Dominican University of California

Our Hungers are Prophetic

Movement and the Power to Disrupt and Create Meaning

Yoshie Fujimoto Kateada

Dance and Spiritual Expression RLGN 3001
Gay Lynch Ph.D.
9 December 2014

Take an example of some dance you have seen or performed and discuss what it was about the
event that impressed you. Was the dance powerful? Why? How would you approach the task of
trying to discern how a given dance exerted its effects? What questions would you want to ask
the dancer(s), Choreographer(s), or audience in order to answer such queries? Note: the goal of
the question is to derive a template of important issues for a dance student of religion and dance
to consider in approaching any dance event. Please include a brief description of the event on or
following your title page.

Sadeh21 by Ohad Naharin:

This fall I went to a performance by Batsheva Dance Company of Isreal. They presented
a full evening length work titled Sadeh21. The piece took place at the Yerba Buena Center for
the Arts, and the stage was framed by three white walls. The walls were relatively short; rising
high above all of the dancers heads, but not high enough to reach the ceiling of the theater. On
either side of the stage the walls had three or four breaks where dancers could exit and enter, but
which did not allow audience members to see offstage. Sadeh means field and as each new
section of the dance started, Sadeh1, Sadeh2, and so on would be projected on the back
white wall. In an interview with Naharin, journalist Rachel Howard clarified that Sadeh refers
to a field of investigation. Towards the end of the piece sections would run together and the
projection would say Sadeh 17 18 19, or something of that sort.
The piece was performed by eighteen dancers, and totaled around seventy five minutes
with no intermission. The dancers wore pedestrian clothing in muted colors. The piece had no

literal storyline, and began by showcasing each of the dancers. Each person came onstage, did a
short solo and went back offstage. After this, the piece was made up of mixtures of group, duet,
trio, and solo sections. The sound score was varied, and included everything from melancholy
cello music to the sound of someone screaming. The dancers occasionally vocalized, sometimes
counting or speaking gibberish. After a reprise of the solos, the dance ended as the dancers continuously climbed up onto and jumped off of the white wall at the back of the stage. At first they
quietly jumped, but as this section progressed they began launching themselves off of the wall as
if hoping to fly.
I found this performance incredibly affecting. However, as I left the theater I did not
have words for what I had seen. I had a feeling; a sort of powerful nostalgia. It was as if I was
longing for something that I could not identify. As I left the theater the world looked different,
and I felt different. This experience led me to consider art as a force which can disrupt and refocus our lives. In much of her writing, Dance Scholar Kimerer LaMothe discusses the importance of movement as a means to transform. As watched this performance, the movement in
front of me caused a shift within me, and I felt freer and more able to feel. Tears rolled down my
cheeks as I left the theater, which had not happened in months. LaMothe describes great
health as an ability to digest our experiences (What Is). For me, this performance was a
catalyst which opened the door to this process.
Additionally, my experience of a powerful nostalgia fits within LaMothes description
of the healing process. She writes at the heart of any and every pain is a desire (What Is).
Leaving the theater that day I craved more movement. I felt nostalgic for the kind of deep hearted dancing I had just witnessed. Watching that piece has changed the way that I approach dance

class each day, as well as my Senior Project. Our hungers are prophetic writes LaMothe
(What Is) Art has the power to wake us up to our hunger, which steers us towards a more
meaningful life.
It is often easier to walk through life numb. LaMothe writes we would not feel the pain
of not caring if we did not care (What Is). And since this pain can be great, it is sometimes
easier to choose to not care; it is sometimes easier to live narrowly and ignore our desires. This
is where movement holds so much potential. The very definition of movement denotes a shift
or a change. Watching Sadeh21 shifted me; it disrupted old patterns of thought about dance and
life, and settled itself into my consciousness.
So how exactly did Sadeh21, one evening of dance, lead to so many powerful feelings
and shifts? I found this performance so transformative because it appealed to a common sense of
what it means to be human, while also shattering my expectations about what human means.
Many of the sections in the dance reversed gender roles, and played with unexpected power dynamics. One such section featured a woman in a red leotard who was occasionally joined by the
rest of the women in the company. The women danced sensually, but not sexually. Their movement spoke of their own power, choice making, and joy. Behind them, the men of the company
jumped, turned, and ran with abandon, while dressed in strapless black dresses.
Naharin may not have been making an explicit statement about what it means to be male
and female in the world, but his work engendered a deep feeling of unexpected satisfaction in me
as an audience member. I felt as if a power in the women, and a freedom in the men, which had
always existed was suddenly unleashed. This experience made me look at my own Senior
Project and attempt to disrupt some of the unintentional gender roles I had created.

