Four women dance to the sentimental sounds of classic Hollywood orchestra music. Ardent fans of musicals will identify these as the song that accompanied Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse's nighttime dance in Central Park in "The Band Wagon," Vincente Minnelli's 1953 film. The four women dance with delicate grace and use their limbs to create a series of kaleidoscopic, geometric compositions - reminiscent of the numbers performed by the glamour girls in Busby Berkeley's films of the 1930s and '40s. At a certain point, you get the urge to watch this quartet from above, as in the Berkeley films, from a perspective that will present the full extent of the choreographic composition.
This is the opening of Noa Shadur's new dance piece, "Calypso," which premieres tonight, at the SummerDance Festival at the Suzanne Dellal Center in Tel Aviv. The piece, featuring Doron Raz-Avraham, Inbar Nemirovsky, Rosalind Noctor and Osnat Kelner, chronicles "four women trapped in a mythological order that is constantly being updated, from Greece to Hollywood, from the Israel Defense Forces to Eurotrash," according to Shadur's program notes. "The perfect world they create does not belong to them. The glamour is sometimes dulled and other times shines through in its full splendor."
It is evident that classical musicals were a major influence on Shadur's work.
"I watched everything that was available obsessively," she confirms. "Busby Berkeley, Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire, Cyd Charisse, Esther Williams, Ginger Rogers - and Bob Fosse, who astounded me; I followed his entire career." She says her favorite films include "The Pajama Game" (1957 ), "Silk Stockings" (1967 ) "West Side Story" (1961 ), "Cabaret" (1972 ) and "All That Jazz" (1979 ). Shadur's love of the genre even prompted her to learn tap dancing about two years ago.
"I think it was a reaction affecting my personal involvement as a choreographer," she says of her attraction to the musicals, "to the search for an authentic and preliminary expression of movement."
Shadur stresses that the choreography in "Calypso" does not embody nostalgic longing for the musical per se, but provides a contemporary interpretation of it.
The actual work process, into which trickled quite a bit of the artist's sense of humor, started with gazing at images of pin-up girls, says Shadur, referring to those models whose partly nude pictures were reproduced and distributed among men primarily in the first half of the 20th century.
"These are photos or drawings depicting women, usually alone, wearing a bikini and in all kinds of alluring poses," she explains. "They would be sent to soldiers in the battlefield, and men would hang them on the wall so they would have a female presence - and that's how they maintained their virility."
Shadur asked the dancers to "adopt, swallow and embody" these images. And thus was born a work that focuses on popular depictions of feminine sexuality throughout history. Shadur also weaves in other influences in this context, such as the burlesque and strip-tease shows. Last year she herself took part in a burlesque workshop in Vienna; she also visited a Tel Aviv strip-tease club. She was trying, she says, to understand the way in women highlight or display their femininity. The years go by, but the manner in which a woman is perceived as sexy is stable, she observes.
Why did you call your work after the mythological nymph?
Shadur: "At a certain point, the subject of Greek mythology entered the studio and was a presence."
She says she started delving into these myths and focused on the female characters, especially the nymphs, who were half-gods and half-mortals, and the sirens - the seductive sea creatures who were known for their mysterious and phenomenal singing ability.
"They would trap men who would hear their singing and immediately plunge into the depths of the sea and not return," she explains. "Something about the seductiveness, the cruelty and the water that I found in the context of these characters piqued my interest."
One of the parts of "Calypso," in which three dancers entice the fourth to approach them but keep pushing her away, is called the "dance of the nymphs," Shadur notes: "Their appearance is very alluring, innocent and aesthetic. A little like a sea anemone that looks like a flower, but is actually alive and traps fish and eats them - except for one fish, which it protects and for which it provides a home."
Were you influenced by underwater life?
"Yes, at a certain point I started watching the BBC documentary series, 'Wonderful World,' mainly the parts related to water. I have a big fear of water: If I don't feel the ground, I can't be in the sea. And I love the sea, but I'm scared that it will pull me in. Since I was a child, I have had this feeling, that the sea is very cruel."
