Holocaust Literature - Dance

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)

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Famous quotes containing the word dance:

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    All the old supports going, gone, this man reaches out a hand to steady himself on a ledge of rough brick that is warm in the sun: his hand feeds him messages of solidity, but his mind messages of destruction, for this breathing substance, made of earth, will be a dance of atoms, he knows it, his intelligence tells him so: there will soon be war, he is in the middle of war, where he stands will be a waste, mounds of rubble, and this solid earthy substance will be a film of dust on ruins.
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