Iyar Elezra and me have met at a point in our lives where we consciously make an effort to leave behind what we have learned, trained as and become successful in so as to experience what else there is to discover in unexplored realms. While embarking into the unknown we commit this work to transformation through the act of forgiveness. What does it really mean and how does it change the future physically? What do I need to see in order to be able to forgive myself and others.
How would we move/destroy/react/sing if we were deeply experiencing oneness with everything around us?

“The possible redemption from the predicament of irreversibility of being unable to undo what one has done is the faculty of forgiving.“
Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition

Prior to working together both of us had questions in mind such as where are the similarities between a physical/danced pattern and a musical structure? Since everything is sound, what in the work process inspires us to capture and develop into a musical composition? How should we bring our movements and sounds into one singularity, and get as close as we can to each other without taking from the other’s space?
Once we started to work we quickly found our way into these questions – to give them a physical shape. We realised that by discovering each other anew, we were connected to the core – the presence alive in us before we became dancers, musicians, people with a nationality, or people conditioned by external structures, etc. In our work we foster the sensitivity and wonder of awareness, like a new born that explores the sense of touch, the first sight, the first listening.

This is the quality of how we create the piece. Utilising the open mind of the beginner, ripe for discovery. We believe that in this pure texture shared by all humanity, we are able to reach a state of forgiveness. Because I am not a trained dancer, every touch of our bodies is more sensitive. More exciting, because Iyar does not know what to expect of my reactions and actions. If a dancer moves with a non dancer or if a musician creates sound with a non musician, the volume of the listening to each other is more acute, because neither can rely on known patterns. During our process of getting closer to a pure level of perception we started to become even more aware of the weight of historic guilt, national responsibility, gender responsibility, and family. For us the concept of forgiveness is like shedding our skins, it’s an action with ourselves first and then between people.

We wish to create a safe space, a shared experience where it is possible to take off an old layer of ourselves and reveal a fresh and vulnerable skin. Our work aims to connect to life, beyond art.

“In order to approach now the very concept of forgiveness, logic and common sense agree for once with the paradox: it is necessary, it seems to me, to begin from the fact that, yes, there is the unforgivable. Is this not, in truth, the only thing to forgive? The only thing that calls for forgiveness? If one is only prepared to forgive what appears forgivable, what the church calls ‘venial sin’, then the very idea of forgiveness would disappear. If there is something to forgive, it would be what in religious language is called mortal sin, the worst, the unforgivable crime or harm.”

Jacques Derrida, On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness