yossioded.com
יוסי ברג ועודד גרף
“The best party in town is actually a dance show” Ha`aretz
המסיבה הכי טובה בעיר היא בכלל מופע מחול" הארץ"
“A praise song for the arts – poetry, cinema, dance and the physical experience of the body” Yediot Achronot
שיר הלל לאמנויות – לשירה, לתעלולי הקולנוע, למחול, לחוויה הפיזית של גוף" ידיעות אחרונות"
**The show is modular and adapts itself to changing spaces, stages, museums, galleries, studios and other sites.
The gap between the way love is presented in culture and the way it is experienced by individuals is the basis and inspiration for Berg and Graf’s dance-musical-performance. The work is constructed as a series of short stories connected by a body that is in search of intimacy. Three people oscillate between personal nostalgia and collective memory, sing and dance to fill the gap between their inner world and the one outside. The past wanders around the space like a ghost, putting on and taking of the shape of songs that haunt you, and of bodies whose tangible memory has been imprinted on you. Yossi and Oded explore the performer/audience relationship and what it means to be human - to love, to get excited, to fail, to dream, to long for something, to belong and to be estranged. They like to surface that which is evasive and undefined, and whose edges only art can touch.
Concept & Choreography: Yossi Berg & Oded Graf
Creating performers: Ofri Mantell, Tal Adler Arieli, Yossi Berg
Musical advice & original score: Nadav Barnea, Costumes: Ilanit Shamia
Lights: Omer Shizaf, Artistic Adviser: Rachel Erdos, Outside Eye: Nava Zuckerman, Ran Brown, Nir Segal. Yossi Berg & Oded Graf’s Company is supported by: Rabinovich Foundation, The Lottery Council for Arts, Tel Aviv Municipality, The Ministry of Culture
Edit: Kino Kitchen & Yossi Berg, Website: yossioded.com
Tech:
3 dancers Duration: 65 min / Total Duration: 90 min Premiere: 2019
From the press:
“Here is a piece that loves its audience. That embraces it. It’s real with you in its love. It gives you three performers; shy, cunning, charismatic, sharp, dashing, awkward, aging, young, younger. It lets you see them. It lets you see them in their love of dance (love that can be a real bitch).
It harks back to neighborhood dance classes, to Dolly Dinkle studios, to lyrical combinations danced from the depths of fantasy, to dreams of great choreographers.
It gives you the choreographic couple, a real couple, for a short moment, in a glimpse of the true love fueling the staged love.
It is cute without trying, it is melodious without being obnoxious, it sings without worrying about being a singer, it is cool in its complete disregard for cool.
It is a dance party that you don’t have to dress up for, that you don’t have to have any special moves for, that celebrates its wallflowers, that you can walk out of in love.”
Ori Lenkinski, Creative Writing / Jerusalem Post
About the choreographers:
Choreographers and Artistic Directors Yossi Berg and Oded Graf started collaborating in 2005, when they founded the international dance company Yossi Berg & Oded Graf Dance Theatre.
They have since built a reputation for work that is supremely physical, sometimes provocative, and by turns poignant and witty. Having performed with world-renowned troupes, including Batsheva Dance Company and DV8 Physical Theatre, they mix a masterful physicality with a dynamic research of theatre, text, and voice. Responding to the social and political realities of contemporary life, they offer new ways of looking at dance and exploring performance.
Berg and Graf’s company is touring extensively in prestigious festivals and venues around the world: Montpellier Danse France, American Dance Festival, The Joyce Theater NYC, DansensHus Stockholm, SIDance South Korea, The Place Theater London, Lausanne Danse Switzerland, The Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome, Israel Museum in Jerusalem, and JCDN Japan, among others.
They have created work for opera houses and won numerous choreography awards. They received Israel's Ministry of Culture Award for Outstanding Choreographers and were awarded the Rosenblum Prize for Artistic Excellence in the Performing Arts.
Yossi Berg & Oded Graf Dance Theatre is a non-profit organization that operates for the promotion and diffusion of the Art of Dance; it responds to the social realities of contemporary life, inspires deeper reflection, and offers hope and beauty.
