Choreography
I CREATE WORK WHEREBY HUMAN experiences, movement and dance are interwoven into an individual interpretation of relationships and emotions through dance and performance.
My research is a practice based, and besides analyzing my own choreographic work, I am looking at other choreographers who are dealing with similar concepts and concerns; choreographers who relook at the notion of autobiography.
I am dedicated to open, relevant and relatable work informed by my background in Dance Movement Therapy. My research involves a collective of artists, collaborators, professional and non-professional dancers simply sharing my vision and an appreciation for dance as a down-to-earth medium for expression and connection.
Audiences engage with the work because of its empathic nature that draws out the feelings and emotions that are identifiable to all.
I aim to talk to people through my work in a way that is compassionate and relevant to a wide age range from diverse backgrounds.
My work introduces a ‘feminine’, political practice which elaborates on an identity as being understood through relationships; a vibrant and insightful choreographic practice that stretches the self into a communal act. It entails discourses of affect, theories of psychoanalysis, feminism, autobiography, accountability and performativity.
It is a practice-concept-based research which incorporates social and community aspects as well as stretches the boundaries of choreography, performance and presentation.
I work collaboratively and my work is process oriented. I begin with just defining a subject matter and then let the project evolve gradually in time and through dialogue with the collaborators. I look at the notion of experience through the analysis of Walter Benjamin. Experience for Benjamin doesn’t need to be described or informative, but instead, it should convey a feeling, emotion, sensation and a psychological event. In my choreographic work, I create a dialogue between freedom and structure; expression and abstraction, details and energy. It is always personal but never private.
My years as a Dance Movement Therapist influence significantly the way I work: from the topic I choose, through the creative process, to the way I structure a piece, and the points I highlight in the work.
The process is a safe space and a supportive environment for the dancers and for everyone else involved (including myself) to be as open, honest and raw as possible.
During the creative work, we are all confronted with accountability, hope, vulnerability, humility, humanity, and the idea of being part of our society and surroundings.
Although I work with concrete material I never remain at the concrete level. I try to extract from what the immediately given and to create an abstract structure. I look for ways to refine details, to find clarity, purity, musicality, space, time, and feminine energies within the moving bodies.
My aim is to create poetic, abstract, and movement-based choreography and to develop empathic, humble, and down-to-earth performers.
PhD
Dr. Hagit Yakira has a PhD from Trinity Laban/ City University. Her thesis is titled: Relational Autobiographical Choreography – on new choreographic practice.
My research is practice-based, and besides analyzing my own choreographic work, I am looking at other choreographers who are dealing with similar concepts and concerns; choreographers who relook at the notion of autobiography.
The new millennium witnessed the appearance of a novel choreographic practice in the West which challenged old concepts of autobiography. Until then autobiography had been based predominantly on a coherent self who speaks itself, by itself, but now became a practice in which a self, while dependent upon the other(s), could create her autobiography only through her relationship to others.
The new choreographic practice presented autobiography as a relational act. Based on feminist ideas of subjectivity, this new form of autobiographical choreography has three distinguishing features: first, it posits identity partly as a narrative; second, it views the other as the autobiographer (instead of the self); and third, it regards relationships (with various others) as the essence of one’s self. In other words, without the other, the self cannot know who she is. It is the other who tells a self her life story and through it reveals her uniqueness to her.
This is the choreographic practice that I have created and analyzed in my thesis. I have named this practice: relational autobiographical choreography.
My thesis presents my analysis of this new form of choreography. It introduces a ‘feminine’, political practice which elaborates an identity as being understood through relationships; a vibrant and insightful choreographic practice that stretches the self into a communal act.
Since my PhD my work elaborates further on the notion of ‘the feminine’, feminism, community performance-based work, site generic and site-specific work, affect and the theory of emotion, and the listening body, the healing creative process, and the notion of empathy.
Teaching
Teaching for me is another fundamental source of collaboration.
I believe in developing a sense of community with the students, honest communication, thinking bodies, positive (but still demanding) challenges and empathic manners.
I encourage a passionate, and experimental approach to dancing, dance technique, improvisation and choreography. I challenge the students to take risks, to work with and against their habits and individual movement choices.
I strive to create a safe and encouraging space for the students, as well as to nourish their energy, curiosity, creativity and personal responsibility.
I aim to develop dancers’ awareness’ of touch, time, space, the idea of listening (to themselves and others), and patience.
I incorporate the knowledge of the dance world (practitioners, choreographers, pioneers, thinkers, historians etc.), as well as theory, discussions and reflection.
