Inbetween uncertainty: Nitzan Moshe and Yotam Peled

SE.S.TA Centre for Choreographic Development, once again, pulls you into the fascinating mystery of artistic creative process. Lucie Kocourková and Katarína Brestovanská interviewed Israeli dancers Nitzan Moshe and Yotam Peled during their ART CLUSTERS residency in Žďár nad Sázavou.

While reading an invitation text about your creative process titled Kibutz, it proposed astounding background of your interests. Besides ecofeminist theories, intertwined with your personal history – growth as a queer person in Kibutz, your chronic pain which brought you to your artistic journey as a choreographer, history of the State of Israel, an ongoing conflict resulting in recent war… How did you start the process of decoding the essence of this creation?

Yotam: When I sent an application, in September 2023, I had another project in my mind. The starting point was for me very personal. I thought that I will work in a studio alone, or work in a role of a choreographer with three other dancers. So, it started off in my head as more of my thing – studying the culture of Kibbutz and the origins of socialist movement in Israel. And following the events of the 7th of October 2023 in Israel (Palestine terrorist attacks in Israel), we started to work together in the studio. So, my idea has shifted, so did the plans with the project.

Nitzan: Yotam and I we always like to work together even though we do not have a clear purpose… but recent situation of war confused us and urged us to do something. We were laughing that ever since the war we have had regular afternoon school in studio, full of improvisation, observing each other, talking a lot, which was our warm up which eventually shifts into the movement. The images and elements that we have been using during presentation and we picked up, were exactly from this playful process. In some way meeting without a clear purpose, being able to talk, move and express ourselves became therapeutic for us.

Could you describe how does your personal and universal perspectives moved throughout the process? Perhaps, it was not one way ride but movement back and forth, wasn’t it? Could you name some of those perspectives?

Nitzan: I think it is quite a long process. There are some topics that Yotam and I repeatedly keep talking about such as being in Berlin as foreigners, Israelis… it is always there. And Yotam is a person that I can share this with him. But there are many layers. Variety of emotions…

Yotam: … fields, landscapes, objects, …

I remember exactly the moment of processual shift. I came to Nitzan with all of these theoretical sources and she asked me: “What moves you emotionally related to this topic? How the topic interest you?” It was not gradual process of decomposing the theory into movement. More likely as Nitzan said, we investigate through our sharing during afternoon “school” sessions.

And yes, Israelis in Berlin is definitely the topic. We have been talking a lot about this personal level of our existence: “How do we feel like? How do we feel like foreigners? Also, questions related to dance culture: How do we relate to dance? How do we like to dance? What do we like to see in dance? How to describe intellectual versus emotional body? Do we need to apologise that our drive, in dance culture, depart from physical, emotional or sensorial place? Do we find ourselves in comfort with that or not?

We have been thinking how ceremonial farewell with homeland could look like. Then topic of nostalgia came up. If I want to say goodbye to homeland maybe, first, I want to visit all those places that I am connected with. There are not just bad places, but lot of good places. We questioned how to work with nostalgia, hence the idea of ceremony sneaked in our process, which bounced both us. On the way we followed Israeli memorial ceremonies. We found out that Memorial ceremony creates tension between independence and memorial event in Israel. We have started to use elements of memory – monuments, flags, different states of body. As we wanted to embody this tension we started to play with contradictions of heroic and pathetic body. We developed different postures and movements which perhaps belong to religious or fight contexts, with how the body desires something fully and how it falls apart.

Nitzan: We created our kingdom from elements such as flags and rocks on the stage. The challenge in this process was to set aside the judgmental aspect of working with folk and ceremonies. We obviously have our opinions on this highly charged social rituals, but we wanted to open the space, to let people in, to give them the possibility of developing an emotional connection without taboos. We tried to maintain that unencumbered mindset of kids when we played with material, fully committing to the tasks but staying playful, to convince ourselves, and invite people in.

Yotam: We tried to embody our material physically. For example, if we choose certain scene, we want to be that scene, we are the rock in that scene, we are the memory, we are celebration, we are like those kids absolutely submerged in doing it. Maybe it sounds abstract. But we want body to be medium not intellect. From the perspective of spectators, we also wanted to propose experience with the material not what we think about that material. And even though some topics in the process were painful, we were able to laugh at them and stay curious.

Above all we are not just showing physical material or our cultural heritage, but we question our essence. Such questions as: “Where am I now in relation to these stories? What is my personal story? Who is Yotam or Nitzan here? Where is our homeland? These questions are underlying issues of our process, which we would like to develop in the future.

