Dance
The subject of the Holocaust has been dealt with in modern dance. Some dances illustrate the feeling of being trapped and having nowhere to go. In 1961 Anna Sokolow, a Jewish-American choreographer, created her piece "Dreams". It was an attempt to deal with her night terrors. Eventually it became a memoire to the horrors of the Holocaust. In this dance, the dancers stand still, each one clasping a balled fist with the other hand, trying to pull them apart but with no success.
This same feeling of being trapped and enslaved is illustrated also in one of Pilobolus dances, "Selection". In Selection, one of the dancers approaches a dancing couple, separating them by his cane and snatching the woman away from her partner’s arms.
In Rami Be’er’s "Aide Memoire" (Hebrew title: Zichron Dvarim), he tried to illustrate the feeling of being “trapped.” The dancers move ecstatically, trapped in their personal turmoil, spinning while swinging their arms and legs, and banging on the wall; some are crucified, unable to move freely on the stage. This piece is performed by KCDC (the Kibbutz Contemporary Dance Company)
Read more about this topic: Holocaust Literature
Famous quotes containing the word dance:
“They dance with reluctance, they are growing civilized; the old men
persuade them.”
—Robinson Jeffers (1887–1962)
“When we were at school we were taught to sing the songs of the Europeans. How many of us were taught the songs of the Wanyamwezi or of the Wahehe? Many of us have learnt to dance the rumba, or the cha cha, to rock and roll and to twist and even to dance the waltz and foxtrot. But how many of us can dance, or have even heard of the gombe sugu, the mangala, nyang’umumi, kiduo, or lele mama?”
—Julius K. Nyerere (b. 1922)
“The city is all right. To live in one
Is to be civilized, stay up and read
Or sing and dance all night and see sunrise
By waiting up instead of getting up.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)