Dafi Altabeb Choreographer
Contemporary Dance
Video: Nini Moshe
Artist Statement
I'm Dafi Altabab, choreographer, artist, creator of movement.
The motivation in my works always comes from personal experiences.
Experiences that are scorched into every cell of my body, into my skin and my soul.
These are experiences that I feel with such high intensityy, that they must break out and become a moving physical entity. A movement investigation and then a dance creation.
The idea initiating my creations doesn’t initially hint towards how the show will look like or how it has to be build. It is rather just a seed, an unknown beginning of a potential that will reach the physical body, the studio and only much later an audience.
The experiences that are scorched in my body are the key to the movement investigation.
I'm interested in distilling emotions into movement, looking for how a topic that exists inside me can be translated into movement, become a physical action in the body.
My research focuses on the body's ability to bring emotions to the stage in its’ most exposed and pure form, in a human way. So that everyone can identify with what their eyes see. My search is for human experiences through my personal story and that of the dancers I work with.
Why should someone identity with my personal story or find it relevant for him/herself ? What makes audiences identity with my dance pieces ?
I don’t aim for my audience to not be a mentally passive one, but I rather create situations in the show that invite the viewer to feel that the dancers are moving them, not necessarily in the physical sense, but more in the emotional sense.
I aim to create an internal movement that will take place in the mind of the viewer during the viewing. that the same experiences will take place simultaneously on the stage and within the audience. In this way, there is no separation between the audience and the stage. The forth wall is gone. The audience is part of the show and the show is part of the audience.