It is always easier to observe, reflect, compare or judge our history from remote time and place. Your situation in your “new” perhaps temporal place might be in cultural clash but, at the same time, could be a shelter, a distant place for acknowledging of existential itching. How does your personal history overlap your current time? How such diverse Berlin treats you?

Nitzan: Oof, it is a difficult question. We have a special word in Hebrew – ciometer, which refers to a scale of tension. Personally, I feel tension all the time. Wanting to have my family, to hear news, not to hear news, want to be in Israel not want to be there. I am constantly running on this scale. It is a kind of unresolved tension, which we confront with the creative process.

Yotam: I have lived in Berlin for almost 10 years, Nitzan about 5, but our attitudes on how we relate to Israel is not in unison. I feel more complete about leaving, I do not have a feeling of belonging there and I wonder if I will ever have a home. We both have different aspirations for the future as well, but what interests me is how much of these personal topics comes out during the process.

Nitzan: As artists we feel welcomed and also privileged to be based and work in Berlin. We have got really nice welcoming. As a collective we also have nice experience working in Germany. Although it is a struggle to sustain in the role of an artist, constantly applying for fundings. In general, I feel somewhere in between.

Yotam: I always felt that living in Berlin is like one on the train station. There is very international community. Everyone would give I guess very similar answer, even Germans do, even people who were born in Berlin. It is not commitment place. I think that living in Berlin in comparison with other places, I have experienced, is more likely to be perceived as a transitional place. Everyone is kind of uprooted there. But I slowly make peace with it.

Artistically, I was very inspired when I moved to Berlin. My journey was connected to night life, clubbing, and my initiation into dancing. Berlin is amazing city in which you feel omnipresent self-acceptance, celebration. At the beginning of my work as a maker this was very much kind of an input. What was weird, the more I tried to do my work, more I realised that Berlin is actually really difficult. So many artists, everyone want to speak out in the space and, yes, it is a struggle. But as NItzan said we are privileged that we managed to be part of artistic discourse in Berlin. But sometimes I ask myself: “What is my voice in that city? Am I needed? (We operate a lot in other places in Germany, and other places in Europe. Both because there is a need to have partners for our projects.)

We have seen 10 minutes work-in-progress presentation. We observed expressiveness of body articulation, strong accent on musicality and preciseness in execution of movement. Could you describe how specifically do you work with temporality and musicality?

Yotam: We both are nerdy about the musicality of movement. Timing and quality guide us throughout shaping of material. I am not very disciplined, I started dancing late, and I am struggling with lots of things in dance. However, I do enjoy making movement, but dancing other people’s material is always a bit of struggle for me. But when I have my own material, I like digging into it and Nitzan is for me best partner to work with. She is really intuitive. If you would visit our rehearsal, we would be most probably dealing with how many counts, whether material is too short or too long, how do we feel about it… We take decisions about material from these inside sensations, not from outside.

Nitzan: Clarity of actions is important for us. Actions itself give rhythm. To attain this shared rhythm we respect our actions, our agreement, we listen a lot. The words that we sang during presentation gave us also frame for temporality.

Yotam: Naming certain situations as qualities such as tension, release, collapsing, softening, hard, etc. helps us to define tempo. Since we do not have to put extra effort to negotiate in between us, we can allow process to be intuitive. We also use traditional elements of ceremony – singing and marching, which gave us regularity for execution of the material. However, we work a lot in silence.

What we share for sure is a certain level of emotionality – those highs and lows of intensity. When we connect our conversation with what we said about us foreigners living in Berlin, even though we are very different human beings, we sometimes feel that our emotional response is slightly different than people in here. From my observation of works of other choreographers, some come from theoretical places, political concepts. And it is perhaps a step in our work but, at some point, we need body to process it, for it to become a living experience. And, yes, we invest a lot into sensations and perception, which sometimes could be a curse, sometimes blessing. But we cannot avoid it, it is ingrained in us as human beings, in dance education, in the path of a dancer.

Is there also correlation between shared rhythm and language?

Nitzan: It is something we just began observing and it is not yet very developed. There are elements of the Hebrew language that offer a sense of rhythm and musicality. The songs we choose to work with carry a feeling, we assume, but we still need time to process it.

How this residency helped you to develop your ideas?

Yotam: At the beginning of the residency, we asked ourselves a simple question: “What interests us right now?” It was important anchorage of such vast subject matter. But we are still at the beginning of the process. The residency showed us that there is something valid and could be shared with diverse public. I am doubting whether without this residency we would materialise these thoughts. In the realm of 10 minutes work-in-progress presentation, there are some universes that were not present, but do interest us. But we need time to process, digest this experience and decide where do we want to go.