The dance of ballet -and perhaps every dance- is an embodiment of death. Excess, too, is a form of death. What, then, does it mean to dance excess?
This solo was developed out of All the Spirits, that premiered at the 2026 Israel Festival.
Created and performed by: Ariel Cohen
Dramaturgy: Kim Teitelbaum
Lighting: Oded Komami
Ariel Cohen is an Israeli choreographer, performer, dancer, visual artist, and costume designer whose interdisciplinary practice spans dance, performance, visual art, and stage design. Since 2009, he has developed an independent body of work while collaborating with artists and dance companies in Israel and internationally. After dancing with companies in Europe, he joined the Batsheva Ensemble and later the Batsheva Dance Company, where he collaborated for many years with Ohad Naharin as a dancer, costume designer, artistic assistant, and creative collaborator. During this time, he designed costumes for major works including Sadeh21, The Hole, Last Work, Venezuela, 2019, and MOMO. Alongside his work with Batsheva, he developed an independent choreographic practice presented at leading contemporary dance platforms, including Curtain Up, Intimadance, and the Diver Festival. His artistic practice investigates the body as a site of transformation, materiality, and image, integrating choreography, contemporary dance, ballet, performance, visual art, and design. In addition to his artistic work, he teaches Gaga movement language and is a certified Gyrotonic and Gyrokinesis instructor. He continues to work as a multidisciplinary artist whose practice explores the visual, kinetic, and political potential of the body.
Image: AI
From Here to HereIyar and Adam Elezrah
For the past six years, we, Iyar and Adam Elezrah, have been creating together. Iyar is a dancer and choreographer, and Adam is a sculptor. Over the years, our family relationship itself has become material within the work.
As children, our grandfather would create puppet theatre performances for us, continuing the theatrical world he had grown up with in Slovakia. We would invent songs and stories together based on everyday experiences, and he would turn them into small performances, building the characters and sets and operating the puppets himself. Even within this family game, questions emerged that continue to accompany us today: Who tells the story, and which sibling gets the leading role?
Another starting point for From Here to Here is an album belonging to our great-grandparents from the 1920s, in which members of our family appear at balls, wearing masks and costumes. In the work, we reimagine the family life of then and now as a cabaret performance—a kind of new surreal album populated by archetypes and larger-than-life characters.
The dancers shift between roles and identities, while costumes, sculptures, and objects transform the body and give rise to new characters. Within this cabaret, family relationships become a performance: turbulent, intimate, and charged, yet not always decipherable. Every gesture, glance, and action takes on an ambiguous meaning, within a system in which we operate one another while, at the same time, being operated ourselves.
Choreography: Iyar Elezrah
Set Design, Sculpture & Costumes: Adam Elezrah
Dancers: Shaked Werner, Yarden Barkat, Danai Porat, Sofia Piklova, Nathan Chips, Emil Bruckmann
Lighting: Oded Komami
Music: Gideon Shoken
The work was created as part of Batsheva Dancers Create by the Batsheva Dance Company, with the support of Mifal HaPais.
Special Thanks to Dan Roman, Or Bergman, Uri Karol, Adiomer Gonzalez Castillo, Ido Feder, Iris de Botton, Romi Atias
Iyar Elezrah is a dancer and choreographer living and working in Tel Aviv. She is currently a dancer with the Batsheva Dance Company and creates independent choreographic works.
As a choreographer, she created Broken Peacock Parade with Assaf Salhov as part of Curtain Up (2015).
Elezrah created Play Loud during the Tanzfabrik workshop in Berlin, and Forgiveness in collaboration with Ayumi Paul. She worked as a dancer and creator with the Batsheva Dance Company (2006–2015), and participated in works by choreographers including Sharon Eyal, Yasmeen Godder, and Rami Be’er. She performed in Bill and The Toxic Exotic Disappearance Act, Adam, and Figure Humaine at the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg by Sasha Waltz. She also collaborated with artist Michal Helfman in various projects at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, and took part in Ohad Naharin’s Playback project in 2019.
Adam Elezra is a multidisciplinary artist living and working between Tel Aviv and Leipzig, Germany. His practice includes sculpture, painting, set design, and costume design.
Elezra studied for his B.F.A. at the Department of Multidisciplinary Art, Shenkar College, and completed an M.F.A. at the Academy of Fine Arts Leipzig, Germany. He also participated in an exchange program at the University of the Arts Berlin (UdK).
Elezra has presented solo and group exhibitions in Israel and abroad, including “BUSYBODY” at Galerie Partner (curator: Amit Rubin), “Untitled” at the Edmond de Rothschild Center (curator: Hadas Maor), and “Smooth Pursuit” at Third Floor Left Gallery (curator: Mital Aviram). He also presented the solo exhibition Write it behind your ear at Fortuna Kino in Leipzig.
