Group of | Michal Samama
Michal Samama is a choreographer whose works exist in the space between dance, theatre, and visual art. As part of the Creators Lab series that offers encounters with artists and explores creative processes, Sela presents Samama’s latest ensemble work, Group of.
A Group Of is a documentary dance, built around some forty songs many of us grew up with, for better or for worse, evoking longing and revulsion. The piece returns to materials drawn from the collective's childhood experiences. Out of the joy of play and rhyme emerge the horror of the night, hidden and overtaken violence, contradictory ideas, and the solitude of the joint body. Like a compulsive thought that chases sleep as the children toss and turn, the piece is overtaken by practices of excess, obsessiveness, restlessness, and agitation. It is a collective work, in body, voice, word, and song.
“Fear drifts through the air. We must be brave! We tease each other instead of crying. We are allowed to be cruel. Violence is part of the game. I dream that my mom is coming, I send my arms to hug her as my hands hit the cold wall. I go back to sleep.
In the morning, the housemother flings open the windows, waking us with a shout: "One-two-three, on your feet!" We are her little company of soldiers. Standing, like leaves on a branch, in front of a row of sinks. I brush my teeth and hear a voice. We don't believe in God. But I still hear a voice. A voice speaks to me: "We survived another night!"
Performers: Karmit Burian, Moshe Shechter Avshalom, Omer Uziel, Kim Teitelbaum, Keren Carmon, Isaac Chocron
StageTalk - Following the performance, a conversation with choreographer Michal Samama and the ensemble dancers will explore topics such as the kibbutz and collectivity, theatre and contemporary dance, the boundaries of the genre, and movement as a form of language.
Artistic advisor: Tal Yahas
Text and vocal consultation: Hadas Pe’ery
Lighting: Tamar Orr
Costumes and production: Daria Efrat and Michal Samama
Outside eye: Darya Efrat
Graphic design: Miki Matlon
Through the singular language of Michal Samama, and the piercing, precise performance of six heartbroken performers, I was carried yesterday through a time tunnel back to my own childhood connected, with terrifying force, to the childhood horrors of all children everywhere. Thank you for this. I thought of Maguy Marin, I thought of Hanoch Levin, I thought of my own life and the lives of everyone I love.
— Iris Lana, dance scholar
Group, Michal Samama’s new work, performed by her remarkable ensemble, once again lands a punch to the gut. Six performers who never separate for a moment throughout the entire piece, churning together all of our childhoods—the innocence, the stupidity, and the sorrow. I can’t stop thinking about it. Go see it.
— Shelly Lieibowitz-Kalaora, curator
The entire work, as its title, a severed construct phrase, suggests, is haunted by ghosts. Scene after scene, phantom pains reappear, which the dancers attempt to soothe through a compulsive repetition of words, sentence fragments, or parts of familiar songs. The truncated sentences complete themselves, almost automatically, in a conditioned response that testifies to the power of Israeli collective conditioning. The immediacy of this response is physical; it bypasses consciousness and, in an instant, makes my own body a participant in the performance. Samama makes an exceptional formal choice, fusing the dancers together for the entire duration of the work.
— Ran Brown, Haaretz
