Yasmeen Godder
Practicing Empathy #1 – 2
A one-year research under the title “Practicing Empathy” led the Yasmeen Godder Company to visit different locales around the globe, bringing it into contact with many communities. The ensemble around Israeli choreographer Yasmeen Godder will now transfer the results onto the stage in the form of a two-part evening. In order to do this, Yasmeen Godder devised possible work modes to get a grasp of the complex processes that enable identification with oneself, a group, or a thing. Thus, the artist creates a space wherein rituals, chants or choreographies emerge that strengthen our ability to observe the needs of others and to react to them.
Six performers dive into repeating movements and chants, laying bare emotional landscapes that let the audience adumbrate relationships and their diverse connections with one another. In one movement, Yasmeen Godder creates an environment in which empathy comes to light as support, encouragement and reaction. While the audience witnesses this strong language of imagery and sound throughout one part of the evening by its sheer presence, the active act of witnessing puts them also in the centre of proceedings. A search for communal and easily transferable actions begins.
Yasmeen Godder’s work has long circled around the field of encounters and the challenges imposed by emotional connections, among people known to each other as well as among strangers. The basis for this empathic research work always resonated in her artistic practice in which dance and choreography as a medium play a central role. Her most recent productions guesting at tanzhaus nrw were the participative plays “Common Emotions, “Simple Action” as well as “Demonstrate Restraint”.
Creation, Choreography: Yasmeen Godder; Dramaturgy: Itzik Giuli, Monica Gillette; Dance: Ortal Atsbaha, Or Ashkenazi, Carmel Ben-Asher, Tamar Kisch, Ari Teperberg, Nir Vidan; Sound design: Tomer Damsky, Lior Pinsky; Vocal coaching: Tomer Damsky; Scenery, Lighting: Omer Sheizaf; Costume design: Hila Shapira; Production: Omer Alsheich; Administration: Zohar Eshel-Acco.
A perfomance by Yasmeen Godder Company, co-produced by tanzhaus nrw as part of Bündnis internationaler Produktionshäuser, funded by Beauftragte der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien. In cooperation with CSC – Centro per la Scena Contemporanea.