Q: How did you become involved with the performing arts?

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I think like a lot of other dancers I can say I’ve been dancing for as long as I can remember. But when I actually started dancing in the studio was when I was twelve and I joined a folkloric dance troupe in Israel, in my village in the north of Israel. And so, from the age of twelve until the age of eighteen I was doing mostly Israeli folk dance. There is a Chem history for the type of dance I was doing and it's very interesting but it was mostly fun, but I actually started dancing more professionally, practicing ballet, modern, contemporary dance like taking class, only when I was between seventeen and eighteen years old.

Q: What has dance taught you that you have applied to your everyday life and how you engage in the world?

I think what dance really taught me was --- even when you walk in the street you still feel like a dancer, I still feel my bones and muscles and I can actually think about how I am activating them as I’m walking. It's a bit weird but even now when I'm sleeping I'm quite aware of my physicality, about which muscles are tense, what I’m holding, what I'm not holding, what is my bone structure. So I think it makes me be much more physical in my life. And then, normal people, I think there is really no real difference between dancers and normal people. But if I was not a dancer I don't think I would be so aware of my physicality when I'm not dancing. And like it's something that stays with me from the morning until the night and while I sleep.

Q: Has dance helped you overcome any hardships in your life?

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Well, I'm gay and a lot of men in the dance industry are also part of the gay community. I grew up in a small village in the north where it is not a very gay friendly environment, let's say. And when I moved to Tel Aviv, actually when I started dancing really professionally, to be surrounded by not only gay people that are just coming out from the closet like me, who were my age, but also to be surrounded by gay people that are much older than me, who are like in their 30s 40s 50s. I don’t think these people would be part of my life without me being a dancer and meeting those people made it a lot easier for me to come out of the closet and accept myself and to let it be part of my identity. Even the fact that I'm here outside of my country, not speaking my mother tongue language, all of this, it's a huge thing for me and I wouldn't have been able to do all that without being a dancer.

Q: What other interests and passions do you have outside or inside of (performing art) that influence and inspire your artistry?

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I'm quite interested in philosophy and right now, through the Open University of Tel Aviv on the internet, I started my degree in philosophy. I think philosophical thinking is connected to dance too. Like, you know, when you see a show, and you think about not only if the dancing is nice and not only if the dancing is beautiful and not only what the dancing means, but you think more about what the show means by itself. The fight of the choice happening right now and the fact that the show is happening in this or that context, and I think all these philosophical interests I’ve had for a long time have made me approach dance like that, in this point of view.

Q: How can dance be a platform for social justice issues?

Well I’m a bit of a pessimist, let’s say, because I don't think there is a real connection between the dance pieces we see today and what is actually happening in society. So I think when I see the dance pieces that the most popular dance artists are creating today and what's happening in companies in Europe, especially, and in Israel, I cannot see them as a real criticism about our society. I don't find that dancers or choreographers or all the people that are part of the dance world answering or even talking about social justice issues. And I don't really have an answer for how it should be or how to make the conversation about that. There are some artists that I can name in Israel right now that I believe are doing that job, but most of them unfortunately are not.  

Q: Can you name some of the ones that have been doing that kind of work?

Yasmeen Godder, she's been a choreographer in Israel in Tel Aviv since 2000 / 2001. I find almost every piece of hers is very engaging for the audience and makes them think about more than if they're just enjoying the show or not. I feel maybe the key for me to see if it's engaging with social justice is that the enjoyment, or the joyfulness from the show, is not the main part of the show. If it's about emotion and beauty and all this kind of thing, except where the philosopher can speak about the meaning of beauty, it doesn't really mean something or come to solve something when we're talking about social justice.

Q: How has the COVID-19 pandemic affected you as a performing artist?

So, in our company, Ballet National de Marseille, it was the premiere of our show after a very long creation process that we started in September and finished in February. We premiered the show called Room With A View which was the first show under our new artistic director. We were supposed to have thirteen shows in March. We finished almost everything but after we got through half of the shows, in the last week we were only allowed to have a thousand people in the audience so they had to give back half of the tickets they sold. In the end the last few shows were actually just cancelled. So after that we came back to Marseille and we have been here since then, not working, not practicing, not working on our new choreography series. Most of the shows that were planned into July were cancelled. We were also supposed to start a new creation process with some African choreographers but we’ve had to cancel that project as well, which was supposed to be part of Festival de Marseille. So right now, our artistic directors aren’t even sure if we can come back to work for the rest of the season because everything got cancelled. But we are all hopeful that we’ll be able to go back at least just to practice. You know, we are dancers and we still have to work on our ballet technique and our modern technique and our floor technique even if we don’t have the goal of performing right now. But that essential part of our job is cancelled right now, performing, and so of course we have not been working at all since the end of February, beginning of March.

Q: Initial reactions? What did the shutdown in Europe look like for you? How has the company reacted?

So in France, everything is closed. We have been in the same situation since the middle of March. We cannot leave our apartments unless we’re going to get groceries or for physical activity and when we do go out we need to have a paper with all of our information. I live here with my boyfriend and our only outings are going to Lidl, the supermarket. I think that’s the same for most people in France right now. With the company, there is a law in France that they have to keep paying us because we are permanent workers. The government pays half the salary, but they don’t have to pay us the whole salary right now. Right now they are paying us 1% of the salary which we are grateful for because we know it is not like that in a lot of the world. But since we are not supposed to be working right now, everything we do is on a volunteer basis. We’ve decided voluntarily to have Zoom class sessions with our director. We are doing a lot of Pilates, one of the dancer’s is a SAFE® FLOOR and SAFE® BARRE teacher so we’ve been doing those with her, we have another dancers who has been giving us improvisation sessions, and we also have some meetings to talk about when we will be able to go back to work. So we basically have a daily connection inside the company right now but it’s all on a voluntary basis and it’s always changing.  

Q: Imagine the performing arts world after the pandemic. What would you want it to look like and what changes would you want to see?

First of all for me, I don't really like the platform of taking classes through Zoom. And so actually I hope on one hand that the physical classes, like Gaga or ballet, won’t be through the internet after the pandemic situation. I really hope that somehow the dance world will find a way to keep sharing the knowledge that we all have as dancers with the outside world, and more than just sharing our shows and our final products, but maybe finding a way to also share our process in a new way, to share our daily practice. I would like to see it inside communities or inside the local area rather than see it on Facebook or Instagram, but I know the idea of sharing has become essential in our current life. And maybe this idea can be much more strong and instead of companies going back again to their basements and just practicing dance and preparing for their shows, we will see the companies connecting more. I talk about companies because I am in a company, but I think we can say that about all the dance projects, that we will see those projects and companies and all the dancers in the studios sharing much more of what they are doing, not just the final product itself but the process. I would like to see more collaboration. It’s happening a lot in Israel where the dancers work behind closed doors and don’t let anyone see or share what they’re working on before the premiere. But maybe now people will understand that sharing these important parts of our profession, the creation processes of the dances we make, will allow people to not only watch but participate in it, and also allow them to maybe collaborate more with different institutions and people in other fields and creators in other art disciplines.