Israel’s highly regarded Vertigo Dance Company brings its vision of sustainability to PS21’s 100-acre campus with One. One & One, choreographed by Noa Wertheim and set to an original score for strings and vocals by Avi Belleli.
Performed by ten dancers on a soil-covered floor, One. One & One reflects individuals’ desire for wholeness and spiritual connection to the natural world. The number “one” suggests solitude but also unity, and the work expresses the human tension between the competing desires for independence and connection—“the individual and his or her tribe” (Financial Times).
Earth covers the stage during One. One & One, creating a visual record of the dancers’ steps and slides, it also forms the ground of the company’s Eco-Art Village in Kibbutz Netiv Halamed-Heh, where Vertigo relocated in 2007 (the company also maintains its original studio at the Gerard Behar Center in Jerusalem). The village’s land serves as both a vehicle for arts education and a durable artifact in their substantial body of work. Watching the dancers toss buckets of soil around the stage, the audience is reminded of Pina Bausch’s similar device in The Rite of Spring and Walter de Maria’s iconic Earth Room.
“In the last few decades, some wonderful dance artists have established an important place in Israel’s cultural landscape, and Vertigo Dance Company is among them. Vertigo’s excellent dancers express a distinctive voice through an impressive movement quality—visceral and raw, but with a surprising, acute sensitivity.” — Mikhail Baryshnikov
About Vertigo Dance Company
Founded in 1992 and based in the Vertigo Eco-Art Village located within Kibbutz Netiv Halamed-Heh in the Elah Valley, Vertigo Dance Company is rooted in the principles of promoting sustainable living and social consciousness through art and education. The Eco-Village is not only a beautiful earthly setting; it is also a model of ecologically sustainable living and working. Having performed in festivals in Israel and around the world, Vertigo has earned recognition and fame for their community-centered style and ecological focus.
In the Eco-Art Village, company members shower outdoors with “grey water” collected from their roofs and recycle it to feed the plants in their garden. It’s here this collective of fierce yet gentle dancers create new work in the partly improvised approach guided by the company’s prolific artistic director, Noa Wertheim. Employing a distinct movement-based language that arises from the connection between Art and Earth, Vertigo’s dances challenge and intensify awareness of the limits and potential of the human body.
Read Wendy Perron’s Dance Magazine interview with Noa Wertheim, the company’s prolific artistic director, where she discusses her work and how it’s been shaped by the Eco-Art Village she runs with her extended family.
One. One & One Looks at Oneness and Separation
“This is very intimate, about feelings. To put feeling into movement is an interesting task. In Hebrew, the title One. One & One, describes oneness but also a separation between people. We are always defining ourselves. It seems like more and more the separation is also happening inside of ourselves”
How The Village Affects The Dance
“I love nature and am influenced by nature. The Eco-Art Village is trying to behave ecologically—saving water in the desert, collecting it from the roof in big buckets. We have a compost center for the kitchen and toilet, and after a few months, we get plenty of black earth, rich earth, from it. I felt that material, earth at its most condensed, should be in the piece.”
Why She Uses Dirt Onstage
“Two years ago, I got an image of a man walking with a bucket in a line, delineating, putting limits, separating. We are not endless. Maybe our soul is endless but the body is not. We are moving beyond the edges even though we are stuck inside of it. The first time I used earth onstage, 14 years ago, it was outdoors and I got really connected to ecology. I understood how we are behaving to the planet, raping our own land, the poison we put in. Then we started with the Eco-Art Village. It’s all connected. The choreography I’m creating always has conflict or dilemma. Even in nature, the lion eats the sheep or deer. One is taking from another in order to survive. Human beings always have strong feelings, willpower, and conflicts.”
The Extended Family Runs The Village
“My mom passed away 17 years ago. We are four sisters, four husbands and babies—altogether a tribe of 13. After one year, Adi, my husband and the father of our three children, said, “When you four sisters are together, something is complete.” Then we started thinking about it. We came to this Kibbutz. Every night for a few years, like pioneers in the beginning of the country, we sat, asking what will be the essence of the place. We started putting these ideas into action, like turning the chicken coop into a dance studio. Now it’s growing. This year we are building a third studio.”
How She Shapes Her Ensemble
“The dancers train in contact improvisation and release technique, with ballet once or twice a week. We do a little bit of centering, using the energy of martial arts. Our studio in Jerusalem is the school for studying the Vertigo language. It’s very versatile, what we give them. It takes some time for the dancers to go deep. You have to fall in love with your dancers. I mostly have Israeli dancers, but I like sometimes two or three from different countries. Israelis understand their roots, but it’s beautiful to have more flavors. Sometimes Europeans are more patient. Of our nine dancers, one is from Hungary, one from Portugal and one from France.”
Her Feelings On Israel
“I don’t bring the music that came to Israel 50 years ago. The togetherness of a nation can be joyful, but it can also be stepping on the other. Somebody is celebrating and somebody else is being stepped on. It’s an endless story.”
WEDNESDAY, JULY 27, 1 PM
PS21 DANCE BARN
Israel’s Vertigo Dance Company leads an interactive dance and movement workshop based on its community-centered, ecologically focused dances. This free two-hour Master Class, the first of its kind, provides an introduction to the unique dance language developed by choreographer and artistic director Noa Wertheim, over her years with the Vertigo Dance Company.
Influenced and inspired by a variety of dance techniques and mind-body disciplines, the workshop intersects ballet, contact improvisation, and Eastern martial arts such as Tai Chi and Chi Gong, whilst conversing with Jewish philosophy and spiritual teachings. Join Vertigo director Noa Wertheim on an enchanted journey to discover the sources of this fascinating movement language and encounter signature elements from the repertoire of the Vertigo Dance Company.
SIGN UP HERE!
Choreographer: Noa Wertheim
Co-Choreographer: Rina Wertheim-Koren
Dancers: Tamar Barlev, Yotam Baruch,
Jeremy Alberge,Liel Fibak, Sándor Petrovics,
Nitzan Moshe, Shani Licht, Etai Peri,
Daniel Costa, Hagar Shachal
Music: Avi Belleli
Musicians: Viola and Vocals Galia Hai, Oud Eliahu Dagmi,
Vocals: Ilai Belleli
Costume Design: Sasson Kedem
Stage Design: Roy Vatury
Lighting Design: Dani Fishof – Magenta
