Possessing

Possessing brings together artists Hadar Ahuvia and Shira Eviatar to collaboratively question their inherited connections to Israeli nation-state, asking “How do we move together?” 

Ahuvia, unpacking Ashkenazi heritage in institutionalized Zionist folk dance, and Eviatar, recentralizing Arab/Mizrahi aesthetics in contemporary performance, incite dialogue around appropriation, legacy, and settler-colonialism. After conducting research separately, they come together to deepen their questions and application of their respective forms.

Their search unfolds in movements that recall ancestors’ and institutionalized celebration and mourning rituals—extending far past their respective bodies and histories.

Together we ask, what is a Jewish dancing space, in a diaspora that includes Israel/Palestine?  How do we practice connection to place, belonging, acknowledgement, and hosting? We are lingering, suspending between history and the flesh, between narrative and fiber, between what is taut and what quivers. We are recognizing one in the other, and one another, we are moving alongside and intertwining, wandering amidst the multiplicity of placements and settlements, lingering in the present as a possibility for atonement.

Possessing premiered as a part of Walls Down!, the 2019-20 Performance Season at Gibney, curated by Eva Yaa Asantewaa, Senior Curatorial Director. 

PRESS

“We agree to be together in questions and not necessarily find answers. There is solidarity in our disagreement,” - Two choreographers work together to explore both sides of Israeli dance- Jerusalem Post

Shira Eviatar is an independent choreographer, dancer and artist based in Jaffa. She presents her works, lectures and leads workshops of her method in Israel, Europe and the US, including Festivals such as Rencontres Chorégraphiques, Fabbrica Europa, SPRING among others, and at Gibney and Batsheva Hosts. She is the only Israeli choreographer invited to present at Theater De La Bastille in Paris. Eviatar was a guest artist at SEAD and at an international project through Suzanne Dellal with ATOM Theater, Bulgaria. She was a 2015 DanceWeb Scholarship Program participant, and is an award winner of the 2019 Prize from the Ministry of Culture and Sport for the Preservation and Cultivation of Israeli Culture, and The 2020 Rosenblum Prize for Promising Artist for creating a new genre of local dance called contemporary Mizrahi.

Past Showings

Gibney Dance, NYC November 2019

Tmuna Theater, Tel Aviv- Yaffo/ Yaffa, December 2019

Habayit Theater, Yaffo/Yaffa, December 2019

Mahol Shalem, Jerusalem/Al Quds, December 2019