The Boycottgirls kick down the partition and step out of the women’s section. In the Living Gallery, it is no longer enough to ask: art or life, or art as life? There is eternity and there is place; there are forms, and there are troubles. And so they clear away the sculptures and install paradoxes in their place. They gather poles and set out to build the dove of peace through their dance. “Hush, boys! This is the morning prayer!” Day after day, morning after morning, they rehearse. At noon, they turn to writing pop songs about sorrow. Again and again, they return, taking pleasure in the impregnability of the BPM. “I’ve got a Tropit!” cried one artist, breaking into a samba. Another Boycottgirl, recognizing the trouble, joined the dance. And the audience, with sorrow in its heart, hums: “Eyn li eretz. I have no country.”
The work is inspired by a drawing of a wounded bird by the artist Yehiel Shemi, my grandfather.
Through breath, movement, and action, three dancers seek to breathe life into this image—to enable the bird to fly. During the performance, they assemble structures from wooden poles; the two-dimensional lines of the drawing gain mass and become joints, connecting to the dancers' moving bodies. As the movement builds momentum, it aspires to take flight. In a persistent attempt to break through the boundaries of physical space, the dancers carry the wooden structures between earth and sky—where the physical merges with the abstract, matter is carried by air, and the imagination unfolds a space to breathe.
Choreographer: Kerem Shemi
Performers: Maayan Horesh, Ella Polak, Kerem Shemi
Music: Tamir Friedrich
Object: Shahar Kedem
Producer: Natalie Afriat
outside eye: Ma’ayan Horesh
Costume design: Yasmin Steimetz
Object Work Consultant: Roni Sagi
The work was developed in collaboration with dancers Amit Zaretsky and Yuval Finkelstein.
The work is supported by the Pais Council for Culture and Arts and by the Menashe Dance House residency program, under the artistic mentorship of Anat Cederbaum.
The creative process was also supported by the Kelim Festival, under the artistic direction of Ayala Frenkel.
Kerem Shemi is a dancer, choreographer, and martial artist. She holds a degree in Dance and Choreography and spent five years studying and practicing Chinese martial arts in China and Berlin. Kerem is a graduate of the Alma Fellows program for Hebrew Culture. She is the developer of "Kung Fu Dance"—a unique movement language that integrates traditional martial arts into the world of contemporary dance. Works as a choreographer and teacher in leading dance programs both in Israel and abroad.
Image: Natasha Shakhnes
There’s no way of doing this right…Shaked Mochiach
Language is broken,
and still, something must be captured.
I write movement,
the dancers bring it into being.
We survive,
counting to eight.
The body takes shape,
like it once did.
What cannot pass through
becomes a song.
We dive into the labor of performance,
in a shattered pop show
in memory of the present.
Choreography: Shaked Mochiach
Dancers: Michael Yalon, Michal Meskin, Guy-Tamar Levy
Music: Shaked Mochiach and Daniel Sapir
Artistic accompaniment: Ido Feder
This work was supported by Yasmeen Godder Company as part of the Resident Artist Program, a residency within Tights: Dance and Thought at the Batsheva Dance Company
Thanks to Uri Shafir, Ofir Yanai, and Noa Keller
Shaked Mochiach is a choreographer, musician, dancer, and artistic director based in Tel Aviv. She is a graduate of the two-year choreographers’ training program at Kelim Center for Choreography and holds a B.A. in Dance from Kibbutzim College. Her selected works include The Voice of the World That Only I Hear (Israel Festival 2025), Phantom; Life as Longing (Kelim Festival 2024), Lucid (Curtain Up 2022), At Night I Am Everyone (Curtain Up 2021), Source of Life 53 (Intimadance 2020), Shoulders (Akko Festival 2018), among others. Her debut album, Sagol (Purple), was released in 2023. In 2024, she founded HaMedura (The Bonfire), a program for deepening physical and spiritual practices in dance and performance for participants from diverse backgrounds. Between 2019 and 2022, she served as Artistic Director of the Ramat Eliyahu Art Workshop.
Image: Shira Marek
Pais TropicalGal Levinson
Inspired by the album Beautiful Tropical Land, we put on raincoats and step out into the streets of South Tel Aviv. The heat is unbearable.
We start sweating. More and more and more.
And as we wipe layers of sweat from our bodies, we sense the ongoing pain and the desire to dance and make love.
(like in Rio?)
It’s an album of Brazilian music from 1977 that became part of local folklore.
The experiences of “I grew up with this” and “It has nothing to do with me” create a feeling of being out of place.
(Israel?)
This leads us to measure different movements and images in order to learn what remains, what is ours, and what is still left in our bodies, in this place and at this moment.
choreographer: Gal Levinson
Performed by: Maya Rachel Schiff and Gal Levinson
Music: Ziv Brashi
Guest performers: Dror Shoval and Rei Cagan
Artistic guidance: Ido Feder, Tal Yahas
Created with the support of the Pais Council for Culture and Arts
Special thanks the CCA, Sigal Dahan, and Gilad Levin
Gal Levinson is a choreographer and dancer based in Tel Aviv. Her artistic training is rooted in the field of dance. Over the years, she has expanded her artistic practice through completing an M.A. in Performing Arts & Visual Culture at the Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid, Spain, training in the Melissa Michaels / SomaSource method in Boulder, Colorado, and collaborating with various artists. She holds an M.A. in Performing Arts & Visual Culture from the Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid and a B.A. in Dance and Dance Education from Seminar Hakibbutzim College in Tel Aviv. Her works have been developed and presented at festivals and residency programs including Diver Festival, Jerusalem Puppet Festival, Live Gallery at the School of Visual Theatre in Jerusalem, La Térmica Málaga & BienalSur, Espacio DT in Madrid, Teatro Conde Duque in Madrid, Noche SCRATXE Gaua #16 – Sala BARATZA in Vitoria-Gasteiz, Tights Residency for Dance and Thought in Tel Aviv, Clipa Theater, HaHanut Theater, Herzliya Center for the Arts, and Edmond de Rothschild Gallery. In addition to her work in dance, she is a dance and Pilates teacher, and recently also a birth doula.
