proposes thinking of performance as a process of discovery and interpretation.

Dr. Erez Maayan Shelev emphasizes in his response that Shafir expresses an ideal of live performance, a continuous search for vitality that can only be realized in the living encounter with the audience. He identifies in Shafir’s work a rebellious stance against the replication and commodification of choreography, linking it to Peggy Phelan’s notion of performance as something that exists only in the moment, cannot be reproduced, and where every moment is different from the one before, echoing Heraclitus’s words: “You cannot step into the same river twice.”