Yama – 7 – Devenir Spectateur

When the lights came back, I didn’t want to leave. During four days I had been one with the theater, the setting and the dance. The dark and velvety black, the warm and moving lights lined my nest.At the end of the fours rehearsal days on stage, where Noa and Rina built scenes, associated lights, adjusted transitions, edited, cut, and reorganized the play, a sort of truth came out, whose magic we will see on stage from February 4th.The task seemed, at first, insurmountable, the setting was a monster to be tamed, to make it dance with the stage, the lights, the dancers. Rina and Noa were following a thread I didn’t always saw, novice as I am.

At the end of the first day, Ran the composer and I left worried, the story seemed still to be written.The second day, the technical mobilized the all morning. There were so many things to be reviewed, to be understood. We were swallowed by the time, it was going to throw us back, naked. But at night, our prayers and the last months work, took us by the hand and whispered to Dani, the technical director and his right-hand man, Yaacov, the way to sprinkle magic on Noa’s choreography.The third day, we murmured, not to make at risk our luck. The music was developing at the same time as it was feeding us. My words were to be integrated in it, I needed to fine the tone. Again, at night nothing was working : music, setting, dancers were carrying a slight di-synchrony. What sent me into transport the day before became annoying. So, again, Noa, Rina and Dani until 3 in the morning, reinvented, remodeled, reorganized all the scenes, in the morning there was even more possibilities.

The last day, few hours before the last run, we were again in the dark. The dancers, valiant soldiers, during these long hours of fine-tuning, were putting their body at Noa’s service. The tension was tangible, physical. The time of a lighting adjustment, with a pas de deux, a weightless jump, a hip wing, few laughing, finger snaps on the music rhythm taken over by all, mischievously the dancers recalled us their youth, love of dance and rhythm. In the emergency, the discussions switched definitively to hebrew. I became foreigner, the fatigue was taking me. I was looking from elsewhere, outside what was happening.  Separating, giving up the fear of emptiness. I became spectator.

I am looking forward to share this with you soon. I expect you in Tel Aviv the 4th and 5th of February.

PS: Link to Vertigo