Land-Research by Arkadi Zaides
Choreographer Arkadi Zaides gathered five solo pieces into a sort of parting hymn from Israel. Zaides' works have a precise and subtle sound in a world of noise. In his new work, "Land-Research", Zaides deals with the ideological formation of the body by its surroundings. The work, which uses the architectural nature of the place and its substance, manages to retain a very precise frequency and becomes a parting hymn, a secular requiem, to this country.
"Land-Research" presents five consecutive solos, with each of the dancers in a restricted physical situation in search of salvation. Zaides places and connects hi performers in a manner that creates stories, absurd routines, truths, and perhaps most of all – the common hunger for transformation. On stage is a panoramic photograph of a local landscape. The dismantled wall of separation we can see immediately creates a concrete space for the dancing body.
Yuli Kovbasnyan moves, and every time she lies down, her body is a reminder of the flat concrete plates comprising the wall. In Ofir Yudilevitch's solo, there is an accumulative movement that doesn't stop. His body is repeatedly flung, tormented, to the floor, and each time he records his own breathing. Raida Adon sings a children's song in Arabic. Every time she stops singing, it seems that she loses something and has to continue from another place. Eventually her body becomes a stain, retaining the struggle between the internal and the external. Sva Li Levy talks with his body, everything is tense and vulnerable, and every moment that body is obliterated and is reborn. Asaf Aharonson redefines balance, but by this time the viewer is so overwhelmed that he cannot take it in.
This is not a piece that is easy to like or embrace. After the external and internal eyes compose the complex picture, it's hard to live with it when you see up close how people live here, in this place. How each person wants to get out of their bodies into the light or dark, through a constrained, teeth-grinding tension. Because no matter what they or we do, nobody here can rescue themselves from the country.