Yossi Berg and Oded Graf | Mid-War Dance Moves

Mid-War Dance Moves

I wonder, had there been no war, what dance would have emerged?

But there is war, and these are the movements that were created at this time, in this place.

Do you feel like the ground is slipping away from under your feet? Then let’s lay down some sand, a sea, and a boat.

We write scripts, looking for new ways to convey the reality; here, we are the ones who control the situation.

This ritual takes place between us – the dancers – and you – the audience. It’s something special, isn’t it?
We can sail wherever we want.

Credits

Concept, Choreography, Soundtrack Design: Yossi Berg & Oded Graf
Creating performers: Amit Zaretsky, Shira Ben Uriel Oded Graf, Yossi Berg
Lights: Ofer Laufer
Costumes: Eran Shani
Musical Editing: Binya Reches
Outside Eye: Yael Venezia
Website: www.yossioded.com

Supported by: Co-produced by MART Foundation, Rabinovich Foundation, Tel Aviv Municipality, The Ministry of Culture

About creators
Tel Aviv-based choreographers Yossi Berg and Oded Graf began collaborating in 2005. They’ve garnered a reputation for boundary-pushing work that is highly physical, poignant, and clever. Berg and Graf toured their productions worldwide (Festival Montpellier Danse, American Dance Festival, The Joyce Theater NYC,
DansensHus Stockholm, SIDance South Korea, to name but a few) and received several prestigious international awards. They commissioned their works as guest choreographers in numerous dance companies, opera houses and universities.

Yossi and Oded are artistic directors, inventors, researchers, dancers, educators, and mentors; they teach extensively around the world, focusing on the next generation of dancers.

Since 2020, Yossi has been leading the Sadna Professional Dance Program, located at Kibbutz Ga’aton, serving as both Artistic Director and teacher, while Oded has been leading the Curtain Up Dance Festival (2000-2024), and since 2023 regularly teaching the MFA
program at Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance. They received the Israeli Ministry of Culture and Sports Award for Outstanding Choreographers and the Rosenblum Prize for Artistic Excellence in the Performing Arts.
Yossi is an avid mountain trekker; Oded is a dedicated yoga practitioner.

Reviews:

“Beautiful and clever compositions, precise and captivating execution…the great dancers!
Yossi and Oded themselves, along with the excellent Shira Ben-Uriel and Amit Zaretsky.
Along with a perfect finish in everything – physicality, composition, expression, costumes
60 minutes pass in the blink of an eye. You could see the audience hanging their eyes
spellbound and wanting more and more” Eden Kramer, creative writing

“A work that touches on deep sadness, manages to articulate the experience of life here and at the same time illustrates the power of art to create alternatives, imagine a future, show
that it is possible otherwise” Ran Brown, Haaretz

Audience responds

“I was at the premiere of your new work and I was really moved. Thank you for a journey that spoke to many feelings that I am experiencing these days. Thank you for the humor, for the advice, for the honesty, for the concealment, and in general for agreeing to touch open

wounds like this…I didn’t want it to ever end”

“The work you created is so moving because all the elements – the space, the performance, the materials, and also the time (the period) managed to exist both within the reality-fantasy of your artistic language, and also within the actual reality and imagination of the viewer.
For me, you created a dance-theater work that is an oxymoron. Revealing the paradoxes, the contrasts, in a communicative way: tragic and comic, grandeur and failure, controlled or dominated, staying or escaping. Thank you!”

“It was so significant on so many levels that it is difficult to describe. A spectacular aesthetic of movement in space that allows for such a different and blessed observation of our lives”

“Exciting, intelligent, disturbing and mesmerizing. So happy to be in this moment and see in a broad perspective your works and how they are built layer upon layer. Pearls of distress”