As of now, my piece is a series of three duets. Two of these take place between a man
and a woman. I realized that, without intending to, I had made the women in both duets appear
dependent on the men. Watching my piece after the Batsheva performance, I saw this and
worked to transform the duets. Naharins work was able to shift my perspective because it took
ideas I was familiar with, or could relate to, such as the roles of men and women, and exposed a
new dimension to this relationship. I was raised by a fiercely feminist mother, and I thought that
this upbringing could protect me from any sort of gender bias, but this performance woke me up
even more. I saw how I was unconsciously creating patterns in my own work, and perhaps in my
own life. Witnessing dance disrupted my perspective and re-shaped my belief system.
The solos at the beginning and end of the piece had a similar affect, and possessed a similar familiar yet strange quality. These short phrases were highly physical and clearly required
skillful artists to dance them, but were achingly human at the same time. An impossible backbend, or an incredible extension, would be followed by a walk that betrayed all of the frailty of
what it means to be human. The result of this contrast was a redefining of weakness. The
dancers gave in to a level of abandon and brokenness that resulted in more whole-hearted dancing. As an audience member, this broke down my assumptions about what it means to be human,
and what it means to be strong. I was given a more nuanced understanding of strength and power.
Ohad Naharin is the creator of Gaga technique, a powerful movement language which is
partly meditative and partly pure physicality. This concept of giving into weakness is a huge
part of the Gaga vernacular. When I have taken Gaga in the past I was struck by the way that
finding your weakness paradoxically connects you to your power. Gaga teachers often implore

their students to give in more. It is challenging for our brains and bodies to let go, but when
they do you are connected to a limitless source of energy and strength.
During one of our class discussions this semester, one of my classmates said: In order to
make art you need to live life fully. you need to be vulnerable to life. You dont have to have
suffered something awful to create art, you just have to live life fully. By giving into our
weakness for real connection, or true emotion, or full bodied living, we allow ourselves the
privilege of falling into a more meaningful way of moving and living.
In the article What Can a Body Know, Kimerer LaMothe offers four steps to the philosophy of bodily becoming. 1) We are bodies 2) Our bodies are movement 3) The movement that we are is the movement that is making us 4) Transformation occurs when we bring
our sense of this dynamic to life (3). These guideposts point to an understanding of the wisdom
that is housed within the body; a wisdom that movement has the power to awaken. When we
stop numbing ourselves to the feelings, and attempting to become stronger than our weaknesses,
we can connect to this wisdom inside.
I believe that art, is meant to disrupt. When LaMothe writes that the movements we
make are making us, she is referring to this ability of dance, and art in general, to transform us
(What Can). In order for this to happen though, we must acknowledge our hunger for something more. Shifting patterns of thought and movement is difficult, because sometimes when we
acknowledge our hunger we realize how empty we truly are. That is why I felt such a powerful
sensation of nostalgia or longing after the performance. I wanted to always be as fulfilled as I
was in that moment. While the Batsheva performance did cause a huge shift in my perspective, I

think that this occurred not because of that singular moment of watching dance, but because of
the years in this program that prepared me for that moment.
I have spent three and a half years clearing out the cobwebs of doubt, and being led to a
deeper thought process about art. The process will be life long, but in general this program has
emptied me; it has taught me to be gnawingly hungry for a deeper experience. Batsheva felt like
the satisfaction I had been searching for; the experience that stayed the hunger. But the effect
was brief, because mostly it left me wanting more. The experience broke me down so that I can
learn to create my own meaning, and so that I can continue to follow the hunger towards what
matters.

Works Cited
Howard, Rachel. "Batsheva Dance Company: Ohad Naharins 'Sadeh21 at YBCA." Rev. of
Sadeh21. SF Gate [San Francisco] 5 Nov. 2014: n. pag. Sfgate.com. 5 Nov. 2014. Web. 9
Nov. 2014.
LaMothe, Kimerer. "What Can a Body Know." Across the Threshold, Duke University (2009): n.
pag. Print.
LaMothe, Kimerer. "What Is Mental Health." (2011): n. pag. Print.