Things I Did Overseas is a new platform at the Center for Contemporary Art where artists talk about a project they created outside of Israel: an art work that was significant in their creative development, but that the audience in Israel is almost unfamiliar with. This is an opportunity to get acquainted with thought and work processes on complex, large-scale projects that were realized overseas, through the challenges, doubts, and breakthroughs in their making.

First to present in the series is Hilla Ben Ari, who will talk about her work I Must Be Circumstanced from 2023.

Ben Ari was invited to create a work for the New York-based Limón Dance Company, a repertory dance company that advances the legacy of modern choreographer José Limón. The project emerged as part of the vision led by the company's artistic director, Dante Puleio, in which contemporary choreographers are invited to create new works in dialogue with Limón's oeuvre. Ben Ari was the first visual artist commissioned to conceive a work for the company.

At the center of Ben Ari’s installation and video work is the female body, which she explores through different narratives and postures. Though she had previously worked with dancers in many of her projects, I Must Be Circumstanced, which combines video and live performance, is her first work for the stage. The artistic language and static choreography that characterize her video installations were transformed in this project into relationships that are woven between the projected body and the living body on stage.

During the presentation she will talk about the homage she created to Limón's iconic dance piece The Moor's Pavane (1949), based on Shakespeare's Othello. She will recount her artistic research into Limón's work, her collaboration with the dance company, the process with the dancers in the studio and the dialogue with musician Rea Mochiach, who created the soundtrack for the new piece.

The presentation will include a screening of the documentation of the work’s premiere, which took place in New York in December 2023, a few weeks after the outbreak of the war.

The event will be held in Hebrew.

Duration: 90 minutes

Admission: 20 NIS

For tickets, click here

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Image: Hilla Ben Ari, I Must Be Circumstanced, 2023, Limón Dance Company. Photo:Christopher Jones