LOVE FIRE by Yasmeen Godder

Godder’s most recent work is performed entirely to the soundtrack of well- known classical waltz pieces, ranging from Shostakovich to Strauss. Not a typical soundtrack for Godder’s work, who often uses contemporary experimental music, this was an exciting creative opportunity in which she used her cultural and aesthetic distance from the music, to create a complex and humorous journey dealing with fantasies and perceptions of “romanticism”, through the very personal prism of the performers.

The desire to fall in love, to lose control, to be transformed and to be taken by passion are explored through physical and plasticized images, give a new twist to stereotypes of male and female identity, and the roles they play within a relationship. The two performers physicalize mental association of romantic imagery, connected to art history, Tarzan films and science museums’ cavemen dioramas, undergoing a transformative and cathartic experience on stage, employing their bodies, their voice and inexpensive props. Given the unique quality of this intimate production, which ends with a response/ intervention of the visual artist Yochai Matos, the audience has the opportunity of rehearing classical music in a refreshing, contemporary, sometimes outrageous way, through physical playfulness and emotional bravery, which resonates in a spectrum of audience responses.

Yasmeen Godder
Yasmeen Godder was born and raised in Jerusalem, and moved to New York with her family in 1984. She graduated from the High School of the Performing Arts in New York City, and received her BA from the Tisch School of the Arts at NYU. Since 1999, she has been living in Jaffa, Israel. Her works have regularly been presented at the Suzanne Dellal Dance Center in Tel Aviv, and extensively throughout the world: Lincoln Center Festival in New York, Tokyo International Festival, Hebbel Am Ufer in Berlin, the Place Theater in London, Montpellier Dance Festival in France, and many more.

Yasmeen is the recipient of numerous awards, including a Bessie Award in New York in 2001, for the presentation of “i feel funny today”. Her works have been commissioned by DTW, The Kitchen and Dancing in the Streets in New York City, the Lab Theater in Jerusalem, the Curtain Up Festival in Tel-Aviv, and Montpellier Dance Festival, in France, the Hebbel Am Ufer in Berlin among others. She has twice received the Israeli Ministry of Cultural Affairs “Choreographers Award” in the years 2001 and 2003, and her company received the Ministry’s award for “Small Ensemble” in dance in 2003 and 2009. In addition, she received the Hasia Levy Agron Choreography Prize, the Rabinovich Foundation, Tel-Aviv Municipality’s Rosenblum Prize for “Excellent Artist” , grants from the Israeli Lottery Council for the Arts, the Teva Foundation, as well as a special scholarship from the Ballet Master Albert Gauvbiers Fund in Denmark.

To date Yasmeen has created seven full evening-length works, “Hall” (2001), “Sudden Birds” (2002) “Two Playful Pink” (2003), “Strawberry Cream and Gunpowder”(2004),”I’m Mean, I Am” (2006) commissioned by the Centre Nationale de La Danse (CND) in Paris, and the Hebbel Am Ufer in Berlin, “Singular Sensation”(2008) commissioned by the Montpellier Dance Festival 08, and “LOVE FIRE”(2009) which was co-produced with The Hebbel Am uffer,Berlin and Theatre de La Place, Liege, Belgium.  She has created several short works, including “Green Fields” for the Batsheva Ensemble and “UNDER2” a matanicola production, in Berlin, co-produced by Sasha Waltz and Guests. Solo for Eran was commissioned by Kunstfest Weimar GmbH, Weimar, Germany and Karioki Waltzing commissioned by LES SUBSISTANCES – Laboratoire de création artistique, Lyon, France.

In  2007 Yasmeen Godder Studio has been opened in Jaffa, a home for all of her activity and projects, which other than creation and rehearsals include open classes, year long workshops and collaborations with “Search Engine”- the school for theater and creation, headed by her partner and collaborator Itzik Giuli.

Most recently she presented a new site-specific creation at Opera Estate Festival Veneto at Bassano del Grappa, Italy at the Bolle Nardini-a grappa distillery. The work will continue to develop into a stage version which will premiere in March 2011.