Sweetness and breakdown
Noa Shadur, 31, was born and grew up in Givat Shmuel, the third child after two sons. Her father died of heart failure when she was a year old. As a child she studied jazz ("today, I see that this had an impact on me" ), but her mother dreamed of her becoming a ballet dancer. "We lived in London for two years and she took me to all the performances of the Royal Ballet," she recalls. When Shadur was 17, her mother died of cancer.
At that time, she was attending the Ironi Alef school in Tel Aviv - first in the dance track and then in the theater track; this is when her desire to combine the two disciplines arose. As a teenager, she studied dance at Bat Dor and later on at Muza, for three years. "It was there I developed into a professional dancer," she says.
But that is also where she realized that she did not feel at peace with her place as a dancer per se, and that she had to seek out other performances options. "I have serious stage fright," she admits, "I think it's stage fright, I don't know."
Therefore, when she was 24, she went to Holland and did an undergraduate degree in choreography at the College of the Arts in Arnhem. Since then she has created a series of performance pieces for the state ("It Will End in Tears," "Hunting Rabbits in the North" "Into the Night" ) and dance clips ("Give Me a Break," "Country Club" ). In addition to her creative work, she also teaches dance and choreographs television ads (that is how she supplements the funding she needs for her productions, in addition to the government support she receives ).
For "Calypso," Shadur concocted an eclectic soundtrack together with Shahar Emerilio, which ranges from the musicals mentioned earlier to Brian Eno, Metallica, the Temptations, Handicraft and others.
"I think the soundtrack defines the emotional range of the work," she says, "It starts off being very sweet, but during the piece shatters this convention that 'all is well and good.'" In other words, she seems to have used the soundtrack to highlight the choreographic process, which moves from visual perfection and sweetness to a certain weakening and breakdown.
It was evident that the set and costumes also had to reflect feminine glamour. The stage floor will be covered with a shiny black mosaic, she says, so that the dancers' images will be reflected in it.
Isn't it hard to dance on that?
"Very hard, it's very slippery and we're working on it. I really hope we won't have to drop it."
On the back wall will a large white geometric flower-like motif, composed of paper airplanes, which also plays a part in the rhythmic compositions. As for the costumes, "the thinking started from a very classic place, that they should be 'show girls' and slowly we realized that they have to have a contemporary presence." The stylist, Tanya Jones, put together costumes that combine sequins, knit fabric and Lycra. The high-heel shoes covered in blue and red sequins that are being worn by the dancers came from the studio of Max Kibardin in Italy, Shadur relates proudly. "He donated the shoes to the production thanks to his work with Tanya." At first he offered her the model he designed for Rihanna, but it wasn't to her taste, because it had "a bimbo-ish and gross platform."
Dance of the cars
It is not easy to grasp the reason for Shadur's need to delve into these feminine images. At first, she says she admires women and hopes this is apparent in the work. Later on she says it is a complex thing to be a woman and reveals that as a teenager she really wanted to be a boy: "I did not agree to my feminine presences in the world and played soccer. I also had two brothers at home so you start to drink whiskey, act a little like a boy." After her mother's death, the family consisted only of her brothers and her grandfather, and the male presence was dominant, she explains.
In the meantime, Shadur is not lacking ideas for future projects. "The next thing I want to do is choreography for cars," she says. "Take a parking lot full of cars and choreograph them in motion. The cars will be like dancers. I will create a dance for them and photograph them from all kinds of angles." Shadur also says she is also planning a joint project with dancer Andreas Merk, with whom she did a performance last year, and even danced in his work, "BUTT it's OK." According to her, the plan is to create a piece together in which they will both appear. "I want to learn tap dancing on Broadway," she adds.
But there is also a more grandiose fantasy, which initially sounds like a joke (also because of the tone she uses to describe it ), but turns out to be a genuine ambition of Shadur's: to create a film musical that she will write and direct with her brother, filmmaker, Dan Shadur.
"It will be about a couple, about an impossible love set in the Ministry of Interior between a woman from Darfur and an Israeli man, and all the clerks will basically be props for the musical."
